It is effortless to come into a conversation and feel like you need to have all the answers. It doesn’t matter if you are the CEO of a startup, part of a team in a larger organization, or even talking to your partner. Part of our roles, and I would argue that it is also our responsibility to know what we don’t know.
Seek to Understand: It is not the answers that will drive the decision-making. What drives decision-making is having the foresight to ask the right questions at the right time. That is why seeking to understand what we don’t know is so vital in order to obtain the correct information or knowledge to more forward.
Know That No One Really Knows: Many times, we answer a question with only a minimal amount of information or just through the assumptions we have. The thing is, we are not alone. Many folks do this each day and many times a day. Consider ways to mitigate that. Whether it is testing those assumptions or realizing collectively that the future isn’t here yet and that a unified path forward is really your starting point, be honest with what you don’t know and create a critical way to identifying what it is that you need to know.
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