How To Be The Dumbest Guy In The Room
Everybody wants to be smart. Intelligent people are admired by others for their ability to retain facts, complete crossword puzzles and maintain scintillating conversations at cocktail parties. Nobody wants to look dumb.
That’s unfortunate. There are a lot of benefits to being the dumbest guy in the room. You get to encounter ideas that you never heard of before. People can explain things to you that you don’t understand. Dumb people can always be surprised and thereby discover new things.
It isn’t easy, though. Being truly daft takes a whole lot of effort and courage. However, it can be accomplished. Read on and I’ll show you how.
Hire and Retain Really Smart People
The first thing you can do is hire really smart people, which is more simply said than done. Those with tremendous intellectual horsepower can’t be lured with big salaries alone. They usually have an inner need to be stimulated and achieve great things. They’re curious about a variety of areas and don’t fit into easy categories.
Highly intelligent people also bore easily and need to be continually challenged. You need monitor not only their work, but also their energy level. If they are left in the same job too long, their performance will eventually suffer. Most of all, they need to constantly engage in freewheeling discussions with other smart people.
Very few managers attract and retain brilliant people simply because they want to be the smartest guy themselves. Make no mistake. If you are in a position of authority and can hire anyone you want, you should be the dumbest guy in the room. Anything else is truly moronic.
Facilitate Connections
Another way to ensure that you are the dumbest guy in the room is to facilitate connections both inside and outside of your organization. By helping your people to connect with new people and
ideas, you will ensure that they will know a lot of things that you don’t.
There are a lot of ways to do this. Sending people to conferences is the most obvious, but by no means the only or the best way. Simply making introductions and encouraging staff to get out and meet people can work wonders.
Increasing connectivity within your organization can also be extremely effective. In the past, I’ve used a variety of ways to get people mixing. Graduate training programs can be a great way for young people to bond before moving on to disparate parts of the organization. Best practice programs give up-and-comers a forum to show off their best work, while at the same time diffusing valuable information.
Unfortunately, many managers want to be the “face” of their organization themselves and so miss opportunities for their people to build relationships that will bring new knowledge into the organization.
Change Your Context
We all have our own areas of expertise. Our experiences typically lend themselves to certain tasks at which we excel and make us feel satisfied and fulfilled.. Over time, we develop a comfort zone that’s hard to break out of.
I’m an unusual case. I’ve worked in five different countries in a variety of roles. Each new challenge has forced me to reinvent myself. I’ve had to learn new languages, skills and cultures. It’s often been difficult, however every new adventure has left me vastly better off.
Of course, when you find yourself learning and doing new things, you are going to look dumb and that’s uncomfortable. It’s always easier to stick with what’s familiar, but if you don’t stretch you become a slave to your context. Eventually, that paradigm will change and you’ll be left unprepared.
The Dumber You Look, The Smarter You Get
Marcus Aurelius once said: “A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself.” Jonah Lehrer makes a similar point in his book, How We Decide. He cites a study where students who are told they try hard outperform ones who are told they are smart.
As we progress in our careers, our sense of self importance increases. Others are more willing to listen to us and take our opinions seriously. It’s natural to get complacent when respect is so easily won with a job title and an air of authority.
What’s much harder is to constantly stretch yourself beyond your abilities. Inevitably, you will fail and look dumb. Hiring and managing super-smart people makes you question your own competence. Facilitating connections of others makes your own network less unique and changing your context is probably the most difficult thing you can do.
Yet the alternative is a mirage. You can close yourself off and be the smartest guy in the room, but only at the cost of your awareness of reality.
The world is a big place, with lots of stuff in it. If you are going to do more than just scratch the surface, you’re going to have to be the dumbest guy in the room sometimes.
- Greg
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“He cites a study where students who are told they try hard outperform ones who are told they are smart.” It must be from Carol Dweck! She’s very good!
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Greg Reply:
October 31st, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Right on the money. Good catch!
- Greg
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Chris Reply:
November 1st, 2010 at 4:36 pm
Great Article. Dweck is very good. Have you read anything from Ed Deci?
