Strong Opinions, Weakly Held

Posted on November 15, 2009 by Ronald T. Brown, Ph.D.

The phrase “Strong Opinions, Weakly Held” describes an important philosophy for effective leadership. Bob Sutton describes the importance of this idea as:

“A virtue of wise people – those who have the courage to act on their knowledge, but the humility to doubt what they know…to deal with an uncertain future, and still move forward – have ’strong opinions, which are weakly held.’... Weak opinions are problematic because people aren’t inspired to develop the best arguments to support them, or to put forth the energy required to thoroughly test them. It is just as important, however, to not be too attached to what you believe because, otherwise, it undermines your ability to ’see’ and ‘hear’ evidence that clashes with your current perspective and opinion. This is what psychologists call the problem of ‘confirmation bias.’”

When navigating your organization into a complex and uncertain future, formulating strong opinions - that are weakly held, is a wise posture when developing and implementing an effective strategy.