Not many of us have the humility to know what we don’t know! It’s a tough one, but need to be, so says Paul Bridle


KnowingThat I 28 issue 1 • You Don’t Know


‘Knowing that you don’t know.’ Strange title isn’t it?


I’ve given this article the title Think about


it for a moment. What we know is important and if I ask you ‘what you know’, well you’d probably spend the rest of your life telling me. However, we’ve arrived at a


time


when knowing that you don’t know something is very important. How do you deal with that? How do you acknowledge that, and how do you know that you don’t know?


First of all let’s deal with the way you are about not knowing. Can you remember as a child at some stage and you got ‘Hey Johnny did you know that those things over there are dangerous?’.


Johnny looks


back and goes ‘I knew that’. Ok, it’s a typical thing that a child will do. A child doesn’t want to appear not to know.


When we get older and supposedly wiser then we start to realize how childish that behavior is, and so we start to mask it and eventually we outgrow it (at least most people do….some never do!)


If you said to


somebody “Did you know this?” and they pretend they do and they start waffling on about it as if they do, they make the situation worse.


So the


first thing I want to ask you is: ‘Are you very careful in terms of making


careersuccess


sure that you don’t try and pretend that you know something when you don’t know it?


There are many mistakes that a lot of people make by just not being able to relax and feel comfortable with what they don’t know!


The next aspect I want to focus on with you is: You can’t know everything There are going to be things that


you don’t know about and if you go around trying to pretend that you know about everything, or feel that you should learn everything, these are negative situations to be in. What’s important is that those around you have access to the information that is needed. So it is important to be able to acknowledge to yourself that you just don’t know, and that it is ok not to know, as long as you have someone around you that does know. Getting to that position becomes very, very important.


How good are you at doing this? When situations arise, or when


you are dealing with conflict, or when decisions have to be made, ask yourself: Are you someone who allows people to give you the information you need?


or, are you


going round as someone that knows it all and you have to know everything before a decision can be made?


My questions for this month are: • Have you fallen into this trap? • Are you that person who is trying to pretend you know it all with people


and


making a fool of yourself? Or


• Are you that person who recognises that you are not going to know everything and embraces others? • Do you encourage others to know things that you don’t know, and allow yourselves to discuss things together so that the right decisions are made and mistakes are prevented due to wrong information?


So, what is it that you don’t know? What is it that you either need to know or need people around you to know? I hope this has been helpful. I hope you are going to have a great year!


More information from Paul Bridle, Information Contextualiser, Bridle International on www.paulbridle.com


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