Letting Go of Being Right
The Smartest Person in the Room Is Stuck
You have spent your entire career being right. Right on the diagnosis. Right on the treatment plan. Right on the board exams, the case presentations, the peer reviews. Letting go of being right feels like letting go of the thing that made you successful in the first place.
I get it. In clinical medicine, being right keeps people alive. But in leadership, in relationships with colleagues, in your own development as a physician -- the need to be right is quietly holding you back.
What Medical Training Actually Teaches
Medical education selects for people who are right and punishes people who are wrong. That is not an exaggeration. From day one, the incentive structure is clear: know the answer, defend the answer, do not waver.
By the time you reach faculty, that pattern is bone-deep. It is not a personality flaw. It is a trained reflex.
The problem is that the reflex does not know when to turn off. So it shows up in a faculty meeting when a colleague suggests a different approach to scheduling. It shows up when a mentee pushes back on your advice. It shows up when your coach asks you to consider a perspective that contradicts your self-image.
And instead of getting curious, you get defensive. Not because you are a bad person. Because your training told you that being wrong is dangerous.
Intellectual Humility Is Not Weakness
Mark Leary, a social psychologist at Duke, has studied intellectual humility extensively. His research shows that people with higher intellectual humility are better at evaluating evidence, more open to learning, and -- importantly -- viewed as more credible by others. Not less. More.
That finding matters for physicians in academic medicine. The coachable physician mindset is not about doubting your expertise. It is about holding your expertise loosely enough to let new information in.
Being right about a diagnosis and being right about how to lead your team are fundamentally different skills. The first rewards certainty. The second rewards curiosity.
One Thing to Try This Week
The next time you feel the urge to correct someone or defend your position, pause. Ask yourself: Am I protecting a patient, or am I protecting my ego?
If the answer is ego, try a different response. Ask a question instead of making a statement. Say "tell me more" instead of "actually, I think..." That two-second pause is where growth lives.
Letting go of being right does not mean becoming passive. It means choosing to be effective over being correct. The best physician leaders I work with have figured this out. They are not less confident. They are confident enough to be wrong.
If your department could benefit from building this kind of culture, we can help. Learn about coaching for departments.
