[00:00:00] Don't just look for information that confirms the way that you think the world works. You should actively challenge your thinking. Hi and welcome back to Reflect Forward. I'm your host, Kerry Siggins, and I'm so glad you are here today. Today I want to talk about why great leaders are willing to change their mind because I believe if leadership is about learning, then being willing to change your mind is not just important, it's absolutely essential because we always need to be learning.
[00:00:26] We leaders do not have all of the answers. We do not have all of the information we need. And if we get so locked in on the decisions that we make or the things that we say, then we're not willing to take in that new information and make a better decision. And that's what leadership is all about, making good decisions. I love this quote from Paul Sappho. He says, strong opinions loosely held. So who is Paul Sappho? He is a renowned technology forecaster and futurist at Stanford University.
[00:00:56] And the Institute for the Future. He coined the phrase to describe a mindset that allows for conviction paired with adaptability. That's really important. Conviction paired with adaptability, which he believes is an essential quality for fast changing environments. Leaders who hold this idea of strong opinions loosely are willing to act decisively and open themselves up to being wrong as new evidence arises. And this is really important because new evidence is going to arise all the time.
[00:01:24] And that's why I want to talk about this today, because great leaders don't cling to ideas for the sake of being right. They evolve. They evolve their thinking. They evolve their decision making process. So why is it so important for leaders to change their mind? I think it's two primary reasons. One, you have to have a growth mindset. Leaders are constantly faced with complex decisions in fast changing environments. Just look at the first part of 2025. So much in the world has changed in such a short period of time.
[00:01:52] And if you are too rigid, then you are not going to be able to pivot when new information arises. And that is key to long term success. You have to be willing to pivot. You have to be willing to say, I'm going to grow in this and learn from this, especially in light of this new information. When you're too rigid, that is a no, no. In fact, the most adaptable leaders are going to be the most successful leaders in the future. And the second reason why I think it's so important is that it builds trust.
[00:02:21] Your team is watching you. If you cling to your idea, if you cling to being right, if you cling to your ego, you are saying, I don't care about growth. I care more about my ego, about being right. And that does not set a good example. You have to be the role model and you need to show people what it's like to say, oh, in light of that new information, I'm going to change my mind. I think this is the direction we should go now. That does not make you a wishy-washy leader.
[00:02:49] It makes you a decisive leader. It makes you a leader who's willing to say, in light of this new information, we're making a better decision. And that's what people want from you. I'll share an example with you. A few years ago, we were looking for a director of compliance and contracts, somebody who would grow into corporate counsel for us. And we interviewed several candidates. And I really liked this young woman who I had developed a mentor relationship with. I saw so much potential in her. In fact, I saw a lot of myself in her, this diamond in the rough.
[00:03:18] And I wanted to give her a chance, to give her a shot at this job. The rest of my executive management team just didn't see it. They saw that she was too inexperienced for this role. In another couple of years, maybe, but not right now. And I really wanted to go to bat for her. Again, because I think I saw myself in her. And I kept going back to the time when John and Jerry, our founders at StoneAge, took this risk and hired me. And how much it changed my life and changed their life.
[00:03:47] And it was a good thing that they invested in me and took this huge risk. But after sleeping on it and really analyzing what my team had to say, they were right. We needed somebody with a different skill set. We needed somebody who had more experience. And as much as I wanted to give her a chance, as much as I saw myself in her and felt like I should be the person who also is giving those same chances to these young, high potential rock stars in our organization,
[00:04:17] I knew I needed to listen to my team. And so I came back to them and I said, you know what? I'm going to change my mind. I really wanted to hire her. And I think you all are right. And I am not right. This is not the right move for the company. And I'm changing my mind. I'm going to say, let's move on to different candidates or go a different direction. And that was really powerful. I chose growth in that moment. It wasn't like I got new information. I had insider information because I was mentoring her.
