The Road Not Taken: There’s No Prize For Being The Smartest Person In The Room

There is a prize, however, for being the person in the room with leadership and communication skills. And that prize is one worth winning.

trophy grabIt’s true. Maybe you’ve noticed that by now. If you are insecure, you might have thought you haven’t received the prize yet because you haven’t yet been in a room where you were the smartest person. That isn’t the case: there is no prize.

Why am I pointing out the obvious? Of course there’s no prize for being the smartest person in the room. Heck, usually when one is the smartest person in the room, nobody else in the room notices. This past week, I had the fortune to work with many intelligent people on a collaborative project. There were several times during these meetings where the smartest people in the room were frustrated, ignored, and resented. Not because they were jerks, not because they were annoying, but because the objectives of the project were not to identify the “smartest” solution, but rather the most effective solution for our circumstances. The “smart” solution would have alienated colleagues and then likely been ignored and dismissed by those alienated colleagues. With that highly likely result, the “smart” solution was not the best solution.

When a lawyer works in a law firm, most of his colleagues are lawyers who all do the same or very similar jobs. Add to that, many lawyers have substantial egos, confidence in their own above-average intelligence, and a healthy competitive spirit. When multiple lawyers are in a room, jockeying for “smartest person” can yield tangible benefits.

When a lawyer goes in-house, he becomes part of a team that is, by nature, more diverse than his pool of colleagues at a law firm. These new corporate colleagues have different experiences, needs, and goals than you as an individual and the legal department as a whole. These needs and experiences need to be accounted for and addressed as part of any collaboration. Being the smartest person in the room doesn’t mean much if the other people in the room feel condescended to, ignored, or even insulted.

Thus, my brilliant colleagues were the smartest people in the room. They knew they were the smartest people in the room. But nobody cared. And nobody cared because it didn’t matter. Their intelligence (and their awareness of their intelligence) was not conducive to reaching a collaborative solution. In fact, their visible frustration may cause them to be excluded from further projects with this team.

Being smart is important. Being smart is what got us through our education and is a necessary element of being an effective lawyer. However, intelligence quickly moves from being a very important factor in your professional success to only one of many elements required to be an effective colleague and leader, not only as an in-house attorney, but in any role in a corporate environment. Moving from the comfortable place of receiving almost immediate deference because of one’s intelligence can be difficult for those who have never had to demonstrate their abilities in other areas, such as effective listening, understanding the needs of others, and management of group dynamics.

There’s no prize for being the smartest person in the room. There is a prize, however, for being the person in the room with leadership and communication skills, but who may not be the smartest person in the room: the prize of effective group dynamics. And that prize is one worth winning.

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Celeste Harrison Forst has practiced in small and mid-sized firms and is now in-house at a large manufacturing and technology company where she receives daily hugs from her colleagues. You can reach Celeste directly at C.harrisonforst@gmail.com.

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