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Greg Reply:
November 1st, 2010 at 5:01 pm
No, can you suggest anything?
- Greg
Clever stuff Greg – I’d hire you if I had the money. Jimi.
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Greg Reply:
October 31st, 2010 at 6:01 pm
Thanks, Jimi:-)
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Hi Greg,
Life is a learning process, both personally and professionally, and in my opinion, those who do not take advantage of this, will be the “dumbest guy in the room”. Great article – thanks for sharing
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Greg Reply:
October 31st, 2010 at 6:52 pm
Thanks, Julie.
Have a great week!
- Greg
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Interesting post Greg, Reminds me of my favorite quote from the movie Serendipity, “To improve in life, you have to be content to be thought stupid and foolish”. In my opinion, In this connected world, dumbness is more about being open and receptive to knowledge coming from divergent nodes…
Venky´s last [type] ..India Retail Forum 2010 – My takeaways and experiences
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Greg Reply:
October 31st, 2010 at 7:00 pm
Good point, Venky. I wrote a post about a similar idea a while back. Most great “discoveries” are actually make by synthesizing disparate ideas than by specific expertise: http://www.digitaltonto.com/2010/power-of-synthesis/
Thanks for your comment:-)
- Greg
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Interesting thoughts there Greg.
Connectivity and status seem to go hand in hand nowadays, the more connected people are the smarter they feel. I’ve just read your article and feel smart although I actually am the Dumbest Guy in the Room, and it’s a very small room.
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Greg Reply:
November 3rd, 2010 at 7:45 pm
Fantastic! I’ll have to remember that one:-)
Thanks, Gareth.
- Greg
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Great post Greg. My uncle gave me the same advice when I started my career. Though a lot of people agree to this philosophy, it is truly rare to find people who actually go on to hire people who are smarter than themselves……
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Greg Reply:
November 12th, 2010 at 8:22 am
Thanks, Mukesh.
Hiring really smart people is indeed difficult and intimidating, but your uncle was right. If you are going to have a high performance organization, that’s what you have to do.
- Greg
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Now that is truly a brilliant article! And you are right- you, as a boss, must sometimes be stupid like a fox on purpose for everyone to cooperate with your business plan.
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Greg Reply:
November 25th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
Thanks, Laura. Have a great holiday!
- Greg
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Oh, I so wish I’d read this years ago… I’ve noticed a really interesting (and discouraging) phenomenon in the workplace. Managers who feel threatened by their employees. One would think, (and it seems intuitive to think so) that a good manager would want to hire the people who would make them look good. However, when a poor manager gets an employee who can outshine the manager, that employee is made miserable. How does one go about making sure that they make their employer look good, and yet not be threatening? This is a dilemma that fits perfectly with this article…
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Greg Reply:
January 16th, 2011 at 2:45 pm
Ed,
You make an excellent point. I think the first and most obvious thing is to make good choices about where you work. Another important thing to do is always think in terms of what you can contribute before you think about what you’ll receive in return. Finally, try to be supportive of those around you (especially of your boss).
That’s the best I can do. What do you think?
- Greg
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Hi Greg, Love your blog. Thanks again for enlightening me. – James
James Snider´s last [type] ..Oooh! They got me!!!!
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Greg Reply:
February 13th, 2011 at 8:02 am
Hi James. Nice to see you again!
I saw you started your own blog. Good luck with it!
- Greg
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Or tell everyone to leave the room
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Greg Reply:
February 13th, 2011 at 5:25 pm
Nice:-)
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Great points Greg,
As a young potter I was placed on a vocational program with Neville Wison of Maldon Pottery in Australia, who was a great potter and an extremely interesting guy.
At the end of my placement he gave me two pieces of advice, one was to always recognise the history of places, people and objects. The other was to work hard and play dumb, as he put it no-one ever learnt from being the smartest kid in the room!
Thanks for your consistently enlightening thoughts.
Rohan
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Greg Reply:
June 9th, 2011 at 7:33 am
Great points, Rohan!
Thanks.
- Greg
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