Punished for being Smart
Being the smartest one in the room is not easy. 
Really smart people who get to the answer before everyone else get frustrated because:
- No one wants to listen to you
- No one gets why you are right
- Everyone seems to WANT to go slower (and it is infuriating)
- You resent having to make the effort of “bringing people along”
Good guy or bad guy?
I have met and coached many talented and genuinely kind people throughout my career that want to do positive things for the business in an unselfish way — but they get stuck because they are so smart that they piss people off.
If you are one of these people, or you have one of these people working for you – here is the trick.
You can either be Smart or you can be Effective
You can’t do everything alone. You need other people — either to help or to get out of the way. So if you can’t influence them, you will face road blocks and fail to get others working on your agenda. You will not be effective.
If you want to be effective, you have to suck it up and bring people along with you, even though it seems like a waste of time.
Here are some ideas… slow down even though it goes against every grain of your being.
Include people: don’t just announce the answer, go through the step of setting context and getting input.
Listen: In meetings, give others time to talk, and listen instead of arguing or shutting them down. You may feel like you are wasting time, but you will win favor by listening. It will pay-off later when you need to get their support.
Don’t be mean. I know it doesn’t feel like you’re being mean. You are not trying to be mean. You are trying to be straightforward, practical, share the answer, and make progress. In fact, one of the things that is so annoying about these people is that they accuse you of being mean when you are not.
But they have the right to their perception. What they see may be your dismissing their inputs, ignoring them, or picking fights publicly. Say less. Be more gracious. Be more patient. Use more steps in your logic. Get smaller agreements along the way. Say thank you.
Make an effort to learn what their strengths are. You may be pleasantly surprised. Or not. But if you can get someone talking about what they are good at, and show some appreciation of that, they will be your friend, and you can get their support for your agenda.
Give them the benefit of the doubt. Keep in mind that these people might be brilliant in ways that you don’t see. In ways that you are not.
What if someone in the room is really gifted at networking and connecting and getting others to get on board? Even if they never understand your project, if you can win over that one person they can bring you all the others.
What if the numbers guy who is just not getting the big picture, has a relationship with the CFO that will get your idea funded if you can win him over?
Set your sights on effectiveness
OK. Even if you are truly in a room full of stupid people who can’t keep up, you have a choice to make. Jump to the answer alone and face roadblocks, or make the effort to bring them along, so you can get the job done.
It’s a choice you have. It may be frustrating in the moment, but the upside is that you will be getting things done – maybe not as fast as you want to go, but better than not at all.
December 15th, 2009 at 2:45 am
Now, this is a great post, totally closing the loop on the poor smart French guy nobody would listen to. WHen you put it that way, I guess he did have a language problem.
December 15th, 2009 at 6:34 am
It’s all about good change mangement.
December 15th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
It is quite the opposite with me. I am surrounded by smart people and they pose real challenge to my productivity and self-satisfaction. My manager is addicted to these smart people aka consultants and I get under estimated far too often.Do you have something for me?
December 17th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Oh Patty how I wish i had this information 10 years ago. What a public service.
One thing I’ve come to learn is that as a “stretegic” strength I had a hard time realizing that what I would see was not totally obvious to everyone. So it wasn’t that I thought I was “too smart” or that others were dumb. I seriously thought that people were just being difficult about things that were totally obvious.
Getting a better handle on the idea that people were not trying to be difficult but instead were just not seeing what I was seeing has helped me so much to *try* to focus on being patient. Also, it gave me a sense of just how long I need to be patient since I often missed by a large factor what that would take. I think it also has helped a lot to get older and have a broader sense of time which makes patience easier (if not easy).
Great post!
-Meg