Confusing ignorance and bravado

It’s easy to assume that you’re the only person in the room not understanding what’s going on.

While that can absolutely be the case—for most of my career I’ve worked with incredibly intelligent people with technical abilities far surpassing my own—sometimes you’re simply in the presence of someone who is using jargon as a shield to cover for incompetence.

Once, in meeting with a client my colleague and I sat down to talk through technical details of a complex project. The client spouted off jargon for an hour—all of which I could not understand—and in the debrief later I asked my colleague (someone who was incredibly technically minded) if I’d missed something. I was used to missing much of the technical details, but to understand 0% of it was unusual.

He laughed, and let me know that he hadn’t understood any of it either—because the words being used were nonsensical. They were simply attempts by the client to try and show how smart they were.

Since that moment I’ve been in many more rooms (virtual and in-person) filled with smart people. When I don’t understand something I’ll first look to see if there’s something to learn, or if the words being used have no purpose other than to attempt to make the speaker look knowledgeable.

In the case of the first scenario, there’s always room to grow and push yourself and learn from others. In the case of the second it’s more about learning why someone feels the need to boast, and maybe you can use the opportunity to show them it’s ok to admit not knowing.