Its OK to Say “I Don’t Know”
When I was in college, I spent six months in Compton working in the education system. It wound up becoming one of the greatest leadership lessons of my career. Part of that time, I worked at a very under-funded continuation high school. I naively thought when I first went in that I could inspire change and had some vision of Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds in my head. (It’s OK to laugh. I was 25, forgive me.) After my cell phone got stolen on the second day, I quickly realized that I would have to do a lot more learning and listening if I was going to be effective at Compton Continuation Day School.
That experience taught me something very important which was, when you enter a new environment — show respect to that environment before you try to change it. Learn the culture, listen, build relationships authentically and be willing to say, “I don’t know.” The idea that a leader has to know everything in order to be perceived as competent is ridiculous. Some of the greatest entrepreneurs in American history were people who were willing to say, “Hey, I don’t know how to do all that, but I can hire some people to support me who do.” The leader charts the path, the team executes the vision.
It’s easy when you’re an ambitious person to think you need to go into a new environment and “fix it” with your great ideas. It takes humility to say that your ninety-day plan may involve building relationships more than strategy decks. Garnering buy in with the people you work with, be they continuation high school students or tech employees, will go a lot farther than trying to wow people with your plan to solve everything.
For women and people of color in particular, “impostor syndrome” often has us thinking we need to flex our muscles in a new position so that the hiring manager knows they made a good choice by hiring us. I remember counseling a young female exec who felt out of depth in her new role and struggling to garner buy in with her new directs. As I listened to her detail the issues she was having, I asked her if she had spent much time getting to know the people she was managing. She had not. She was so eager to fix things, impress her new boss and get her own plan going that she hadn’t really taken time to invest in her people. I said to her,
“Listen, you got this job because your boss thinks you’re the most qualified. Period. There is nothing to prove to him right now. You are qualified and you are deserving. What you need to do in order to be the most effective you can be in this situation is to get your team to believe that so they can support you in executing your vision.”
Not all teams welcome leadership change, but when a leader is willing to be authentic vs. rote, embraces transparency, tries to learn the culture and sees how they can offer help vs. “fixing” — the change is often supported.
Have I always practiced this in my career? No. It’s honestly something I think I could have done better when I started at Tumblr. The culture at Tumblr is very different from other tech companies and I would have benefited by listening more in my early days. However, nearly three years in, I have adapted and re-embraced my own lesson. I practice radical transparency. I will go to you if I hear you have a problem. I will sit and listen if we need to solve a crisis and see how we can focus on solution. I will find the right person to teach you if I don’t know the answer to something. I believe management is a symbiotic partnership, not a dictatorship.
Mr. Trunnel, the principal of Compton Continuation Day School, told me I was the only teacher’s aide to last longer than two weeks. I still remember so many of the kids and think of them often. There was a young gay boy who was bullied. His dream was to sell Mary Kay for a living. I spent time encouraging him to pursue his dreams. There was Wyneshia who gave me grief then became a great ally. Marquise, who worked after school at McDonalds because he wanted to earn an honest living. I have often wondered where they went. When I started, I thought I would teach them something. In the end, I felt guilty that perhaps they taught me more.
