102. Ten Percent of a Bad Idea
Highlights
- The 10% Rule: How to Address the Reactive State of Rebuke
Key takeaways:
- Reacting to the other person's wrongness can lead to a retreat into our own rightness, which is not productive.
- The 10% rule suggests that the other person is at least 10% right, so we should not be too quick to react to their wrongness.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
You respond with an eye roll, a sigh, and a pause preparing your rebuke and complete course correction because really, what a dumbass. All right, what's the common thread here? It's succumbing to the reactive state of rebuke. I am right, you are wrong. And in your wrongness, you are 100% wrong. What happens then? How does the conversation proceed? Is it productive and moving forward, setting up future discussions for success? No, it is not. I think a lot of us have a natural propensity to contract and retreat into the rightness of our own position. It can happen in business, in leadership and medicine, in relationships. Anytime you're interacting with someone else, even if it's just in your own mind, this can be the place that we naturally go to. There's myriad frameworks to address this. We've talked about several on this show, listening to understand the Spock retreat on violent communication. And one that we haven't looked at much is one of my favorites. I'm not sure if I've even mentioned this on the show before. It's the 10% rule. The condensed version of the 10% rule is that the other person is at least 10% right. Our inner critic not only criticizes us, but others and situations. (Time 0:03:01)