#Results March 26

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March 2026 marks the 75th consecutive month that Jeff Neelon, Jaclyn Donovan, and I have completed a 30-Day Coach4aday Challenge. For this milestone month, we’ve chosen to focus on teaching. Each day for 30 days, we will share one lesson, principle, or insight gained from the previous 74 challenges—calling it the 30-Day Coach4aday Teach It Challenge. For each of us we believe that our own personal growth increases when we share it.

Going to revisit a personal story about making a decision between getting RESULTS or focusing on being right. Often, they are two different outcomes.

In 2014 I experienced a professional leadership decision between proving I was right or achieving a result for the team I was leading.

“Teach It” 30 Day Challenge Guidelines

In past challenges, we invited others to join us, though participation has been limited. This month, the three of us will return to January 2020—the very beginning—and move forward to the present, reflecting along the way and sharing a life lesson or insight from any month with one another.

Here is how we will do it.

1. Identify the principle, insight, or lesson from a previous 30-Day Challenge-identify the Challenge also.
2. Teach that lesson to each of us.
3. Share the conversation by posting on social media with the hashtag #Coach4adayChallenge

Day 26-The dilemma between being correct or achieving results

In 2014 I was unexpectedly thrust into a leadership role, asked to provide technical guidance to a group of very important individuals. Our university hosted a high-level meeting with influential participants, but due to a series of circumstances, the team members who typically handle the technical aspects were unavailable. We pride ourselves on cross-training and usually have at least three people prepared to cover any responsibility, but today that depth wasn’t there—leaving me as the one looked to for technology leadership.

The Situation

At a critical meeting, a former military leader was unable to access his university-issued iPad and insisted that someone had tampered with it and changed his password. Rather than consider that he may have simply forgotten it, he directed blame toward someone who wasn’t even present. I knew the device had remained secure since the last meeting, but his pride made him unwilling to request a reset, so the blame game continued.

I was faced with a choice: point out that the issue was likely an incorrect password or find a way to resolve the situation quickly. Instead of escalating the tension, I chose to focus on a solution and offered him my device so he could rejoin the meeting without delay. The outcome of that meeting was too important for our team to risk distraction or delay.

One of my colleagues questioned why I didn’t take the opportunity to point out that he was wrong for blaming others for his password issue. I explained that strong teams and effective leaders are judged by their ability to deliver results—and that priority outweighs any personal need to prove you are right.