[00:04:46] But I got information from my team. And I knew that if they weren't bought into it, that it wasn't going to work. And I knew that I could see things differently, that I was biased because of developing this personal relationship with her. And so I decided to go with my team and trust them. And I know that built trust on their part with me. That's just an example of being willing to change your mind. You need to know that your team is always watching you.
[00:05:14] And you need to role model that you are willing to grow, that you are willing to change your mind, that you don't always have to be right as a leader. In fact, the more often you let other people be right, the better leader you will be. There is a huge strategic advantage to all of this as well. McKinsey research shows that agile organizations, those who quickly respond to and adapt, outperform their peers by a factor of nearly three times in financial returns. And that requires agile leadership.
[00:05:42] And you cannot be an agile leader if you are not willing to change your mind. Be flexible. Be willing to grow. Build trust on your team. When you have new information, be willing to change your mind. All right. So now let's jump into the psychology of changing your mind. There's this thing called cognitive dissonance. And it was coined by a psychologist by the name of Leon Festinger. And he used it to describe the discomfort we feel when we hold conflicting beliefs in our minds.
[00:06:12] Or when evidence contradicts our actions or our opinions. We don't like to do this. When we have to change our minds, this means that we have to resolve this dissonance. And that can feel like an identity threat. I made this decision. I'm only going to be a good leader if I stick with my decisions. I have held this bully for so long. Who am I if I don't believe this anymore? And there's all kinds of reasons why we do this as leaders. The first one is the sunk cost fallacy.
[00:06:39] We tend to stick with poor decisions because we've already invested time, energy, money, other resources into it. But when we stay the course, when it's clearly not working, it only deepens lust. I absolutely know this to be true. I have made this mistake before where I've just said, oh, another month. If we just wait another month, things are going to turn around. We'll just wait another month. Yes, we can make this happen. When the reality is that it's not going to happen. But you've sunk so much cost into it. You just can't let go of it.
[00:07:08] But the issue with the sunk cost fallacy is that you're going to keep gaining more losses. And that is not an effective way to lead. The second reason why we have this cognitive dissonance is that we have ego attachment and confirmation bias. Leaders can absolutely fall in the trap, just like every single human can, of seeking out information that confirms our beliefs instead of challenging our beliefs. And this is really uncomfortable. You need to think about your thinking.
[00:07:37] Don't just look for information that confirms the way that you think the world works. You should actively challenge your thinking to make sure that it is sound, that you're making good decisions. And when you are wrong, it's hard. It's hard to admit. I made a mistake. That risks the persona that you're trying to create, that you're the expert. You're the leader. You should have all the answers and be able to make these decisions.
[00:08:05] But that is purely ego that we are hanging on to because of this confirmation bias. Because we want to be right. Don't fall into that trap. The third reason is neuroscience. Studies show that when people are confronted with evidence that contradicts their beliefs, the amygdala, which is the fear center in our brain, it lights up, indicating that there is a threat. And that's why changing your mind feels so hard. It literally activates your flight or flight system.
[00:08:35] So we don't want to change our mind. We want to be right. It's neuroscience. We have to proactively work against the way our brains are working to physically and mentally change our minds. So those are the primary reasons from a psychology perspective why we tend to not want to change our mind. And I encourage you when you find yourself falling into this trap where we have confirmation bias or we're getting that flight or flight feeling or our egos are really attached to an outcome
[00:09:03] or a decision or a belief that we have, that you reframe it. Growth-minded leaders see discomfort as a cue for deeper thinking, not a threat. So reframe this. It's like, okay, I wasn't right. I have this new piece of information. This is going to be a way for me to grow. This is going to be a way for me to deepen my thinking, to make a better decision, to be a better role model. And if you can switch your mindset to growth instead of, ugh, I need to stick with this
[00:09:32] because this is a decision I make, you will make better decisions. And I promise you will be better respected in the long run. I'll give you another example. We are coming up with a new product. And we set a tight timeline for this product to be launched. But we also gave engineering the task of coming up with something new and innovative. And those two things are really tough. Engineering requires creativity. And if you want somebody to think of something new, you can't really put a time box on it.
