Send to KindleAre you smarter than your workers? If you said yes, you’re in trouble. Either your ego is out of control or you need to take a serious look at your workforce. Let’s turn that question around. Are your workers smarter than you? Here are some thoughts on the subject.
1. In most cases some, if not all, your workers will probably know more than you do about the job, the company, or just life in general. If you are a good leader you’ll understand, accept, and learn to embrace that fact. If not, you’ll probably adopt the attitude that you are the smartest person in the room or you wouldn’t be the boss. Then you will fail, probably rather rapidly.
2. I often hear the argument that the organization’s leader must be an expert in the organization’s product or service. While such knowledge can be helpful, there are a few pros and cons. A leader with such expertise will understand what the organization is doing and how it’s done. Without that experience and knowledge the leader will have to spend considerable energy learning and will never reach the level of expertise the workers have. On the other hand, the leader who is experienced with the company and the product or service will be less likely to be aware of underlying problems and potential improvements that his less experienced counterpart will see more clearly.
3. Many leaders seem to have a problem deferring to a worker’s superior knowledge of a subject as though doing so will diminish them in the eyes of the rest of the organization. In fact, workers usually think much more favorably of a leader who is willing to admit to a lack of knowledge. However; and this is key, they must also be willing to work to fix that knowledge deficit.
4. A leader who thinks he or she must be the smartest person in the room often misses out on good suggestions from their people. A good leader will cultivate others and encourage their thoughts and ideas.
5. A leader’s inability to accept worker’s superior knowledge is usually a sign of insecurity that will tend to isolate them from their workers, the very people who can make them successful. Workers are much less likely to bring problems to an insecure leader and so little problems will fester until they grow up to be big problems. The reverse is true of good ideas. This is usually when a leader says something like “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
Leaders don’t have to be the smartest ones in the room, but it does help if they are the most self-aware and secure in who they are.
