There will be times when you fully believe a decision being made around you to not be the right one. You might have ideas which are factually, provably, better than the ones being implemented by other people, all while having a vision which others fail to realize. The lack of being understood in this sense is a painful undergoing. You will not feel heard by those around you and you will not feel trusted.

This article hopes to provide some pointers on how to navigate instances when you’re not listened to in expressing your ideas.

The people around you will make decisions based on judgments they made without taking your opinions into account. The way you act in the face of such events can either aid or hurt your chances of being taken seriously in regards to future decisions being made.

The Group You Label As Wrong May Perceive You to Be Selfish

The first thing you should remember is that the people making the decisions around you feel exactly the same way about their vision and ideas as you do about yours. Understand that if you are a part of a team, the team must always be placed first on the list of importance. People making decisions on behalf of a larger group likely understand this fact and believe that the decisions they are making are benefiting the team. Thereby anything that you voice your opinion against can be initially understood as you being selfish and wanting to propagate your ideas for the sake of your own pride.

If your ideas are rejected and your opposition to a decision is not taken seriously, you shouldn’t continue to push your vision into reality. Understand that your emphasis on being heard can be mistaken for selfishness, and always give the impression that you are willing to step aside for the sake of the betterment of the team (even though deep down you reject the popular idea).

Another aspect which not arguing with final decisions saves you from is the possibility of being wrong. Though you may be fully committed to your ideas being factual and working out in the long run, there is always a possibility to be wrong. When you accept the final decisions of higher authorities, you will then have the opportunity to test your ideas privately within your perception. See how things play out and see if you were correct in your initial thoughts on the circumstance. Were you right?

Accepting the decisions which you disagree with gives you a chance to train your decision-making skills. View this as a chance to simulate; to improve your skills without the embarrassment that comes with unintentionally misleading a group. You will inevitably be wrong in your venture to be a good decision-maker, so prepare to learn, and use every opportunity to save yourself from negative consequences. Test out the odds of your ideas being right and approach the chance that they may be wrong with care.

When They Turn Out to be Incorrect

The people around you do not feel an inordinate desire to hear your ideas repeated to them over and over. If your idea is rejected, accept the rejection. Do your job in implementing the ideas with which you disagree with the goal of helping those who support those certain “wrong” decisions. Though you may feel that your chances of saying, “I told you so,” are higher when you’ve voiced your idea a dozen times only to be rejected, it’s better to simply voice it once.

The more times your specify why you’re right and why they’re wrong prior to implementing a certain idea, the less likely they’ll be to admit that you were right should things with their idea actually go wrong. By being humble and understanding in the face of their mistakes, your act of mentioning your idea only once will better entice them to admit you were right in the long run. They’d view you as being humble in so-called victory in that instance, and would seek to reward you more than if you were to forcefully imprint your correctness into their minds.

Your investment in the future would have been made by telling the decision-makers what you think of their plans once. If their plans do in fact turn out to be wrong as things play out, do not rub it in their face. The thing that matters most is knowing that you were right, for yourself, by yourself.

Place your trust in those in leadership positions to recognize that you were right; thereby granting you a louder voice during the next big decision to be made. There will be many decisions to make in your time and experiences with them going forward. Help the people around you understand the well-thought out nature of your ideas by enticing them rather than forcing. You are likelier to be listened to the next time around if you act humble in your ideological victories.