The Power of Not Knowing

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A famous English scholar of Asian studies visiting Japan managed to get himself invited to attend a traditional tea ceremony conducted by one of the greatest living tea masters. The scholar considered himself an expert on the history of the tea traditions, and viewed attending the ceremony as an appropriate recognition of his status.

The guest at a tea ceremony is expected to follow certain ceremonial protocols, which the scholar knew well and executed flawlessly. He was very pleased knowing he was doing everything right. When the master began to pour out the tea, he filled the scholar’s cup with great care, and kept on filling it, until it overflowed onto the table and then onto the floor. The scholar cried out, “Stop! Can’t you see the cup is full? There’s no room for more tea.” The master kept pouring, and replied, “Yes, like your mind, so full you can receive nothing.”

One of the most valuable things I’ve learned from being in positions of leadership over the years is how to proceed on the basis that I don’t know. This approach has opened innumerable doors for me that a need for knowing would have kept closed. I have found this to be true of my work with teenagers at the Nova Scotia Sea School, and equally true, with different methods, of my work with executives and their teams in business.

Teenagers are trying desperately to understand the world around them, but they are not alone in being tormented by what they feel they don’t know. We all know people of every age who need to know it all, and whose need for knowing has a desperate edge. This makes them cling like limpets to the “truth” of whatever they think they know. Paradoxically, this need to know hampers their learning and limits their potential knowledge. They want to proceed only on the basis of already knowing, which makes them difficult to engage in anything new and unknown. An encounter with someone who is confident enough to say, “I don’t know” becomes shocking and disarming. This is good. It creates an opportunity. Once the fortress of knowing is disarmed, we can enter.

To keep the defenses down I rarely give the teenagers in the Sea School crews a straight answer, so that after a while their dependence on me as the “leader” breaks down. They need to feel that in the big picture I am trustworthy, that they are safe with me, but they also need to learn to distrust me and trust themselves, with a self-confidence that doesn’t depend on knowing. Rather than knowing on my terms, it’s better that they don’t know on their own terms, so they are inspired to find their own answers.

The Sea School technique of never giving a straight answer may not be the best approach to take with employees, but the principle is the same. If I am in a position of leadership, those I lead need to feel that I am trustworthy, that we are heading in the right direction. But if trusting me undercuts people’s trust in themselves, we have a problem.

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