The New Flex: 100% Present, 99% Certain, 95% Silent

To know or not to know, that is the question.

Knowing best isn’t the problem. Habitually needing to prove it is.

My remit is to find/experiment with the advantages of collective intelligence & collective energy… otherwise known as leadership, teamwork & culture. I’m responsible for noticing the systemic constraints and helping design the human infrastructure (e.g., the leadership system at all levels) that mitigates the blockers and accelerates the learning/adaptation necessary for overall organizational effectiveness. My job is to help the team “win”.

So, what am I learning right now about what gets in the way of collective advantage? Where do most of us experience the stranded energy and stranded intelligence bottlenecks at scale?

1. Energy leaks when any one of us is in reactivity or dysregulation. We show up as a demand on the system, instead of a resource.
2. Intelligence drops significantly deep & fast when we’re in threat state reactivity, subconsciously locked onto what we don’t want.
3. Humans and teams who can shift inner states (metabolize the reactivity, not suppress it) & convert that reactivity into task completion (e.g., shifting skill states) are highly valuable, incredibly rare, and powerfully magnetic. Professionalism without this kind of multi-dimensional developmental momentum under stress is a dead end. In exceptional, sustainable organizations (communities of humans), there is no separation between business development, relationship development and leadership development. This kind of integral leadership complexity gap is what we’re seeing worth practicing.

Practice saying this…

Executive Summary

In a client meeting this week, my knower mindset wanted to take over and prove my value by sharing my expertise/full solution. I wanted to move quickly to scratch my itch of certainty in all the conversations/relationships using very thin data. Instead, I chose 95% silence, stayed fully present, used curiosity and a few well-timed questions in service of the I, WE, IT outcomes I cared about.

Even though I was 99% certain I knew what needed to happen when, I practiced staying 100% present instead of taking over. The practice is not never using expertise. It is discerning when to lead with knowing vs when to lead with not knowing on purpose.

In a fast-paced ever-changing, complex and uncertain environment, curiosity is rarely low-value. Even though my own nervous system devalues it during these high-stakes contexts (preferring the illusion of certainty). Curiosity/not knowing is the most strategic way to create trust, learn faster, and deliver better outcomes under pressure. But most people cannot access curiosity under pressure, which is exactly why/when it becomes most valuable. Most people do not see themselves objectively enough to realize all the ways their default habits/neural ruts are making them less valuable in an age of hyperjerk change. It’s fascinating.

Most people’s default habits keep them blissfully unaware of how their own leadership complexity & emotional maturity gaps are compounding faster than their developmental progress. Most people do not realize that everything they care about is at stake and depending on them to learn/grow faster, more deeply as a leadership community/system… if they did realize it, how might they show up more curiously, listen & pay attention differently? I’m still learning to realize it myself and let’s face it, we all seem like we’re slow to learn the things we need to learn most.

Thinking we know best isn’t the problem. Habitually needing to prove it is. Temporarily not knowing may be the most intimate & the most effective thing a leader can do, especially when they actually do know a lot and it’s likely getting in our way of learning more, faster.

Trust the vertical development process, it is not a mystery. Trust each other…social learning is the cultural developmental accelerant; social learning (collective intelligence) is our species superpower.

It works in reverse, too. Social learning cuts both ways…we see it in the hyper-polarization. If the dominant patterns in your system are reactive, defensive, and threat-based KNOWING BEST patterns, those patterns become contagious and we stay stuck at the current level and/or regress. People learn to survive by adopting the same defensive strategies they see modeled/reinforced around them. The collective intelligence becomes collective reactivity, where claiming to be right matters more than being effective.

We are all powerful enough not to be fooled by our default habitual patterns of reactivity & shared reactivity.

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Here’s my fresh catch….

When I Think I Know Best (But Don’t Know Any Better)

My mind tells me I know best a lot, especially when we’re in a domain where I have real experience, real pattern recognition, and real expertise. You’d think that would be an advantage. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t. This past week I was in a meeting with a client team who had expressed interest in leadership development support. It was one of those moments where the room is full of smart people, the stakes are real, the time is constrained, and everyone is trying to do the right thing. And I could feel it: my knower energy.

