It’s nice to have the answer to a question or problem. But what happens when we think we have all the answers to every question, and that our answers are better than everyone else’s?
Here are 5 dangers of thinking we have all the answers:
- We won’t gain new skills and experience. When we think we have all the answers, we aren’t open to trying new approaches to solving problems. This keeps us from gaining new skills that come from new experiences.
- Our problem solving skills will not improve. If we already know the answer to every question, we won’t have opportunity to exercise our problem solving skills. Instead, we’ll continue to simply rely on our own limited knowledge and miss the challenge of considering new methods to solve a problem.
- We won’t be able to collaborate with or leverage the knowledge of others. If think we know everything, we won’t seek assistance from others, or avail ourselves to the knowledge and experience they have. This limits our exposure to new thoughts and ideas that we may have never heard or considered.
- We are not likely to attract or keep good thinkers on our teams. Good thinkers don’t want to be around people that have all the answers, because good thinkers like to think and share ideas. If we have all the answers, the good thinkers around us will go elsewhere; and take their good thinking with them.
- We’ll never create anything bigger than ourselves. If we rely only on what we know and our limited answers, we waste opportunities to collaborate with others in order to create something that is much bigger than ourselves. How can we possibly create something bigger than ourselves if we only rely on our own limited knowledge?
Don’t get me wrong, its’ good to have answers to questions and problems, and when we have answers, we should share them with others. However, I think it’s foolish to assume that we are possible of having ALL the answers to EVERY problem or question.
If, in the very rare case, we do indeed have all the answers to every question or problem we encounter, that is probably a good indication we need to step out of our comfort zone and do something else.