Open any social media app and scroll for more than a minute, and you’ll come across some version of this line: “If you consistently find yourself the smartest in the room, you need to be in new rooms.” It’s been recycled by a thousand pages, podcasters, bots, and click-baiters, all trying to light that little fire under you. But what if they’re wrong?

There’s only so much you can do. Eventually, a million TikToks confidently suggesting you need to find new rooms will take root. Throw in a brooding picture of Tom Hardy and—boom!—it’s toxic hubris gold. No offence, Tom. We know it’s not a direct quote.

So, who is the smartest in the room? It’s a question we’d all love to answer with “me!” but the reality is it depends entirely on what the room is trying to achieve and which questions are being asked.

I’m confident I can out-perform my children on most topics, but if the room suddenly needs to know the names of all the dwarf planets in our solar system, I’m getting my butt kicked.

Talk less, ask more

Instead of wandering off in search of new rooms, maybe we could get more out of the rooms we’re already in? Perhaps we could ask more questions?

If you enter every room assuming there’s nothing you can be taught, you’ll almost certainly miss the opportunity to learn something new.

Great leaders need to do exactly that: lead. That requires confidence—in decisions, in direction, in judgment. But it also requires remembering that we are not infallible. Nobody is. You earned your top spot, and you deserve the perks that (hopefully) come with it, but that doesn’t mean no one else has anything of value to offer. Confidence is a strength, but it can also blind us with bias.

Check yourself

Take a moment to be real with yourself. How often do you really check your own ideas? How much rigor and stress-testing to you really apply to them? How often do you apply genuine critical thinking to your plans and decisions? Most of us aren’t as good at that as we’d like to think.

Is this the best decision? Who says it’s the best? What evidence supports it? Am I open to alternatives? Could there be a better option?

Those are some pretty simple questions that a leader (and remember, leadership can be shown at every level, in any role) can and should ask themselves regularly.

Sometimes the only reason we believe an idea is “the best” is because it’s ours. Is that really enough? Have we examined why we’ve chosen it? Have we actively looked for evidence that challenges it, or are we quietly indulging confirmation bias? And if we’re not open to new ideas—why not?

Yes, leaders have to make decisions, often they’re the difficult ones, and sometimes those decisions are immediate and imperfect. That’s where your experience shines! But when we’re afforded the luxury of time (like for longer-term growth planning, for example) we should use it—to test our thinking, to critique our choices, and to explore ideas beyond our own.

The more often we do this, the better our future decisions become. The more perspectives we examine, the more likely we are to uncover innovation.

Building a richer, stronger culture

There’s another upside: leaders who aren’t afraid to consult, question, or adopt someone else’s idea are perceived as fairer and more thoughtful. That builds confidence in their leadership—especially in those moments when the decision really does have to be theirs, right now.

Let’s go further. New ideas are great, but disagreement can be even better. Disagreement isn’t dissent; handled well, it’s perspective. It forces us to consider angles we may never have applied otherwise.

Pretty much every meaningful innovation exists because someone dared to say, “I think I can do this better.” And a lot of progress happened because someone else was confident enough to reply, “Alright—show me.”

That’s the culture we should all be aiming to foster. We shouldn’t be afraid to surround ourselves with different types of thinkers, doers, and believers. Quite the opposite. These are the people who naturally spark debate and fresh thinking.

If I’m in a room with ten other people and I have a decision to make, that’s not ten people relying on just me—that’s ten potential improvements on my own thinking. I’d be crazy not to use that!

The smartest leaders aren’t those who avoid disagreement; they’re the ones confident enough to invite it. Because when debate is encouraged and ego takes a back seat, decisions get better, trust runs deeper, and innovation stops being an accident and starts becoming a habit.

Interested in building a stronger, more productive culture? We can help.