If you ask it means having strong opinions came back to bite you and you don't want it to happen again. Keep this situation in mind, it's an excellent starting

If you ask it means having strong opinions came back to bite you and you don't want it to happen again. Keep this situation in mind, it's an excellent starting point to understand how you could react differently. In most cases, strong opinions are only problematic if there is miscommunication around. You may have good reasons behind your opinion, but you need to make your case to the other people. They don't live in your head or share your knowledge. Explaining is the most difficult part: you have to put yourself in the shoes of the other person. What's their background, what do they know about the problem, where does their opinion come from,... It's essentially an endless list but the better you understand the other person, the better you will communicate. Never attack the person or be condescending, you are the teacher and they are the student. ... So, that was the case where you were right, but you will be wrong sometimes and you have to know. It's also a communication problem: you need to find the information you were missing when you made up your opinion. If someone comes to you and says "we have a new project coming, it's on an embedded chip and we'll do it in Python". You may want to reply that Python is slow and we should do it in Rust otherwise there's no point of even doing it on embedded. And you'd be right for certain cases, but this project was meant be as an introduction to robotic for children. Without all the info, you reach the wrong conclusion. Here, you have two choices to not be perceived as an asshat: seek the information/explanation first "oh Python on embedded, is there a particular reason (for not using Rust/C)?" or admit you were wrong right away "yeah, teaching children about ownership models seems like a stretch..." (if you're not in the mood for jokes: "ok, makes sense"). Do this and people won't blame you for having strong opinions. If you are just holding strongly to your opinions without explanation, all the other person will hear is "I won't listen to you", "I don't want to change" and/or "I want to win". And I'm sure that's now how you want to appear. Another poster talked about "Strong opinions, loosely held." and that's pretty much the summary of my rant.