[00:10:02] You need to, right? Because a company that's manufacturing new products and wants to stay ahead of innovation has to be timely in their product development. But you also have to allow space for the creative process to unfold. And so I put a very tight deadline on this and I was going to hold engineering to it. The market's asking for it, this particular product we need to deliver. And the timeline kept slipping and I kept holding their feet to the fire and getting a little upset that we weren't going to hit the timeline.
[00:10:30] And then the engineers in charge of developing the product sat down and said, hey, we'd really like to show you this new technology that we're developing so that you can understand what we're trying to do. And of course I said, sure, I would love to learn. So they gave a whole presentation on this new technology and they had built a couple of prototypes that we could see. And I went up into the shop and I took it apart and all of a sudden I was like, oh, now I get it.
[00:10:55] Now I see that we are doing something incredibly novel here. This is really exciting. And I knew I needed to change my mind. I knew that I needed to give them more freedom to test out this new idea because if this really was going to work, it was going to change the way the industry viewed this product line. And so I changed my mind and I said, okay, you have another year to develop this new product and test this new design. And let's see if we can do something that's really game changing.
[00:11:25] That was really tough to do. I had put so much pressure on meeting a certain timeline. We had customers to answer to who want a new product in this particular product line. And I had to get right with my ego because my ego wanted to say, no, we set this timeline. You guys need to make it happen. But the realist in me was like, that's not even possible. And is this how I really want to run the company to set these deadlines that are completely unrealistic that don't allow for space for creativity?
[00:11:54] And I had to reframe it in my mindset to say, this is about growth. This is about learning. We can learn so many things from this, not just about developing a new product, but how do we create space for creativity so that our engineering team can come up with things that are really novel? It was such a great example of being willing to change my mind. We're in the middle of testing it right now. And we're going to have a great new product to come out with later this year or in 2026 because of this. So being willing to change your mind matters.
[00:12:23] The psychology really matters. So when you feel yourself digging into a decision that you've made, ask yourself, why am I doing this? Is this ego? Is this confirmation bias? Is this neuroscience? Is chemistry that's happening in my brain? Am I stuck on this sunk cost fallacy where I just don't want to stop because we've invested so much time into it? Stop and think about your thinking so that you can make better decisions and don't let
[00:12:48] psychology hijack your brain so that you don't make good decisions because you really want to stick with being right. Now, I get that being willing to change your mind brings up some fear. You might think that you're going to lose credibility if you change your mind. And yes, if you are a person who constantly changes your mind and is wishy-washy, that is not going to build credibility. But that's not what we're talking about here today.
[00:13:14] We're talking about getting new information and really changing your belief system and saying, okay, I was wrong. In light of this new information, I think that we should change the decision and doing that with poise, with grace, and with credibility. The first point I'd like to make is that transparency is powerful. You want to be transparent in everything that you do, especially when you're changing your mind. Let people in on your thought process. You can say something like, I made the best decision I could at the time, and now with
[00:13:42] what I've learned, I see a better path forward, and here's why. And share that information. People value transparency. And we've all found ourselves in a position where we've made a decision, and then we got a new piece of information and been like, oh, whoops, that was a wrong decision. You're role modeling what it's like to change your mind. But you can only do that if you were transparent. The second aspect of this is modeling humility without abdication.
[00:14:07] You need to be confident in how you lead, and that does not mean that when the direction shifts that you should no longer be confident in how you lead. I've absolutely changed my mind on strategy dozens of times because of new information I've received or how the market has evolved or we tried something that didn't work. And that does not shake my confidence as a leader. It just says, okay, we have new information. We tried something and it didn't work.
