PLN 34: The hidden costs of having all the answers
Time to Read: 5 mins
One of the most limiting beliefs in leadership sounds incredibly reasonable…
Leaders should have the answers.
At first glance, this seems obvious.
After all, many leaders (myself included) were promoted because they had answers. They knew the product, or the process, or the customer. And all that knowledge empowered them to successfully navigate the challenges of their role.
In essence, being the subject matter expert is exactly what earned them their leadership promotion in the first place.
The challenge is that leadership and expertise are not the same thing.
Expertise helps you solve problems.
Leadership helps you uncover better solutions.
I've worked with leaders for decades, and I've seen a similar pattern across organizations and industries.
When leaders believe they need to have the answers, they often default to telling.
Telling people what to do, or how to do it. Pointing out what was missed. Telling others what should happen.
The problem is that this “telling” approach creates a closed loop.
The leader's perspective goes in. ↩️
The leader's perspective comes back out. 🔄
Meanwhile, the insights of the people closest to the work aren’t part of the equation.
Despite those people being goldmines of information.
Think about the frontline employee who experiences things in a way the leader never does. Or the gatekeeper who talks to clients every day and sees patterns that others aren’t privy to. Or the team member who has a completely different approach to a particular challenge, because she sees it on the daily.
These perspectives are invaluable, but sadly, they often aren’t solicited or included.
But they should be. Because… some of the best solutions emerge when different perspectives collide.
🤓 Let’s get nerdy for a minute to understand why.
Research has shown that curiosity encourages us to seek out new information, consider different perspectives, and explore possibilities we may have otherwise overlooked. The more perspectives, experiences, and information we bring into a conversation, the greater the opportunity for new insights to emerge.
In other words, curiosity is way more than a character strength or personality trait. It’s a leadership tool that supports better results.
And it’s often underutilized. Think about it…
If people come to you for answers, and you’re quick to provide those answers, then you’ve closed the door on curiosity without even realizing it. Thus the underutilization.
But curiosity is what opens the door to perspectives outside your own experience.
It expands the information you have access to, exposes any assumptions you’re holding, and creates space for ideas that may never have surfaced otherwise.
In other words, it helps leaders move beyond the limits of their own perspective.
And that takes self-leadership! Because... curiosity may sound simple on the surface. But in practice, it requires us to pause, step back from our assumptions, and recognize that our knowledge, while valuable, is also incomplete.
It's also important to remember...
Creating space for perspectives that challenge, refine, and strengthen our thinking doesn’t diminish our expertise. It allows that expertise to become more effective.
đź’ˇ Practionable Takeaway
Make space for curiosity by experimenting with this one simple curiosity-based question:
What if...?
Whether you're facing a challenge, making a decision, or solving a problem, stop yourself from reflexively giving an answer.
(The first answer is rarely the best one anyways.)
Instead, ask yourself, “What if…?” and get curious about the thing before you.
- What if there's a better way to approach this challenge that I'm not seeing because I don't work closest to the issue?
- What if someone on my team has information that would change how I'm thinking about this?
- What if there's a perspective I'm overlooking?
- What if my knowledge is incomplete?
- What if the best solution hasn't been considered yet?
A single question won't solve every leadership challenge.
But it creates a path for curiosity.
And curiosity has a remarkable way of expanding what's possible.
🎥 Want to Go Deeper?
One of the challenges of leadership is that it’s difficult to see the limits of your own perspective while you’re standing inside it.
We all have assumptions, blind spots, habits, and patterns that shape how we think, lead, and make decisions. Most of the time, we don’t even realize they’re there.
That’s one of the reasons coaching can be so powerful.
It helps you uncover the questions, perspectives, and possibilities you may not be considering on your own.
Recently, a spot opened up in my one-on-one coaching practice.
If you’re navigating a leadership challenge, stepping into bigger goals, or simply looking to strengthen your leadership effectiveness, I’d love to explore it with you.
You can learn more about my coaching here.
To Your Success,
Laura 💜🧡
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