I was frustrated by what my super smart teammates were focusing on in the prep. Then, again, during most of the meeting, I felt like we weren’t focused on what we should be focused on, according to my expertise-filled knower mindset. Which raises a question that sounds so, so simple.

But What If I Actually Do Know Best?

How in the world can I bring my learner mindset, curiosity, and person-to-person relating magic when I believe I actually do know best? How can I be curious when “ripping the box open” right now (knowing and telling them what I know) feels like my job, or when it seems obvious to me that I’m right about what’s happening?

This is where my learner mindset starts doing that thing: protesting too much. I’m a learner, I’m a learner. But even after years of practice, I can see my knower mindset still activates even when I’m teaching the learner-knower (super growth) mindset as a concept. Am I once again being asked to tell my learner mindset to just show up and fake it? Be a learner, be a learner. After all, I do know best how people should approach not knowing, best. I really think I do. See how conditioned I am to unconsciously pursue more of my own self-righteous energy of knowing?

The circular, recursive loop is humbling, fascinating, frustrating and energizing. I’m addicted to the energy it produces. It’s the brain button that my brain keeps pushing for more, more, more dopamine chasing more. And there’s a real discernment question buried inside the comedy: do I even know when to choose my “I know best” moments? Because there are times when expertise should be deployed. It’s not about never knowing best. It’s about choosing consciously when to lead with knowing versus when to lead with curiosity (not knowing). The art is in the discernment: awareness, choice, responsibility to choose effectively.

The Experiment: 100% Present, 95% Silent

Here’s what I did. I stayed in low horse through the fire drills of discovery meetings, prep meetings, emails, chat threads, and the internal noise that comes with all of it. In the actual client meeting, I chose to be silent for 95 percent of it. Not checked out. Not sulking. Not subordinate. Not passive. 100% Present.

The intended payoff was simple: show up in service of the I, WE, IT outcomes I cared about. Just be fully present. Let the system and the magic reveal itself. Don’t “rip open the box” and dump my whole vision, plan, and solution hypothesis onto the table just because my nervous system was pushing for tension relief. My 5 percent (not silent) came at the end, when I was directly invited to speak via a thoughtful question. Humbly, it obviously turned out to be more skillful than if I had done all the talking and pontificating that my knower mindset was lobbying for. Thank goodness I didn’t grab the wheel, rip open the box, etc. pick your metaphor.

I might be delusional about how useful it was. But I’m trusting the process of knowing, not knowing, and choosing on purpose. I believe I did enough of my questioning, challenging and curiosity treasure hunts before, during, and after the meeting. I didn’t stay in escape or attack modes for long, even though they flared more than once. I processed it with a few trusted humans and with my AI practice partner, NILES. I’m still learning, moment to moment, how choosing presence and curiosity (in low horse, tension-filled moments) moves me toward the outcomes I want more skillfully than blasting my knowing/controlling/efforting energy every time my default habits kick in. Knowing still wins sometimes. But I win more often because I’m learning to choose more often in alignment with what matters most. I win more often by learning faster.

What I Was Not Knowing (And Why It Matters)

It helps me to be explicit about what I am not knowing. Naming it turns vague threat into workable curiosity. Here’s a short excerpt from my longer list. Notice the mix of threat-state stuff and above-the-line aspirations all tangled together.

