Letting Go of Your Need to Be the Smartest Person in the Room

One of the most common and damaging of a leader’s blind spots is the compulsion to regularly provide evidence that he/she is the smartest person in the room.

Many well-intentioned leaders are adversely impacted by this bad habit without realizing it. The impact of what is often not much more than one or more behavioral tics includes stifling creativity and innovation and derailing any hopes of developing a high-performance environment.

The challenge is to learn to recognize your own “smartest person in the room” behaviors and to replace them with a few simple but not simplistic habits that focus on drawing input from team members instead of stifling input. While blind spots are by definition difficult to see, I’ll make a reasonable assumption that your desire to improve your effectiveness as a leader can help you both self-diagnose and take some simple but powerful corrective actions. (For those too smart to spend time thinking and working on their own performance and behaviors, now would be the time to write a comment suggesting why you’re right.)

3 Common ‘Smartest Person in the Room’ Behaviors

Do any of these feel familiar?

The final word habit. Leaders who struggle with “smartest person in the room” syndrome often operate with the false belief that being in charge means always having the answer. This drives the individual to assert his/her opinion as the final word or last word, and it teaches people to suppress their own ideas and wait for solutions from the person in charge. If you’re frustrated with your team’s lack of creativity or active discussion about ideas, you might be someone who has taught them to wait for the last word.

The eyes, and face and voice, say it all. Some leaders telegraph their “smartest person in the room” persona through their verbal and nonverbal responses to the commentary or ideas of others. I’ve observed senior managers who portray what is perceived as disinterest or disdain for the commentary of team members by interrupting them in mid-sentence or maintaining a facial expression that seems to ask: “Why are you using up my valuable oxygen with this stupid idea?” Of course, the leader may not be intending to communicate disregard or disdain, but we impute this less-than-noble intent based on our interpretation of the visible and audible cues. If your team members are less than enthusiastic about sharing new ideas and approaches, perhaps you’ve inadvertently shot them down too many times.

I’ll see you and raise you. A closely related cousin to the behaviors above is the leader who listens to the input of his team, but fails to acknowledge good ideas or threads of their good ideas. One top leader had the unique habit of responding to input with his own input in a seeming point/counterpoint battle that was interpreted as either arguing or trumping the ideas. In reality, she was using an unrecognizable form of active listening to translate what she was hearing into her own words. However, it was interpreted very differently.

3 Approaches to Combat Your Own ‘Smartest Person in the Room’ Syndrome

Ask more than tell. Questions are powerful leadership tools, much more effective than orders in most circumstances. Train yourself to respond to ideas with questions to help you and others better develop their ideas. Strive to understand before offering your own perspective.

Cultivate the courage to shut up and let others decide. While you never have to cede your right to veto an idea or an approach, use this veto power sparingly. Most of the time through questioning and the technique of building upon the ideas of others, you can promote a modification or adaptation of someone else’s approach without throwing your weight around. If you must, use the “line item” veto

Work hard to look for the beauty in ideas, not the flaws. Some people look at a scene and see the beauty in it and others find the gaps—the faults. Frankly, those who see the flaws are significantly less interesting and enjoyable to be around. A micromanaging boss sees the flaws and hammers people for changes to minutiae. The effective manager acknowledges the beauty inherent in ideas and focuses questions and efforts on realizing that beauty. Discussions about flaws can be isolated to a simple discussion around risks.

And If It’s Your Boss Who Doesn’t Recognize Her Case of ‘Smartest Person in the Room’ Syndrome?

If you are working for someone suffering from this syndrome, you have a number of options—all with pros and cons.

Resist the urge to argue. It’s tempting; it’s one of my own challenges, and it is often wrong. Take a deep breath, close your lips and think. If you must talk, ask clarifying questions. It never hurts anyone to seek first to understand.

Manage upside down. If your boss is generally well-intended and receptive to input from team members, construct an effective feedback discussion with behavioral examples. Indicate the business or performance consequences of the “smartest person” behaviors and offer one or more of the techniques above as suggestions. Offer to observe and look for opportunities to apply the techniques. Agree on a mechanism to signal an improper behavior and suggest a different course on the fly. It takes your own personal courage to offer feedback to your boss. My operating assumption is that your read on him/her is that they are interested in strengthening performance and growing as a leader. There are some who will not take kindly to your feedback. Tread softly, and if the ice is firm, proceed. If not, move to No. 3.

If the boss isn’t approachable, use judo on the situation. Reinforce the ideas from the boss as positive and suggest approaches to strengthening those ideas. Of course, the approaches match your original suggestions, but you’ve reframed the idea as his/hers. A little bit of child psychology can go a long way with a difficult boss.

Facilitate his/her idea development and proactively raise the risk discussion. Your calm facilitation of the discussion will allow you to both ask clarifying questions and at the appropriate time, suggest that you explore the risks. List them on a board or flip chart. The act of highlighting risks may be enough to gain cooperation from a boss who views himself as always right.

The Bottom Line for Now

There are a number of powerful internal drivers that push some people to assert their opinion as the right one. From compensating for a lack of self-confidence to falsely believing that being in charge means being right, this need to assert is a performance- and environment-killing habit. Learn to recognize your tendency to do this and use discipline to resist the temptation. Like reaching for the donut instead of the handful of almonds on the snack table, it’s difficult at first. If you work for “the smartest person in the room,” strive to be just a little smarter by managing the psychology and resisting the urge to argue. In all cases, the effort is worth the potential improvement.

Art Petty is a coach and consultant working with top executives and management teams to unlock business and human potential. He writes the Management Excellence blog.

(Image via AlexRoz/Shutterstock.com)