I was sitting at my favorite neighborhood restaurant, outside at dinner in a cozy 70 degrees F (San Diego), talking with friends about ocean fish. There was a marine biologist and a charter fishing boat owner in the group (San Diego).

Before I could stop myself, I said something that clearly lumped dolphins in with sharks, as if they were both fish. “Dolphins are mammals, though,” said my kind marine biologist friend Colleen.

“Yeesh, idiot,” I said to myself in my head, as I smiled and looked away. I hid my weird facial expressions by taking a bite of the absolutely-a-fish sitting cooked on my plate.

A silly shame kicked in, the shame of being wrong about something. That shame is very familiar, though, silly as it is. Know why? Because I’m a recovering know-it-all.

It’s one of the first things I say about myself when I’m talking about my approach to leadership and team culture. “I’m a recovering know it all.”

This confession always gets a knowing laugh from the group. People love to hear this, especially from someone whose job it is to teach and coach people. In addition to the laughs, I get at least a few people saying, “Hey, me too! I’m a recovering know-it-all too.”

The reason it helps people to hear this, the reason I say it, is because know-it-all-ism is a problem for all of us who want to be effective leaders in strong high-performing teams.

Why? A few reasons:

Holding yourself responsible for knowing everything is really stressful. Even if you are the boss and you have to make most of the decisions, that’s not the same thing as coming up with all the answers/ideas/options.
It’s stressful because it’s impossible, in a world that is complex, to have all the answers. If you go it alone and don’t learn as you go, your answers will fail you.
The know-it-all attitude is isolating. The attitude undermines connection and trust. It puts up a wall between you and everybody else. Even if you aren’t doing it consciously. People think, if you have all the answers, why should I say anything or offer to help?
Trying to have all the answers is wasted time and effort. Want to treat or prevent burnout? Let go of knowing everything.
You are selling your team short. Let other people stretch their brains, help you, help the team, and look good as they do it.

The idea and habits of humble leadership pretty much takes care of know-it-all-ism.

One way to give up on trying to have all the answers is to start with questions, and a supportive, coaching relationship.

Saying “How do you understand this situation?” or “How do you think we should respond to this new challenge?”can help us see beyond our own limited (though still wise and nuanced!) view on something.

“What are your ideas?” is a common way to open the floor to the team to say what they think.

Or to start further upstream as a leader who is developing other leaders, ask questions about questions: “What questions should we be asking to help us succeed in this situation?”

You may be thinking, “I don’t want to be a know-it-all, but I don’t know if my team can handle having a boss who doesn’t take that role.” If so, that’s an important issue, and an observation that has to do with culture. Either team culture or organization-wide culture. I recommend facing that situation directly. You could say something like “Some of you on the team have more experience than I do in this type of situation. I have an idea I can share if we need it, but first, what are your ideas?” or you can say, “I’m practicing giving more room to other people’s ideas.”

How do you address your own and others’ know-it-all-ism?

How do you avoid the assumption of the know-it-all mantle? Or how could you start to get it off your shoulders?

I’m a Recovering Know-it-all