• I didn’t know what the client knew, what my teammates knew, or whether anyone had read my notes, slides, ideas, or that video I sent.
• I didn’t know if my research was naive or superficial, or if it aligned with the reality of what we’ve already learned in prior work.
• I didn’t know if our broader leadership development approach was better than my stuff, or simply better packaged for what people will buy.
• I didn’t know if my jealousy of their professional formatting, and my doubt about my own ability to fit in, was making me defensive and looking for something to push off of instead of looking for what to agree with.
• I didn’t know if I was speaking in a way that was useful to people. I didn’t know if I really even cared.
• I didn’t know if I was judging them for not knowing what I know, or judging myself for not being able to land it cleanly in their world.
• I didn’t know if I was helping the client lead or triggering them. I didn’t know what pressure they were under from the leader who invited us into the conversation.
• I didn’t know if I was trying to be of service or trying to impress, trying to live up to someone’s story about me, trying to live up to my own identity.
• I didn’t know if my energy was pointed at the client’s leadership team, or at every client I’ve ever had, or at my parents :-)

That’s the real context of work and life. If we can’t observe this level of internal relating (habitual thinking patterns), we’ll keep mistaking our default threat state for truth/reality, and we’ll keep excusing/defending our neural ruts as the only leadership we can bring because of external XYZ factors.

The Ultimate P2P Treasure Hunt: What’s it like to be you?

There’s no way to know what’s happening inside other humans. And we can’t do much solo, outside the team, outside relationship context. So of course being curious about the co-regulating relationship system we’re inside of is strategic and effective. Of course it’s in service of I, WE, IT outcomes.

What’s it like right now for the person across from me?

What’s it like to be you, the person who has lived your unique life, believes those things, wants those things, cares about those things, holding those things right now?

What is it like to carry a mission that requires you to build the technical & human infrastructure that doesn’t fully exist yet, under massive complexity, under time pressure, while betting real money on breaking the paradigms that most people are attached to, with new paradigms that most people can’t even understand?

What does it feel like to hold all of that? Where do you feel most confident in your ability to ______? Where does it feel most fragile?

That is not fluff. That is leadership presence. That is how you share electrons and co-regulate with the humans in the room. That is how you stop showing up as a demand and start showing up as a full-ingredients resource.

The Aikido Move: Redirecting My Knowing Into Knowing Better

Instead of fighting my brain’s need to know, I can redirect it toward a better question: can I know better than my defaults? The key distinctions for me live inside different types of not knowing.

a) I don’t know and I’m anxious: threat state, I need to escape uncertainty, rip open the box now.

b) I don’t know and I need to figure it out right now: control mode, rip open the box now.

c) I don’t know and I’m curious: chosen stance, temporary suspension of knowing, no need to open the box yet. This one is the flex.

Temporary Not Knowing as Strategy

If I choose not knowing for part of the meeting or the whole meeting, I can still take control later if it serves the outcomes I care about. This is very different from my unconscious move: stand up out of low horse so I can feel safe temporarily. Temporarily not knowing is not weakness.

It is range. It is self-empowering agency. It is strategy.

Dancing With Defaults to Expand My Range

My defaults aren’t gone. They’re melting away over time. I’m learning to celebrate noticing them as old friends. They served me well once. I still need to keep seeing/noticing them if I’m going to dance with them effectively. I’m choosing more often, to serve my intentions instead of serving my tension relief. Not perfectly, just more often. And it feels gloriously rewarding. Imagine the compounding effect of that over ten years.

Back to the Mystery Box Metaphor

I don’t know and I’m curious. As a chosen stance, it’s the same foundation from our Mystery Box work, now with real-world application in high-stakes moments where expertise wants to take over.

And here’s the part I didn’t expect. After all this writing, it feels like my choice to be 95 percent silent wasn’t simply restraint. I wasn’t forcing my learner mindset to fake it. Maybe it was a different quality of engagement. Maybe it’s a different quality of energy that I’m learning to tap into. Another source of untapped capacity I can access whenever I choose.

Curiosity begets more curiosity. And sometimes the most strategic thing I/we can do in a high-pressure room is stop trying to prove we know best, and start practicing the kind of presence that increases collective energy and collective intelligence. It turns us into a renewable resource. It signals an exceptional way forward into the century of suddenly and the complex uncertainty…. our chosen way forward where collective energy & collective intelligence compound, not collapse/leak/get stranded, under pressure.