The Power of Becoming the Dumbest Person in the Office

-Do you desire to learn how to embrace humility in your work place? 

-Do you desire to build a stronger support team around you?

-Would you like to lead better and be more focused while spending the lion’s share of your time doing what you love?

-Have you struggled to keep up with innovation and changes in your industry and find yourself feeling out-of-touch?

-Have you ever felt intimidated by employees that seemed to know more than you about your industry?

People tend to believe they need to become smarter, more efficient or wealthier to be able to pursue their dreams. I would like to challenge that philosophy. One thing I learned since becoming an entrepreneur in 1999, was that I needed to become the dumbest person in the office. Please allow me to explain.

I am not telling you that you need to lower your intelligence to achieve your dreams. I am also not telling you to lower your expectations of yourself to the point where you grow complacent and lazy. Nothing could be further from what I intend to communicate. Rather, if you are willing to make a few specific changes to your strategic outlook and overall leadership mentality, you can work towards ensuring your future is always brighter than your past. And you can bask in the knowledge that you became the dumbest person in the office.

Below are 6 simple guidelines to achieve this goal and strive toward a brighter future:

1. Become increasingly humble – First and foremost, I believe you need to become increasingly comfortable facing rejection, personal challenge from peers, your team and other coaches. You need to always remain open to learning about yourself, how you affect others around you and how you can improve as a person. If you take on the role of a humble servant, even if you are the CEO of your company, you will be more able to achieve your dreams. If you have run your own business already, don’t be afraid to return to your roots and sweep the floors on occasion. This will help you remember where you came from, and what it took to follow the path of success that you now know. Make sure that no task is ever too small, as it may teach you something.

2. Surround yourself with people that know more than you – It is imperative that you not only recognize you have weaknesses, but that you surround yourself with people that can continually handle those areas more effectively than you by applying their natural gifts and unique abilities.

3. Build depth into your team(s) in all areas possible – I have found, when possible, it is prudent to have redundancy at least two people deep in all areas of the company, even if it requires you to use part-time, contracted or outsourced help. I also strive to hire those who can offer more value than simply an ability to fulfill a role as advertised. This opens up the possibility that they could help you in new ways as the business changes, and gives the team greater confidence in the company’s ability to weather a future staffing change.

4. Always see your future as bigger than your past – No matter how bad the personal loss when a team member leaves, it is critical that you focus on how your business could be better through replacing them (new perspective, new insights, new talents, etc.) or through rebuilding the organization without filling the position left by their departure. Continue to hire people that make your team stronger each time you lose someone or hire someone new. Don’t just hire someone that matches your minimum requirements and keeps you at the level you were before. Always look to upgrade your team so your future remains brighter than your past.

5. Become a stronger delegator – Many leaders and entrepreneurs are poor at delegation. They tend to want to be micro-managers because of what they know and their internal need to feel as if they are control (even if the reality is that they are not). The better you become at more quickly delegating to the most appropriate person, the more effective you will become in producing consistent results and doing the behaviors necessary to achieve your dreams.

6. Spend the majority of your business time focused on your unique abilities – Don’t waste your time doing tasks that simply keep you busy and drain you of time and resources. Many times people do tasks that are only competent (or actually incompetent) rather than focusing their efforts in areas where they have passion and can produce truly excellent results. You should focus more intensely on what you do best and try to get to the point where that is where you spend 80%+ of your business time. The clearer you get about yourself, the better. You can do so by using personal profiling/inventory tools like Kolbe, DISC or a Spiritual Gifts Inventory.

I believe the true beauty in becoming the dumbest person in the office is that you ensure you are able to achieve goals more easily because you have increased support, clarity and confidence as you take each step necessary towards your vision! I have personally found one of the biggest benefits to becoming the dumbest person in the office is that I have learned to build an increasingly more capable team around me. I have been truly blessed by working with them, and have nothing but kudos to extend to them as they continue to show me their unique talents and abilities. They replace my weaknesses with the blessing of their strengths, and in so doing, they have allowed our company to become more and more capable of growth and the ability to run self-sufficiently which should be a goal for any entrepreneur by my estimate. .

I help my coaching clients focus on matters like these so they can see their business become more efficient, profitable and scalable, if desired. I also help them achieve better balance professionally and personally so they can see their business truly work to support their life purpose and vision. If you want to find out more about how this could be leveraged in your world, or if you want to discuss a business problem you are facing, feel free to contact me or call me at 717-615-2274. You are also welcome to share this article or other resources found on this blog. Feel free to contact me if you or an associate would like to join my blog or receive this article as a PDF.

God bless,

Joe