[00:14:36] This happened when we made this huge strategic shift to sell direct instead of through distribution. We made this decision several years ago. And what it did is it opened up new competition. And in hindsight, I wish that I would have kept those dealers open and built those relationships in different ways rather than just saying, nope, we're going direct and we're cutting you out. And with that new information, we started working with the distributors that we have differently.
[00:15:05] We started opening up relationships that we might have been closed off to after we made this decision because we got new information. There's a better way to do this. It doesn't have to be black or white. But I made that decision in a black and white way, not fully taking in all of the unintended consequences of what that decision was going to bring. And so I said, hey, we've learned a lot from this over the past several years. Why don't we change the way that we're approaching some of these markets with our distributors?
[00:15:35] Let's build these partnerships out. Let's go in and tell them what we've learned and how it's going to be different this time and why this relationship can be mutually beneficial changes the way that we go to market in specific markets because of what we learned. It didn't shake my confidence as a leader. I just said, hey, the direction is shifting. We have new information. The market has changed. We're going to change how we're approaching it in these specific ways. And that's because we use every single decision as a learning narrative.
[00:16:04] And that is so important. And that is another way that you keep credibility if you change your mind. We are always learning. Nobody has all the answers. Nobody can predict the future. Nobody can orchestrate an outcome, even though we try really hard because we have no idea what the next moment is going to bring. But if you role model that everything is a learning opportunity, every challenge is a way to grow, every mistake is a way to learn how to do something differently, then you're setting up an organization
[00:16:34] that values trying new things, being willing to fail, and course correcting when you have new information. So to create that learning narrative, you need to say something like, here's what I thought, here's what I've learned, and here's how we're changing course now. People will absolutely respect that because things are constantly changing. And as long as you are transparent and you're role modeling with humility and confidence and
[00:17:01] that you've created a culture where learning and growing is imperative, people will respect you. They'll go, yep, okay, I get it. I understand why he or she is changing their minds. And just to really hit home on the point of learning, it is so important. Being a learning organization is a competitive advantage. And I love this quote from, I'm probably going to butcher his name, but it's Ari Degas. He was the former head of Shell's strategic planning group.
[00:17:28] Shell is one of the biggest refining companies in the world. Our products are used in their plants all the time. And he said, the ability to learn faster than your competitors may be your only sustainable competitive advantage. And this is so true. This is why you have to have a growth mindset. This is why you have to create a culture that values learning and why you have to be agile as a leader. And none of those things are possible if you are not willing to change your mind when you are wrong or when you have new information.
[00:17:58] So now let's dive into overcoming pitfalls that you may experience when you are changing your mind. So the first one is embarrassment. We don't want to feel incompetent. We don't want to appear incompetent. And when we change our minds, we worry about that. We feel embarrassed. But my belief is that vulnerability is your credibility. And I love Brene Brown's work on this. She talks about this all the time, the power of vulnerability. Don't feel embarrassed when you are wrong. Admit it.
[00:18:27] Lean into the vulnerability of saying, hey, I learned this new piece of information and I need to change my thoughts on this. I need to change the direction. Leaders who own their mistakes absolutely foster greater psychological safety within their organizations. And this is so important. So just remember, when you're embarrassed about something, own it. Embrace vulnerability. It is your credibility. And you will create more psychological safety on your team when you're willing to say, I was wrong.
[00:18:55] Another common emotional pitfall that you might run into is feeling like you might lose status or respect. But I promise you, people will respect you more when you model course correction over defensiveness. Just because you were wrong doesn't mean that you're going to lose respect. You will lose respect if you keep driving that train down the wrong tracks and take the company in the wrong direction just because you have this fear of losing that status or respect. People will respect you more when you model course correction.
[00:19:24] Another emotional pitfall you might experience is regret or shame for acting too fast. This is me. I make fast decisions. And I have made wrong decisions because of it. And I have absolutely regretted it. And how I get over that regret and sometimes those shameful feelings is I use it as a learning lab. I ask myself questions. How did I get to this point? What assumptions did I make too quickly? How can I slow my thinking next time?
