Do you put pressure on yourself to always have the answers? You’re not alone if you do. Many of the managers and leaders I work with do this. Here’s the thing, though, you can’t know everything about everything. It’s impossible. Not only that, it creates a culture where all roads lead to you and that sounds exhausting.
In this article, you’ll learn:
- The impact this behaviour has on you and your team
- The benefit of not always having the answers
- Five tips to help you become more comfortable with not having the answers
The impact of needing to have the answers all the time
- If you set yourself up as the person who always has the answers, then you stop your team being self-sufficient and problem-solving issues themselves. As an article in The Leadership Quarterly suggests, the idea of the hero leader who solves and answers everything, who saves the day, is outdated.
- You are in danger of getting things wrong. If you bluff an answer, for the sake of having an answer to give, you make yourself and your team vulnerable. In extreme cases, people can get hurt. Just check out Margaret Heffernan’s excellent book, Wilful Blindness.
- You might burnout. If you are the one who always needs to answer and solve everything that is exhausting. In addition, if you’re a perfectionist needing things to be right all the time, then that extra pressure can make things feel a lot worse when you don’t have the answer or you fumble an answer.
- You create a team culture of overreliance on you, as the leader, and you can become a bottleneck. Not only does this make your team vulnerable, if something were to happen to you, but it makes them less creative and innovative.
The benefit of not always having the answers
As one study found, when leaders behave humbly, employees copy this behaviour which can have a positive effect on team performance. Humble behaviour includes admitting mistakes, admitting when you don’t know, sharing credit, and being open to others’ ideas. It seems an antidote to being the hero leader, who always has an answer, is to be a humble leader.
5 tips to help you become comfortable with not always knowing
- Keep a ‘Things I don’t know’ notebook
Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize winning physicist, was an exceptional learner. His secret? He kept a notebook which he called ‘Notebook of things I don’t know about’. If someone like Feynman can have the humility to acknowledge what he didn’t know, using this as the basis for improvement, then there’s no reason why the rest of us can’t do the same.
This is something I used when I took over a role heading up an IT function, when I worked in local government. I was a psychologist, previously working in organisational development, now heading up a team of technologists. I didn’t have a clue about a lot of things which was a big issue for me as I’m a recovering perfectionist and I also like to be seen as the expert. This situation pushed me way out of my comfort zone as a leader. One thing I had no choice but to do was to ask questions – “what does that mean?”, “can you explain that more simply?” The other was my own version of ‘things I don’t know’. I created a spreadsheet of all the acronyms and technological terms and would note them down and then go and find out about them. I’d do this by asking someone who knew or researching online.
2. Normalise reflecting on ‘things we don’t know’ in your team
The Rumsfeld matrix comes from a concept from former US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. There are four categories:
- The Known-Knowns – Things we aware of and that weunderstand.
- The Unknown-Knowns – Things we understand but are not aware of.
- The Unknown-Unknowns – Things we are not aware of and do not understand.
- The Known-Unknowns – Things we are aware of but do not understand.
In her book, Successful Change Communication, Rachel Miller has created an example based around an organisational restructure. If ever there is a time when leaders are asked for things they don’t have answers to, it’s during change. Here are a couple of the examples Rachel gives using part of the Rumsfeld Matrix:
| Known Knowns | Known Unknowns |
| There will be job losses | How many jobs will be lost and when |
| All countries will be impacted by job losses | If it’s an even split across geographies |
Excerpt from Successful Change Communication, by Rachel Miller (p.175).
3. Ask more questions
In my experience, the best leaders are curious and ask questions to try and get a better understanding. When you don’t ask questions and try to have the answers all the time, this signals that curiosity and questions aren’t part of the culture.
Next time you’re tempted to bluff an answer, take a pause. Here are some questions you could ask instead:
- What do we already know?
- Who else have you asked?
- What have you already tried to resolve the issue?
4. Reverse the hierarchy
If you are meeting to discuss an important issue and you don’t have the right people in the room then it makes sense that people will look to you, as the person leading. This is amplified in hierarchical and traditional organisations.
It can be unhelpful to have a meeting bloated with senior management, particularly if they simply don’t have sufficient knowledge or experience to make an informed decision. This has the danger of making your organisation, your team, and possibly you, outdated. Ask yourself what expertise and knowledge you need in the room in order to have a productive conversation and to make an informed decision. This is one of the most strategic things you can do, in this kind of situation.
In their book, Rewire or Retire: AI for leaders, Marco Ryan and Alistair Lechler talk about the importance of upending hierarchy, particularly in this age of digital disruption. They say, “In traditional models, expertise and authority flowed downward from leaders to teams. In the AI era, domain expertise often resides with specialists, while leaders must create the conditions for this expertise to flourish” (p.25).
5. Role model saying “I don’t know”
As the person leading a team, you are one of the most powerful factors in the team’s culture. If you want your team to feel psychologically safe, where people ask questions and admit when they don’t know something, then it starts with you.
In The Fearless Organization, Professor Amy Edmondson suggests one of the three ways that leaders can create psychologically safe cultures is to demonstrate fallibility and humility. There are three ways to do this:
- Admitting you don’t have all the answers
- Actively inviting others to contribute their ideas
- Asking good questions and listening to understand
Follow up your “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure” with a question. For example, “do we know anyone else who might know?” or “where else could you get the information you need?”
My final question to you is, which of these five tips are you going to try out first?
Post author: Dr Hayley Lewis. First published on the HALO Psychology website 15 June 2026.
For more insights on management, performance, and professional growth, subscribe to my monthly email newsletter.
STUDIES REFERENCED