How To Counter A False Statement About You
Demonstrate a counterpoint to change a false perception or recover gracefully from mistake. Here's how to escape the negative thinking spiral, move towards action, and come out stronger.
Client: I was in a group meeting with the VP of Sales this week about H2 goals. I made a comment that called out his team for not delivering on Q2 goals. I thought it was general knowledge and did not intend to criticize. Yet immediately, I felt the air get sucked out of the room. He got angry and defensive, and everyone stayed silent. I already have a reputation for being “too direct with critical feedback,” and I hear people get scared of being in a meeting with me. What should I do?
One of the critical skills of any leader is speaking up and having your voice heard. Whether it is aligning a group on a direction, holding someone accountable for a deliverable, or pitching a new idea, speaking up and out effectively in large groups is at the heart of leadership. For an aspiring executive, speaking up in a high-stakes setting can be daunting. To make matters worse, we are then often misheard. Verbal communication is highly prone to mistakes.
As a product leader whose job relies on speaking to many people in all types of combinations all the time, I learned quickly that no matter how much I prepare, I will make mistakes or be misheard. I will accidentally upset someone. Others will misunderstand my intentions. I will get criticism for my comments, no matter how carefully it is phrased. When it happens, it feels like taking a physical punch.
It turns out that how I recover from a misstep can be more important than trying to prevent it from happening. We will make mistakes. Learning how to recover from them with grace will enable us to step out stronger than before. How a leader handles and leads through failure can be more telling about their executive potential than how they lead through success.
Don’t Correct The Record
When we make a statement that gets interpreted in a negative or unintended way, our first instinct is the correct the other person.
“No, that’s not the right way to look at it. Let me explain.”
“That’s not what I meant! I was intending ...”
“That’s not who I am! I’m not a person that…”
We want to clear our name and set the record straight. However, when we try to correct others, we come off as defensive, controlling, and often not collaborative. This is because we are trying to correct something that cannot be wrong: the other person’s subjective interpretation of your statement and how it landed with them.
When you try to correct another person’s reaction, you are invalidating their subjective experience and feelings. Regardless of your original intentions, a set of very real emotions and opinions was triggered. It does not cast you in a positive light to continue to litigate what you truly intended or what the other person thinks you intended. This only brings more attention to the potential mistake or unintended consequence.
Identify What You Want to Correct
When someone reacts negatively to something we’ve said or done, it triggers a series of inner dialogue driven by fear and anxiety.
“Now everyone thinks I’m someone who is culturally insensitive.”
“I will not get the green light for the project.”
“This important person thinks I am out to get him and his team.”
Many of these statements are exaggerated and extreme. However, they point to important fears that you want to address. Once you’ve had a chance to regain composure, pinpoint the primary fears triggered and a potential counterpoint to the fear.
For my client who upset the sales leader, her primary fears were that he no longer thinks she’s a good partner to him and that she’ll continue to undermine his work. As a director at Thumbtack, I feared that I was perceived as intimidating. At Meta, I once got feedback that I was not “in the weeds” enough.
There may be many fears that arise at one time. Perhaps a misstep in an executive meeting led you to worry about your credibility as a PM, your leadership potential, your relationship with a leader, and your understanding of technical details. Choose one that seems most important to counter first. Once you pinpoint a particular fear or perception to tackle, the next step is to find and demonstrate a counterpoint.
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Demonstrate The Counterpoint
When you try to correct the record (e.g., I’m not X), you are focusing the attention of others on past perceptions. When you move to demonstrate the opposite of that perception, you are taking control of what you can control and moving the attention to your actions.
Ask yourself: What is one thing that I can do going forward that demonstrates the opposite of my feared narrative? How can I show others that what they think is not true?
For my client who feared damage to a critical relationship, the counterpoint is to show him that she remains a supporter through giving him a helpful resource, prioritizing a task he needs done, or speaking highly of his work in another setting.
When I was at Thumbtack, I got feedback that I was intimidating. To counter this narrative, I proactively reached out to more junior members of the team, particularly on adjacent functions (e.g., customer support, lifecycle marketing), to hear their ideas and support their work.
At Meta, some very senior engineers on my team worried I was not “in the weeds” enough to make strong decisions. To counter this narrative, I got very involved in one particularly technical project in order to build confidence that I understood the technical tradeoffs. Rather than trying to argue the perspective (e.g,. I am considering technical details!), I found a good counterpoint to demonstrate the opposite of the perception.
The counterpoint action is best if it is immediate and visible. Demonstrating this counterpoint within 24-48 hours of the initial trigger has an outsized impact because it is still top of mind for others. This likely means it needs to be practical and lower effort. It does not need to be a grandiose gesture or an extremely thorough analysis. Remember, rather than staying in a negative spiral due to something outside your control, focus on what you can control and take action to counter the perception.
That’s all folks! See you next week at 3:14 pm.
Yue
Thank you so much, what an amazing read! I've encountered a situation that is similar to this at work where I was trying to set a boundary. I haven't found anything like this online, so I appreciate it - amazing article!