The Discipline of Not Pretending

Leadership rooms move fast. Questions come quickly and a five second silent pause can feel like an hour. When the room expects an answer, someone will usually give one… even if the thinking isn’t ready yet.

I was in a meeting recently presenting something I had been working on when I got asked a question that would influence the direction of the work in a meaningful way. The kind of question that, once answered, quietly sets a path in motion.

So I paused for what felt like an hour, then finally, “I don’t know” fell out of my mouth. I was both surprised and relieved. It was the truest thing I had.

Saying that felt difficult because the room was moving quickly. But let’s be real… I felt like I should know. The pause helped me see the reality, that the question deserved more thought than the moment allowed. My answer would carry weight, and once said the room would begin organizing around it.

What I’ve come to notice is that moments like this reveal a quiet dynamic I’ve seen often and don’t particularly like, especially in important leadership rooms.

We reward people who sound certain.

Confidence has a way of moving conversations and decisions forward. A crisp delivery is satisfying. It feels decisive, efficient and smart. All the while, the meeting keeps moving. But is progress really happening? Confidence and clarity are not the same thing.

Watch what happens when someone doesn’t know the answer in a leadership meeting. They rarely say “I don’t know.” Usually they just talk longer and speculate. They might even allude to agreement just to keep the conversation moving. The tell is when they are answering the question next to the question. (And you have to be listening to hear it.)

Eventually something that sounds reasonable lands and the room moves forward on thinking that hasn’t formed at all. This isn’t confidence. It’s risk wearing sunglasses.

Most bad decisions in leadership rooms don’t start with bad intentions. They start with premature answers. We like fast answers and we reward it, but fast answers create direction before thinking does. And once direction appears, organizations tend to follow it when it’s confident and first.

Early in your career, this dynamic matters less. When you’re junior, you’re mostly executing a path that someone else has already decided. There are decisions inside the work, of course, but the direction itself is largely set.

As you become more senior, the work changes. You’re no longer just executing the path, you’re now the one deciding which path exists at all.

This makes the discipline of not pretending matter so much more.

The pressure to pretend never fully goes away. If anything, it increases as the rooms get more senior. As the stakes rise, the expectation to have answers becomes stronger.

It’s kind of ironic because the most experienced leaders understand something important.

Speed in answering is not the goal. Clarity is.

Chiefs of Staff sit in a strange position in leadership rooms. We’re not always the loudest voice, but we’re often the only person watching the dynamic instead of answering the question. We know the leaders and we understand them well enough to read the context behind the conversation.

For us, it’s obvious when someone is answering because they truly know vs when they’re answering because the room expects them to. That vantage point comes with a quiet responsibility.

The most valuable thing we can do is slow the moment down. Not by challenging someone unnecessarily or by inserting ourselves into every conversation. We protect the quality of the decision being made.

The discipline of not pretending is subtle. It doesn’t make you sound impressive in the moment and it rarely earns applause in the room. But over time it builds something far more valuable.

Our teams trust us.

People learn that when you answer, the thinking underneath it is real. They know you won’t manufacture certainty just to keep the room moving.

Leadership isn’t about answering quickly. It’s about protecting the room from false certainty.

And sometimes the most disciplined answer in the room is the simplest one.

“I don’t know yet.”

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