Admit You Don’t Know

“I’m a hypocrite,” I realized yesterday. “I’m not willing to admit, ‘I don’t know.’”

I had just been critical of a “know it all” attitude that I suspected in someone else*. This attitude is often manifested in an unwillingness to say “I don’t know.” And yet, there I sat in office hours, confronted by an entrepreneurial challenge whose answer escaped me… and it was SO HARD to tell the earnest student seeking advice the simple truth, that I didn’t know the answer to their question.

“I don’t know,” might be three of the hardest words to say, especially for a teacher. Teacher is the one who’s supposed to know.

But what happened when I admitted that I didn’t have the answer? It created the space for this student’s classmates to swoop in and be brilliant! “What if you tried this?” one founder said. “Yeah, and in parallel, look at this resource,” said another. Fantastic contributions, all care of a learning cohort, not the instructor.

Would such contributions have surfaced had I remained the “sage expert” instructor, as expected? If I had spouted off some nonsense to try to hide the fact that I had no idea? I don’t know, but I doubt it.

I’m a big believer that knowing the answers is less important than having the right approach. I often tell others, “Don’t be the answer guy; be the approach guy. This was a healthy reminder how deeply the longing to have an answer goes.

The challenge is, the default assumption we make when we come up with an answer is the entirely unverified assumption that we have come up with the right answer. One great way to admit you don’t know: try more than one, or imagine alternatives. Implicitly, by doing more than one thing, you’re admitting that you may not have the right answer. That you don’t know, yet.

*the errors of hubris and judgment are for fit for another post, entirely

Related: Rally A Cohort
Related: Master the Approach
Related: Try More Than One
Related: Imagine Alternatives

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