Earnest Smith
Leading When You Don’t Have All the Answers
Updated: Jul 2, 2021

Leading when you don’t have all the answers is frustrating. So many times in my life as a perfectionist, I beat myself up thinking I should have known “x” issue.
It is times like these that I make a chart and play a quiz game of “What I Know and Dont Know”. It gives me a simple framework for solving complex problems.
More importantly it keeps me from freaking out and blaming myself for something I didn’t know.
When you make a chart like this you can be confident with what you know and confident in what you don’t know. I normally just get in trouble when I think I know something that’s actually a guess and not a fact.
Anything you don’t know, that’s ok. Ask for help(It’s not cheating :-) Somebody on your team may know or know somebody else who can help you solve the problem.