Always knowing everything and letting people know you know, will make you a smart person in the room. Let people underestimate you.
You don’t want to be the smartest in the room, you won’t learn a great deal. If people know you’re clever, they’ll seek you out and you’ll be busy teaching rather than learning.
If you want to learn and get to know people, hide your knowledge & intelligence. That doesn’t mean being unhelpful, it’s strategic.
By doing this, you elevate others in the room and they will naturally impart their knowledge and want to share things with you. It’s magical. If you want to connect with people and learn about their mind, try this approach.
You may well learn things you already know, but the positives to that are, you hear another’s perspective, different detail and you’ll more than likely learn something new!
How to foster this approach, a few tips:
- Don’t say much. If you’re a talker like me, hold back and let others speak
- Become an expert listener. Listen to understand
- Initiate conversation and then let the person lead immediately. This is also a skill, knowing the approach, and the quickest point to back off and encourage their dialogue
- Just don’t say anything except, hey! Some people will be uncomfortable with this
- Ask a leading question about them
- Ask for help with something
- People will fire up over their passion subjects. Get them talking around what they love to do, or love about a topic you’d like to learn about
- If you’re asked for knowledge, defer to wishing you knew more or offer a small amount of information
Discerning who gets access to you and your intelligence, is a skill. Learning how to not use it, is a magical way to connect with people.