Do you always have to be right?

You have a dinner date with a close friend and you are debating where you two should go. You point out the bad reviews her choice has received, but in the end you give in and accept that restaurant…

… And the experience is exactly what you thought it would be: The waiter is rude, the washrooms dirty, and the food is cold and bland.

You have two options during this painful experience:

Critique everything and point out to your friend how wrong they were.
Shut up, eat the food, and enjoy the evening with a good friend.

Most of us, in the light of day, choose option 2. In practice, however, most of us choose option 1 far more than we would care to admit.

Marshall Goldsmith, whose example this is, calls this “winning too much”. It is the most common bad habit Marshall sees in growing leaders. Our urge to win trumps our common sense and reduces our effectiveness as leaders.

My daughter, when confronted with these choices, said that choice number 1 will make you old faster. I have to agree and therefore for both my leadership development, and to keep looking young, I am going to endeavour to choose option number 2 more often.

IBEX Payroll extends our profound respect and immeasurable gratitude to all the ancestors and keepers of the land on whose traditional territories our work takes place. We acknowledge that we are on Treaty 1 territory, the traditional gathering place of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene people and the traditional homeland of the Métis people. This land is sacred, historical, and significant.

Every time we acknowledge this truth, we have an invitation and an opportunity to reflect on the wrongs of the past, what we do in the present, and what we can do to continually honour the people whose lands and water we benefit from today.

This statement only acts as a first step in honouring the land we reside on and its peoples, and must be paired with education, understanding and informed action.