The Trap of ‘Smartest Person in the Room’ Leadership

If you’re always the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.

In one of the recent newsletters, I talked about how Heroic Leadership is an addiction and about the outdated belief that leaders must be smarter, faster, and better than everyone else.

If that struck a nerve, here’s another uncomfortable truth: If you’re always the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.

Why This Trap Is So Dangerous

Many leaders unconsciously position themselves as the central authority—the person who has the best answers, makes the toughest calls, and sees the big picture clearer than anyone else.

It feels good. It reinforces status. And it’s rewarded in most corporate cultures.

But here’s the problem:

It breeds dependency – Your team defers to you instead of thinking for themselves.
It stifles innovation – The best ideas rarely come from one brain. They emerge from friction, dialogue, and iteration.
It makes leadership exhausting – You become the bottleneck, working harder than everyone else instead of smarter.

I recently worked with a leadership team at a company that desperately needed change. The CEO admitted:

"I feel like I have to have all the answers. I ask my team for ideas, but in the end, they still look to me to decide."

No surprise—the team had learned to rely on his brain instead of their own.

If leadership is exhausting, if your team isn’t stepping up, if innovation feels stuck—maybe the issue isn’t them.

Maybe it’s the room you’ve created.

The best leaders aren’t the ones with all the answers. They’re the ones who build spaces where the best answers can emerge.

🔹 Can you let go of needing to be the smartest?

🔹 Can you create a culture where leadership is shared, not hoarded?

🔹 Can you step back just enough to let your team step forward?

That’s the shift. That’s what real leadership looks like.

What’s one way you can invite more voices, more ideas, more ownership into the room this week?

Let’s rethink leadership—together.

📩 Join the conversation.

Reply, comment, or share your experience.

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