I love having conversations with people I respect, look up to and know are an expert on a subject I’m interested in (and usually ten others besides).
Every now and again I’ll find myself nodding sagely as they reference some great wonder, piece of writing, language, blog, book, person that they assume I know about.
There’s a good reason that I nod along…
I don’t want to interrupt the flow of what they’re saying, it’s interesting and I want them to continue uninterrupted as I take what they’re saying on board.
There’s also a bad reason…
My intellectual ego is seeking their respect and validation. It’s preventing me from admitting that I’m struggling to comprehend.
Unfortunately in a group situation, this momentum can carry us too far. Once the thread has reached a suitable stopping point, how often are we willing to go back and ask for an explanation, more context or admit that we “don’t know” something that someone else assumed we do.
Watch out for rooms full of people listening to something they don’t understand and nodding, not wanting to interrupt and secretly not willing to be the first in the room to break the seal on their lack of knowledge.
What time do we waste walking away not understanding the full picture and having thrown away the best opportunity to seek clarity?
When you don’t know the answer or don’t understand, don’t pretend. Lead by example and others will also be encouraged to ask or research and share. This in turn will build a stronger knowledge culture for your teams.
There’s no such thing as a dumb question. If you thought of something to ask in a room full of people I guarantee at least one other person will have as well.
Avoid playing intellectual chicken, be proud to ask the first dumb question of the day and get people to respect your intellectual humility rather than your intellectual ego!
About The Dread Pirate Crom
Captain Crom started programming and debugging games from magazines on his Brother’s BBC as a small boy in the early 1980s. With early qualifications in both computer science & art and a love of live music it became clear he was destined for bad things.
His tyrannical ways commenced with a degree in Computing & Informatics at Plymouth and from the mid 1990's a career in the software industry. After formative years as "The Scourge of the Thames Valley" between Reading and Bracknell with occasional raids on the San Francisco Bay area, since 2004 he has been seen sailing stretches of the A10 North and South of the Isle of Ely with the primary source of his raids targeted around Cambridge. Sightings have also been rumored as far afield as Scotland, Norway, India, Nevada, Florida and Georgia.
The Captain has served in companies ranging from successful startups and ailing dot-coms to global corporations, spanning roles from IT, consulting, support, development and management through to agile coaching.
The common thread in each of his roles is that he has always chosen to join software product groups - usually large-scale enterprise software. His large-scale product and organizational focus differentiates him from the more common textbook agile captains.
(Other differentiators include his distinctive hoop earrings and love of spiced rum)
The Captain's Agile experience started with a blend of FDD and XP in what he describes as "the most disciplined team he had ever served with". He subsequently moved onto using Scrum and XP blended with Theory Of Constraints, Kanban and Lean philosophies to improve software delivery techniques in other organizations.
He believes every member of a delivery team should spend time with customers supporting the product they produced. “Sitting at the dirty end of a product (or cutlass) completely changes the way you think about business processes and write software for the rest of your softwarefaring career!”
Hi Mr Pirate
Love the post.
There are also great risks with this strategy. Many moons ago when I was a student at Newcastle studying engineering I went to visit a friend of mine studying History at Cambridge.
His friends seemed to play a curious game. They would keep switching subjects until they found one in which only two of them were an expert. The two of them could then dominate the conversation. If only one person knows the subject they would become a bore so it was important to find a subject that two people knew so that they could have a conversation. A two man game.
One day the conversation started with Russian literature. Too many people knew that so they moved onto German literature. The conversation went something like…
“Gunter Grass is simply wonderful.” said literature student 1.
“Oh I agree” said literature student 2.
“Which is your favourite book?” student 1.
“The Tin Drum is a classic!” student 2.
“A book famous for its use of metaphor.” student 1.
“Speaking of which. What do you think the horse’s head represents?” engineering student.
“Which horse’s head?” student 1.
“The one they fish with on the beach.” engineering student.
“Err, I’ve not actually read the book so I don’t know.” student 1.
“Me neither.” student 2.
Busted!
I had read the book because my friend studying history had lent it to me as a “must read classic”. It was a hard read and I only found out afterwards that my friend had not read it. I refused to return his copy out of disgust. I’m sure he snorted with laughter when they got caught out. I also suspect he set them up somehow.