Say, “I Don’t Know”

There I sat in office hours, flummoxed by an entrepreneurial challenge. But I’m the professor.

Which means students come to me for answers.

Which made it even harder to tell the earnest student seeking advice the simple truth:

“I don’t know.” Three of the hardest words to say.

But what happened when I admitted that I didn’t have the answer? It created the space for this student’s classmates to swoop in and be brilliant! “What if you tried this?” one founder said. “Yeah, and in parallel, look at this resource,” said another. Fantastic contributions, all coming from a learning cohort, and not me, the instructor.

Would such contributions have surfaced had I remained the “sage expert” instructor, as expected? If I had spouted off some nonsense to try to hide the fact that I had no idea?

I don’t know, but I doubt it.

I’m a big believer that knowing the answers is less important than having the right approach. I often tell others, “Don’t be the answer guy; be the approach guy. This was a healthy reminder how deeply the longing to have an answer goes.

To complicate matters, somewhat — but in the spirit of making this post almost universally accessible, even if you don’t have someone coming to you for the answers — the default assumption we make when we come up with an answer is the entirely unverified assumption that we have come up with the right answer.

One great way to admit you don’t know, even to yourself: try more than one, or imagine alternatives.

Implicitly, by doing more than one thing, you’re admitting that you may not have the right answer.

That you don’t know, yet.

Related: Rally A Cohort
Related: Master the Approach
Related: Try More Than One
Related: Imagine Alternatives

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