How can being an incredibly nimble thinker be a career sinker?

Or how relying on superlative communication skills can lead to your downfall (or your teams')

Many years ago, I gave what I thought was the weirdest feedback I’d ever given.

I said to someone after a really important meeting “That went great, but your problem might be that you’re so good responding confidently to executive questions, you’re going to get yourself in trouble. Not only does everyone else get convinced by you, I think you might convince yourself too.”

They had.

It’s a pattern I’ve seen many times now, but it can be pretty hard to catch.

Here’s a typical flow:

Someone asks a presenter in a meeting a hard question. The presenter hasn’t thought the issue through completely, but is an incredibly sharp/competent person and habitually quick on their feet, so they not only come up with an answer but do so compellingly and eloquently. Everyone is impressed, and moves on thinking the issue is well-understood even though no one can verify if the answer was correct or if the proposed approach works. Not only has the room moved on from the discussion, but the presenter has now publicly committed to that answer - and either convinced themselves that they got it right and don’t need to think about it, or has a bias to try to prove it right before considering any alternatives.

In the case of the person I gave the feedback to all those years ago, in a large room of people, only me and one another person in the room knew that the answer they gave so quickly to a room of execs was possibly wrong. It would’ve been the wrong approach for the company if the group had acted on that decision, and I hadn’t asked for some more analysis after the meeting.

The ability to pause, credibly explain why you don’t have the answer and need to think about it some more, is a skill. It’s a rare skill that is even harder to develop if you are actually able to think quickly on your feet, and have built that habit.

Participating in a lot of debate competitions in college sadly made me a reasonably competent under pressure. So it took some practice for me to add “.. but I’m not sure. Let me follow up and get back to you” to a first thought I had and even more practice for me to either stay silent or respond with “there’s a few factors here e.g. x,y and z, and I need to think about this some more and follow up.”

It’s become even more important as I became more senior since even half-formed thoughts I might have, have unintended consequences sometimes. See “The Bear is Sticky with Honey”. :-)

This is a hard thing to do anyway - credibly, confidently explaining that you don’t have the answer yet - but I find it’s even harder for smart, quick thinkers that are able to come up with what seems like a great answer in a flash.

I think this may count as a shadow that can go missed in Nikhyl Singhal’s shadows of your superpowers framework.

Is this something you struggle with as well? Do you watch for it on your teams or people that you work with?