Are You Making A Point Or Making A Difference?

Are you making a point or making a difference? All of us have likely been in that spot where we are intent on making a point. It feels kind of good to be right, doesn’t it? And as a leader, you are probably right more often than not. Nearly all of us humans do this. We either make the point to people who are already on our side, thereby affirming our viewpoint. Or we make our point to people who disagree, typically creating more division than progress.

Making a point is easy, making a difference is hard. Making a point feels immediately satisfying, making a difference is a slow, work-intensive and long-term endeavor. It’s much easier to make a point with an employee or team off the rails than it is to dig in and figure out what is going to make a difference. It’s easy to tell people how things should be done, but much harder to coach them to do it. We all need to make a point now and then, but are you leaning on it too often? Is it working for you?

I haven’t seen too much change come from even the most well crafted points, whether they are mine or someone else’s. Does anyone really care that you’re right, be it a frontline employee, manager or even a customer? Not usually. Are you fighting for something or fighting against something? Fighting for something can build a coalition, fighting against something creates sides and a more ‘us versus them’ mentality, which we all know as we look to the current political climate, stymies progress of all kinds.

And listen, sometime you have to make a point, you have to be clear about what should have happened, or didn’t happen or just the way something is. And yet, choosing actions that make a difference, though much harder and time consuming, effect change within an organization far more effectively. So are you making a difference or making a point?