Stop Being The Smartest Person In The Room – The route to success

 

Business starts to be fun (again) when you are quite literally the dumbest person in the room.

If you have all the answers then everyone leans on you and you take on some kind of superhuman qualities in the eyes of the lesser beings in the room. You may even blind them and yourself with the brightness of your reflection (or is that your arrogant ego?).

Being too bright guarantees organisational laziness: the others let you do the hard thinking, they become lazy and depend on your eyes and intellect. You end up doing all the heavy lifting.

Far better to be the person with the best questions in the business, the one who looks to their staff, team, customers and advisors for the answers. The business should not be dependent on you. Dare I say you’ve heard it before but hire the brightest people you can. People who are brighter than you. You should be the dumbest (and not the smartest) person in the room.