Would people still respect me if I said I didn’t know? 

I didn’t think so.
So I rarely said it. 

I believed my business was growing and profitable because I knew things other people didn’t know. My expertise helped me win clients and earn the respect of my team.

Knowing made me feel smart and important. It reassured me that I deserved the financial rewards and recognition I was getting.

Not knowing felt excruciating.

What I Made It Mean

As the owner, I thought I should know everything. If I didn’t, maybe I really wasn’t as smart as I thought I was.

That left me completely conflicted about how to lead my team.

I thought I should know, but sometimes I didn’t. I could probably figure it out if I had enough time, but time was the last thing I had.

And if I did slow down enough to figure it out and give them instructions, and it didn’t work, then I was the one who was wrong.

Maybe they’d lose respect for me. Maybe they’d wonder if I really knew what I was doing. Maybe they’d leave.

Then another part of me would think, I shouldn’t have to figure this out anyway. Isn’t that why I hired smart people? Why aren’t they taking ownership?

So I was inconsistent. Sometimes I gave them no guidance at all, and other times I described everything they should do in great detail.

What I really wanted was for them to say: “Here’s what I think we should do and why. Do you see anything I might be missing?”

You’d think I would have just said that.

It took me many years to understand why I didn’t.

The Role Changes

I didn’t understand that my role would evolve as my business grew.

I had to do less of the work I knew how to do and learn how to get results through other people. 

It was much harder to know whether I was doing a good job. For a while, I felt incompetent at almost everything.

I didn’t need to know all the answers. But I could get good at asking questions. 

What do we know?
What are we assuming?
What do you recommend?
What will we measure to know it’s working?

Those questions gave my team room to think with me instead of guessing what I wanted or waiting for me to decide. 

Not Knowing

But still I wondered: Would people respect me if I admitted I didn’t know?

A few months later at a conference, I watched someone ask a business owner I respected a hard technical question.

He had a much bigger business and a lot more experience than me, and yet he said, “I don’t know.”

No hedge. No sheepish look. No rush to fill the silence.

Then he said someone on his team did know and they’d follow up.

No one batted an eye. If anything, we trusted him more. 

What struck me was how comfortable he was not knowing. He didn’t seem to think it made him any less credible.

He was just as confident saying “I don’t know” as he would have been giving the answer.

He’d built a company where he didn’t have to know everything.

I was still trying to be the person who did.