Be the Idiot in the Room

What's up, everyone? Welcome back to Founders Journal. First off, if you didn't already hear the announcement from me, Founders Journal is back. It's better than ever, and it is in place of The Crazy Ones, which had an amazing ride. But I am super excited to bring back the show that my OG listeners know I love so much. Founders Journal is my 5 to 20 minute personal diary made public for the world where I share my stories, learnings, and strategies around my journey as an entrepreneur. And today's episode is about why you should always be the idiot in the room. Let's hop into it. I was recently watching a video by Simon Sinek, and if you don't know him, he's a British author and motivational speaker who has given a bunch of talks that have gone viral, including one called The Golden Circle that talks about why companies like Apple have built such generational businesses. I'll link to that video in the show notes. But he also has another video that is called The Truth About Being the Stupidest in the Room. And the talk starts with Sinik saying, I'm an idiot. I'm not being flip about it. I don't understand very complicated things. And Simon goes on to tell a story about how he was hired by a public company to do work for them when he had a marketing agency back in the day. And one day he was invited to attend a meeting with the company's C-level executives who were being given a presentation by consultants that had done work for the company. Now, as the consultants are presenting, Simon is looking around the room at all of these executives and he sees them just nodding their heads and writing down notes. And that's concerning to him because Simon feels wildly confused and does not at all understand what the consultants are saying. It doesn't make any sense to him. And so he raises his hand and he says to the consultant, I'm really sorry, but I don't understand this, and I'm sorry to slow down the meeting, but can you please explain this again so I understand it fully? The consultant explains it again, and Simon still doesn't understand what they're trying to say. So he asks for clarification again. The consultant then looks at Simon with very clear frustration, and he starts again explaining the topic that wasn't clear to Sinek in the first place. But there's something interesting that starts happening. But then what ends up happening is these C-level executives, they start raising their hands and they start asking for clarification as well, even though they gave off the appearance at the beginning of the meeting that they totally understood what was going on. Now, I think this story is such a poignant example of the relationship that we all have with asking questions in our careers. For whatever reason, we are allergic to being curious, even though we intuitively know that curiosity is a superpower when building businesses or growing as a professional. And so why do we feel this allergy? I think it's because we fear embarrassment for asking the wrong question. We fear that we're going to upset the person that we're asking the question to, and we fear that we're going to be judged by others as being either unintelligent or not a high performer in the business. So instead, what we end up doing is defaulting to blindly nodding instead of truly understanding a topic. And by the way, I want to just mention I am not immune to this strong pull to hold back questions as well. So here's a prime example for you and how I had to navigate kind of this fear of embarrassment or annoyance in my day-to-day life. Yesterday, I was messaging back and forth with the person that I'm trialing as CEO for my new ghostwriting agency that's called StoryArb. And we were talking about our clients, and she mentioned that one of our clients wanted to soften up the tone of his content on Twitter and LinkedIn. And I wasn't sure what she meant by this. What did softening up the tone mean? And so I said to her, what does that mean exactly? But I didn't stop with just asking the question. I then said to her, FYI, you'll notice I ask a lot of questions. LOL. It's literally just to make sure I understand you 100%. I never just say yes or agree for the sake of saying it. Now, you may be listening to me saying this and thinking, Alex, what does this matter? This is such an insignificant conversation. Okay, you asked a question and then you clarified why you were asking the question. But I personally find this fascinating because for some reason I took time and effort to justify to this person why I was asking a question. Why did I do that? Why couldn't I just ask the question and keep asking until it was answered? As I thought more about it and I tried to get introspective, I think in this case I feared that my potential CEO would get annoyed, annoyed that I'm asking a lot of questions that she has to answer. Annoyed that maybe my questions are perceived as not trusting her abilities. And it's amazing how I and we all create these stories around such a simple thing like asking a question. Now, I want to talk about the irony of this whole situation around asking questions. But before we do that, let's take a quick break. If we go back to the example of Simon Sinek asking the consultants questions about their presentation and them getting frustrated, What is ironic is that most likely the consultants are at fault, not Simon, for asking the questions. Unless these consultants have explained things multiple times before and Simon isn't a good listener and he's not retaining what they're saying, Simon's questions are actually more likely an indication that the consultants don't understand the subject matter fully, so they can't teach it well enough to others for them to understand it simply. So instead of being frustrated at Simon for asking the question, these consultants should be frustrated at themselves for explaining things unclearly such that questions are warranted in order to better understand what they have to say. And I provide this shift in framing not to blame people who are asked questions. Of course, we're all going to at some point or another, as we onboard a new employee or as we're talking to an executive in our C-suite, they're going to ask questions, and that's natural. But I use this shift in framing instead for you to feel comfort and confidence that asking questions not only serves you, but it also serves the people who need to answer your questions because it helps them identify holes in their understanding that cause them to explain things imperfectly in the first place, such that your questions were warranted. Now, if that's not enough of an argument for you to ask more questions in your life, in your career, in building your business, and do so unapologetically. Here is a truth from my last 8 years building a business. The smartest people I know— and this rule holds 100% of the time— the smartest people I know never get embarrassed asking questions. Most people will ask a question once or twice and then stop out of fear of embarrassment that they'll look dumb. But ironically, my smartest friends don't have this embarrassment reflex. They'll just keep asking and asking and asking until they understand something so well at the most granular level. Because for them, fear of not understanding is far stronger than the fear of looking stupid. So next time you feel hesitant to keep asking questions, just know that you are shorting yourself the long-term benefit of true understanding for the short-term avoidance of embarrassment and discomfort. And I promise you, it is not worth that trade-off. That's it for today's Founders Journal. And now I'd love to hear from you. And here's the only thing that I would love for you to do so we can get to know each other. Go to your inbox, whether it's Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, or if you use a carrier pigeon, and enter the email foundersjournal@morningbrew.com. And then all you have to do is type in 3 letters, H-E-Y. Hey, that's it. Just say hey to me. Hit send. I will 100% read your email and I will 100% respond. And I may respond by asking you about yourself. I may ask you about topics that you want me to cover on Founders Journal. I may even ask you what you think about this episode. It'll be a little surprise that you'll only get by emailing me after you've listened to the show. Until next time, I love you all and I'll catch you next episode.