Early in my career I often found myself in meetings confronted with information I didn’t think was accurate. My instinct was to speak up and correct whatever I thought was wrong. This built a reputation for me as someone who was knowledgeable and able to explain technical details. All good, or so I thought. Especially good for my ego.

There were 3 problems with this approach that I learned the hard way:

1. Nobody wants to be corrected in front of an audience. While some organizations brag a culture of admitting mistakes, I’ve found this point to be true almost all the time. Culture doesn’t trump human nature in this case. And I wasn’t even always right either, even though I thought I was.
2. People generally want meetings to move quickly toward a conclusion – sidebars and explanations can get in the way of that progress. Especially if they are not material to the outcome.
3. If you continually correct people without moving meetings forward, your reputation can quickly turn from smart, to smart ass.

My mentor helped me understand how to course-correct without losing my intent of making sure we’re working on accurate information – it was a simple technique:

1. Take a prop into a meeting with me as a reminder to stop and think before speaking up (could be a pen, for example – but something you might not normally have in a meeting).
2. In doing this introspection, ask the question “if I say this, is it going to help move us to a conclusion or not?” (You can always take corrections later, and without an audience).

This is what most people would now call being mindful. I’m sure there are many great techniques along these lines that you can find, but this simple technique helped me avoid turning into a professional disruptor and into a catalyst for progress (well, at least I tried to).

So, try to be a catalyst first, and smart second.

Good luck!

-Gary