When Being Right Makes You Wrong

I am sitting in the back of an Uber early one morning on my way to the airport. It’s cold and dark outside, with a slight drizzle.

Po, my Uber driver, and I have been chatting about world affairs as he skilfully navigates the twists and turns of the highway.

As we change lanes, a car honks loudly behind us. Po bristles.

At the next red light, a car pulls up alongside us. Po winds down his window, rests his elbow on the window frame and shouts, “Hey you!”

I presume this is the car that honked at us.

I lean forward and see a young couple in the front. The guy is driving and the woman is sitting on the passenger side, right next to Po.

“You were wrong! You were wrong!” Po yells.

The couple stare rigidly ahead.

“Wind down your window. I have to tell you something.”

They remain frozen, refusing to make eye contact.

“You merged illegally. You were wrong. Wind down your window!”

The lights turn green, and they are gone.

“Po, what’s going on?” I ask.

In a proud voice, he tells me he drives this route five times a day and was perfectly entitled to change lanes where he did. They were wrong to beep at him, and he wanted them to know.

“How old are you?” I ask.

He tells me he has just turned 40 and has a wife and two children.

“What have you learned about humans in your 40 years?”

He pauses and looks at me sideways.

“They are stupid.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because they don’t listen.”

I agree that people can be frustrating when they don’t pay attention to what is going on around them. He smiles.

Then I ask him to cast his mind back to the traffic lights.

“What was your intention when you were yelling at those people?”

“To teach them a lesson and let them know they were wrong.”

“Okay. Now imagine it was you in the other car, with your wife beside you. You pull up at the lights, and some guy in the car next to you starts yelling at your wife to wind down her window.”

I pause.

“Would you think, ‘What a nice, benevolent teacher’? Or would you think, ‘This guy’s a maniac’?”

Po says nothing.

We sit in silence for a few seconds. Then he bursts out laughing.

“Yes. I understand.”

Now he is curious. “Who are you?”

I explain that I am a psychologist and I’m on my way to New Zealand to give a lecture on the power of listening.

He asks what he should have done.

I tell him about something the Australian psychologist Hugh Mackay once wrote: what matters is not simply what we say, but what other people do with what we say.

And I tell him about the work of another psychologist, Chris Argyris, who studied how people behave when they feel embarrassed or threatened. His research showed that under stress, we often behave in ways that produce the very opposite of what we intended.

Po had wanted the couple to listen and learn.

But the way he delivered his message had virtually guaranteed they would do neither.

“So it’s better to say less when I am angry?” he asks.

“Yes. And to try to see things from the other person’s point of view.”

I also admit this is easier said than done.

Two days later, I share the story at the conference, and we all have a good laugh.

But Po had inadvertently demonstrated an important principle of human behaviour.

Being right is not enough. If we genuinely want to influence someone, we also need to think about what they are likely to do with what we say.

That’s the power of listening.

Until next time,