Source: Feans, Creative Commons
An article on a UK engineer using his skills to prove he should not have received a camera generated speeding ticket (love this guy) contained the lines:
Knowing you’re right doesn’t always help. Convincing others of your rightness can, at times, be impossible. All you’re left with is your conviction. (From Chris Matyszezyk)
Now some of us (maybe most of us) are happy to be simply left with our convictions. A team full of people holding on to their own convictions is not a team, but a group of convicts. (In this case, convicts are people holding on to their convictions.)
Notice that the two definitions for the word conviction are:
- A firmly held belief or opinion
- A formal declaration of guilt
Are you guilty of holding on to your beliefs or opinions? This is a tough one.
On the one hand, we do want to hold on to our beliefs and values. They’re what guide us through tough and ambiguous times and what helps us discern right and wrong. But I think we need to be careful (and clear) about what are our true beliefs values and what are simply opinions—when opinions turn to hardened beliefs, we’re in danger of becoming “convicts.”
Convicts don’t make great teams, they form gangs.
Chris McGoff in his book Primes has a great line on this concept:
Do you use facts like a drunk uses a lamppost, as support rather than illumination?”
Have you figured out how to distinguish between your beliefs and opinions and how you can let other people in on that understanding? As Chris encourages, check your facts! Not just what the facts are and if you have understood them accurately but how are you using them: simply to support your belief or opinion or to illuminate the situation and help discover how other people view the same facts and reach different conclusions?
Convictions are good. Just make sure you’re using them to build great teams and not just form gangs.