Individuals always want to see themselves as the smartest person in the room. My words in this article are to clarify that you don't need to be the smartest person in the room to succeed. Let's go through this article and discover more about how we are going to be convinced by that. Saying that an individual's goal is to be the smartest person in the room. Let's go through that sequence and see where it will end. An individual is working in a big organization, he woke up a day full of motivation and excitement after he was scrolling on his mobile phone and read that "To succeed, you need to be the smartest person in the room". He was very convinced and he decided to work hard to achieve that goal. He went early to the office that day and started planning the strategies he needed to be successful. He started to think that he need to be able to understand everything in his field, he need to be able to solve the problems in the projects he face, he needs to be able to provide the most brilliant ideas, he needs to be able to unleash his leadership potential, and he needs to be able to provide a solid perspective when he is asked to or when that moment come, where the meeting is just in silence and he is day savior by providing the solution for the problem. Having all these thoughts in his head with a dreamy perspective and he realized that he needed to get himself out of that dreamy perspective. He started to document all these ideas into a plan to start working on it. He just forgot one important thing to take into consideration, which is his current responsibilities towards the organization. He started giving priority that he needs to being the smartest person in the room over his current assigned tasks. Having in mind that being the smartest person in the room will make him help his organization grow more with his assistance. He started to divide his day between his responsibilities and his goal. He is giving priority to his goal, and he invests a lot of time in working and gaining all the required knowledge. He becomes very attentive in the meetings with trying as much as he can to provide the solution and provide the most brilliant idea. Everything was going well until he felt that this goal was not easy, and he was being pressured and stressed between his current responsibilities and his goal. He decided to continue balancing between both and became determined to achieve his goal and responsibilities. The reason for that pressure is that he gave priority to his goal over his responsibilities, while he should finish his main responsibilities first, then pursue the goal he needs to be the smartest person in the room. He is determined, and he finds out that his responsibilities at this current time are increasing, so the ideal solution is to stop his goal currently and focus more on his responsibilities. He didn't do that and started doing both together. After a few weeks, he got off track and there was a problem with his responsibilities, which was noticed by his team leader. The team leader here is smart with handling his team. He informed him that he needs to set a meeting to discuss a few points regarding his progress. The team member wasn't worried because the team leader's way of informing was professional and clear. The meeting came and the team leader started stating the performance issue with his progress in his responsibilities. After discussing multiple points, the team member decided to share his goal with the team leader. The team member stated that he was working hard to be the smartest person in the room, so he was studying and consuming a lot of knowledge and experience to be able to have a solution-oriented mindset and creative way of generating ideas. The team leader listened well to the team member, and he gave him some words that were the reason for supporting this team member without making him lose passion or motivation towards his goal. Here, the emotional intelligence of the team leader appears in handling the team member. The team leader told the team member a few points if he wanted to succeed: Being the smartest person in the room won't come by force. It will come with the normal flow of your experience through your career.
Working hard can accelerate the process, but make sure to understand your main responsibilities first.
It is great to think you want to be the day's savior, provide solutions, and share brilliant ideas. It is more mindful to take it step by step with opening discussions and sharing insights. You don't need to solve the problem the first time; it can be in steps.
The smartest person in the room should know when he should say the solution, when he should support his team members, and when he should initiate a discussion. The smartest person in the room should know when to provide the solution, not to be programmed that whenever there is a problem, he should solve it directly.
The smartest person in the room could be the smartest because of his focus on the responsibilities, not his distraction to understand everything in the field and every integration point. Being the smartest person in the room won't come by force. It will come with the normal flow of your experience through your career. Working hard can accelerate the process, but make sure to understand your main responsibilities first. It is great to think you want to be the day's savior, provide solutions, and share brilliant ideas. It is more mindful to take it step by step with opening discussions and sharing insights. You don't need to solve the problem the first time; it can be in steps. The smartest person in the room should know when he should say the solution, when he should support his team members, and when he should initiate a discussion. The smartest person in the room should know when to provide the solution, not to be programmed that whenever there is a problem, he should solve it directly. The smartest person in the room could be the smartest because of his focus on the responsibilities, not his distraction to understand everything in the field and every integration point. The team member listened very well to the team leader, and he understood everything he said. These were mindful words that made him change his strategy and definition for the smartest person in the room. The team member learned a very valuable lesson from his team leader about his approach in handling the issue and how he listened to him very well with providing some key points, which will make him focus more on his responsibilities and keep working to be the smartest person in the room, but in a mindful way without losing his role in the organization.

This story contains new, firsthand information uncovered by the writer.

The Smartest Person in the Room Myth

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