Get comfortable with not having all the answers

As a leader, your job is to guide and inspire your team. Your staff may often turn to you for insights—but leaders aren’t perfect.

You won’t always have the answer to every question or problem, and that’s OK. However, it can be difficult to accept this fallibility when you’re accountable to your team.

We asked a panel of Forbes Coaches Council members to share their advice for leaders who need to get more comfortable not always having the answer. Their best responses are below.

1. Ask More Questions To Inspire The Answers

My advice as a leader is to ask questions so it inspires answers. Don’t just answer like an average manager or boss. True leaders motivate the person who has the question and helps them find answers. Next time your direct report or people from your organization ask questions, say to them, “Great question. I have some ideas that I can share with you, but before I do, what do you think?” – Sameer Khan, Inspiring Insights LLC

2. Weigh Your Options And Plan Out Different Scenarios

Exercising judgment and making decisions in the face of uncertainty is leadership’s No. 1 challenge. Instead of focusing on “the answer” or false precision around an answer, show your team how to navigate the unknowns. Conduct scenario-planning and weigh different options. It will grow your and their muscle for adaptive leadership. Know the nonnegotiables and figure out the rest. – Shoma Chatterjee Hayden, ghSMART

3. Surround Yourself With A Team That Knows Everything

Great leaders are not the ones who know everything but the ones who know how to surround themselves with the right people who, as a team, know everything. Therefore, admitting you don’t know something as a leader and asking your team for help means you are showing them respect for their area of expertise and, at the same time, demonstrating that you know how to find and nurture talent. – Masha Malka, The One Minute Coach

4. Be A Lifelong Learner

One of the greatest attributes of a leader is being a lifelong learner. This perspective allows you to embrace the idea that you don’t need to have all the answers. Also, by leaning into the collective knowledge of your team members, you’re demonstrating humility, building their confidence and teaching them that leaders aren’t all-knowing, but know how to leverage the knowledge available to them. – Carol Parker Walsh, Carol Parker Walsh Consulting, LLC

5. Role Model What You Expect From Others

Admitting you don’t immediately have the answer that is being sought is a leadership moment—a time to level up and role model the behaviour you want to see from others. Be open, honest and graceful about what you don’t know—being vulnerable is a superpower! It makes leaders more approachable, and others are more willing to contribute their ideas and creativity. – Rupinder Kaur, Asian Women MEAN Business

6. Give Work Back To Your Team

As people in a position of authority, we can easily get caught up on the dance floor and get disoriented. Sometimes, getting on the balcony can help us see and think clearer, and knowing when to give work back to our team members serves as a strength. It’s acceptable to be vulnerable to our team members when we don’t have all the answers, for it’s a mark of a great leader. – J. Ibeh Agbanyim, Focused Vision Consulting, LLC

7. Maintain A Childlike Curiosity

When chatting to a 5-year-old, you’ll notice they constantly ask “why?” And we need to get super creative to satisfy their curiosity (in the hope that the “why” stream will end). This is exactly what we want to encourage at-work—a curiosity for learning and creativity in our thinking. If we ask questions and listen, we cultivate a culture of learning, which leads to exceptional results. – Daphna Horowitz, Daphna Horowitz Leadership

8. Complement, Rather Than Compete With Your Team

As a leader, your role is to support your managers to do their work and manage their teams effectively. You are not employed to know it all. What is important for you to know is how to support, guide and coach your managers and teams. They will, in most cases, know or have more answers than you do. You should be fine with that. Never compete with your subordinates. Rather, complement each other. – Sam Tsima, COMETSA GoC International (Pty) Ltd

9. Develop A Growth Mindset

The constantly changing world of work actually requires leaders to be able to tolerate uncertainty. Having a growth mindset, the belief that intelligence can be developed is a competitive advantage in today’s workplace. The key is to listen and think from a place of deep curiosity and discovery. When faced with ambiguity, look at it as an opportunity to learn, grow and stretch yourself. – Jacinta Jimenez, BetterUp

10. Admit You Don’t Know, But Resolve To Find Out

Say it with me: “I don’t know. I will get back to you on this.” This particular phrase is the best friend of any true leader. It is an absurd assumption that someone knows it all. This is also a good way to gauge a new team or team member: If in a meeting, anyone has all the answers, it should be considered suspicious. – Kamyar Shah, World Consulting Group

11. Embrace Uncertainty As An Adventure And Opportunity

No answers mean you are facing a new challenge. In other words, new territory is new growth. Wouldn’t you want to solve the same problem every day? Learning how to see such moments as an adventure and an opportunity to discover is a powerful way to train your thinking with a curiosity lens. Be inquisitive, ask questions and be honest about what you know. It will help you learn something new! – Monica Kang, InnovatorsBox

12. Practice Followership

Leaders often have to step back so that others can step up and the organization can move forward. When a leader conveys that they will follow others, the entire organization becomes better. A leader who steps back can ask the team for answers when they don’t know the answer, and that will make everyone see the value that they can bring to the leader and the team. – Ken Gosnell, CEO Experience

13. Use These Moments To Build Trust Between You And Your Team

Recognize that being comfortable not always having the answer is really a trust-building exercise between you and your team. If you hire people you are comfortable learning from and leaning on, this process goes much faster than hiring those who you feel like could do the job, but you don’t fully trust. – J. Ryan Williams, JRyan.Coach

14. Give Permission To Experiment, Fail And Try Again

In today’s ever-changing environment, agility and constant progress is a must. Instead of trying to be perfect, leaders need to show vulnerability, embrace ambiguity, take calculated risks, give permission to their teams to experiment, fail and try again instead of waiting for the perfect solution that may never come! This is a whole new mindset that needs to be lived by the leader first. – Marina Cvetkovic, The Peak Alliance

15. Initiate Growth Via Uncomfortable Side Projects

Becoming “comfortable with what’s uncomfortable” requires initiation by actually doing that which is uncomfortable. For leaders who are not yet comfortable with not having “the” answer, I would encourage them to assume responsibility for a side project they know nothing about (a different industry, vertical, etc.). In this, they will have to yield expertise and rely on the answers of others. – Corey Castillo, Truth & Spears

16. Refresh Your Definition Of Leadership

Ultimately, the most effective leaders know who has the knowledge and expertise that will allow goals to be achieved. If your definition of leadership is that you have to be the omnipotent ruler of all, it’s time to refresh your perspective and, honestly, give yourself a break. If you are the only smart person in the room, it’s time to find a new room. – Tonya Echols, Vigere

What question do you like to use to generate engaging discussions with your team?

This article was first published on Forbes.com o 9 March 2020

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