[00:19:53] What kind of processes do I need to put into place so that I don't act too fast? Use it as a learning lab. Shame and regret, they will not get you anywhere. Nowhere. Those are emotions that hold you back. So channel it into learning. How can I learn something from this to be a better leader? All right. So now let's dive into some tools to embrace flexibility as a leadership strength, aka being willing to change your mind.
[00:20:21] First, build in checkpoints. You need to ask yourself, what would make me revisit this decision in 30 days? If you're feeling really nervous about it, you don't have all the information, ask yourself this question. It will help you understand where you might change your mind and why you might change your mind. So what would make me revisit this decision in 30 days? Number two, make it safe for people to challenge you. Invite feedback. Say something like, if you see me getting too attached to one of my own ideas or a direction
[00:20:50] that we're going as an organization, I want you to call it out. I don't want to make poor decisions based on my ego or my confirmation bias. So call me out on it. Make it safe for others to challenge you. Number three, practice saying I don't know yet. I have said I don't know so many times as a leader, and I know that it has made other people feel uncomfortable at times. We want our leaders to know, to have all the answers. But the reality is that we don't.
[00:21:18] We're constantly making decisions based on limited information. And if you do not feel prepared to make a decision, like you're going to make a poor decision, it's okay to say I don't know yet. It can save you from making premature decisions that take you in the wrong direction. And finally, number four, turn reflection into a ritual. I am such a believer in self-reflection, in self-inquiry.
[00:21:41] You have to ask yourself these questions so that you can better understand yourself as a leader so that you can grow. So at the end of each week, ask yourself, what did I learn that challenged what I believe? Do I still hold these same belief systems? Was this still a good decision? Think about your thinking. This is how you become a better thinker. Turning reflection into a process that you do every single week. I do it every single day.
[00:22:11] I write in my journal every single day without fail. Even if I have nothing to report, I still talk about what I learned from the day, what challenges I had. If something was really easy, I express gratitude for it. Turn reflection into ritual. It will make you a better leader. So now I'd like to tie this all back to the ownership mindset because you know how much I am a believer in the ownership mindset. And mental flexibility is such an important part of owning it.
[00:22:40] Ownership equals responsibility, but responsibility without rigidity. You own the impact of your choices, both right and wrong. So if we want to be leaders who grow people, grow businesses, and grow ourselves, we must be willing to own the need to evolve. Even if that means saying, I was wrong. I changed my mind. That is true ownership. That is the power of the ownership mindset.
[00:23:08] So with that, we're going to wrap up today's episode. And here are the key takeaways from this idea around great leaders are willing to change their mind. One, the best leaders are learners and learners always change their mind because we're always getting new information. Two, the psychology behind resisting changing our mind is real, but it is not immovable, especially when we understand it.
[00:23:32] Number three, changing your mind with transparency absolutely will strengthen your credibility. It will not weaken it. Number four, tools like reflection rituals and feedback loops build mental flexibility. You're challenging the way that you think. You're thinking about the way you think, which makes the quality of your thinking better. And number five, the ownership mindset requires courage to evolve even when it's uncomfortable.
[00:23:58] And we cannot evolve if we are not willing to change our mind. So I challenge you today to reflect on what beliefs or decisions are you holding onto too tightly that might need reexamination. And here is the challenge of the week. Say out loud, I changed my mind. Even if you just say it once, I changed my mind. Notice how it feels and notice how it shifts your leadership. I promise you it's not that bad and it can feel free.
[00:24:26] With that, I'm going to leave you for your day. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you think this episode could help a leader who is very rigid or who feels bad about changing their minds, please share it. I would greatly appreciate it. And if you like this podcast, please subscribe to it on YouTube, on your favorite podcast platform, write a review, share it with a friend. It helps with the algorithms and I appreciate it so much. With that, I will leave you to your day. Take care. We'll see you next week.