Risk Assessment

You may have heard the old expression there’s no such thing as a dumb question or bad question.

Technically speaking that’s not true.

It is possible to ask a stupid question and people laugh at you and think you’re stupid.

So I’m not going to tell you that there’s zero risk in asking questions or speaking up at a meeting but you have to weigh that against the other possible negative outcomes from you not saying anything.

Now it’s been my experience that people actually listening to someone ask a question thinking oh my gosh that’s so stupid this person is an idiot.

That’s relatively rare.

And yet when managers and others are sizing up a group a team a bunch of executives and figuring out who’s an executive who really has leadership potential who’s going to rise further and further who’s going to be the CEO.

People are doing that consciously and unconsciously and every meeting based in part on who’s speaking and who isn’t.

And those who never speak out run a very high risk of being perceived as someone not really cut out for leadership potential.

Someone who should sort of stay where they are.

Folks that’s a real risk.

So when you’re weighing risk you can’t simply do it in an unfair way and focus exclusively on the risk of saying something stupid.

You have to really look at the risk of being seen quiet uninteresting unintelligent nothing to add no real insights no intellectual leadership.

Those are all very real risk you face every single time you don’t speak up at a meeting to either add your insights give some additional thoughts or to ask insightful questions so please let’s have an honest risk assessment in my view the risk of asking a question that people think is stupid is relatively low the risk of staying silent is quite high.