"You’re so smart" - for the first time I realized, it might not be a good thing to hear.
When I read this line in Blindspotting: How to See What’s Holding You Back as a Leader, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve taken pride in my smarts - my ability to absorb, understand, connect dots, and come up with solutions for almost anything. I thought that was the thing that would always carry me forward.
It turns out, it might be the very thing holding me back now.
Not because I need to “get dumber,” but because I believed the only path to success was to keep getting smarter. My reflex to any challenge was always the same: learn more, know more, solve better.
But life, and business, run on more ingredients than just intelligence.
That pitch I didn’t land?
It wasn’t because I lacked knowledge or a great solution. It was because I didn’t focus on what the people on the other side needed to hear, feel, and trust before they could say “yes.”
I’m not “street smart” enough. And sometimes I get so in love with knowing that I forget the human part entirely, outside of my coaching work, at least.
Since childhood, I’ve been praised for my smarts. I got a lot of passes in life because of them. But as the saying goes, what got you here won’t get you there.
What I need now isn’t more facts or better answers.
It’s empathy.
It’s learning to be useful before being clever.
It’s remembering that people don’t always need the best solution, they need to feel understood first.
The good news? My love for learning can work here too. I can point it toward building the skills and the kind of smarts I’ve been missing.
As Martin Dubin writes, the danger of blind spots is that you don’t see how they’re hurting you. But the moment you spot them, AND choose to work on them, they lose their power.
Like the monster under the bed you thought you had as a kid: shine a light, and it disappears.
PS We’re interviewing Martin Dubin soon on the Change Wired podcast. Got a question? Send it in. And in the meantime, grab his book. It might be life-changing.
