The Shortlist: What I've learned about careers

Our best ideas, quick and curated | November 19, 2021

WHAT I’VE LEARNED ABOUT CAREERS

Ryan Davies

Ryan Davies, a senior partner in Washington, DC, helps clients execute large-scale transformations to improve their organizational performance and health. A father of four, he enjoys running, cooking, and trying to get enough sleep.

I often get asked what the most important factor is for a strong career trajectory. I don’t think there’s one right answer—even within, let alone outside of, management consulting. Having a growth mindset and a willingness to view one’s own success as a function of making others successful are both high on the list. But often these days, I’m moved to respond by describing three related qualities: intellectual curiosity, intellectual honesty, and intellectual humility.

Intellectual curiosity is essential to our ability to think outside the box, understand complex issues, and get energy from the problem solving that’s at the core of the work we do. Most of us are intellectually curious, but sometimes the expression of that strength can be inhibited, often by insecurity.

Intellectual honesty is a distinct element of effective problem solving: the responsibility to hold ourselves to the highest standard and exert every effort to make sure we are not biased in our insights and recommendations. I feel lucky to have grown up absorbing this ethos from scientists, ranging from my father’s role modeling to the writings of Richard Feynman. We’d probably all say we are intellectually honest, but it’s another matter to stand up for what we believe when others—especially in positions of power and influence—disagree.

Intellectual humility is pivotal as well. Many people—myself included—see being smart as a core part of their identity, self-worth, and self-confidence. But acting like you are smarter than others, whether or not that’s objectively true, can impede one’s ability to build trust, foster collaboration, and even get to the best answer, despite good intentions.

I started my career with plenty of intellectual confidence and pride—and, in retrospect, my biggest early professional struggles stemmed from this. I still vividly remember walking into my one-year review, expecting to hear how great I was, and instead being told, “You are great at some things, but also have major development areas to address.”

I made progress over the next few years, but in some ways it was superficial. I became attuned to the different things I said or did that conveyed a sense of intellectual superiority, however subtly, and I got better at not doing that. I became a genuinely better listener, more conscious of my tendency to focus on “reloading” in my own mind over what another person was saying. I still made periodic mistakes along those lines, but not to a level that held back my overall growth.

But, to be brutally honest, it’s one thing to avoid acting like you think you are smart in a way that irritates others, and another to truly, fully value their input. Some years later, a classroom exercise memorably opened my eyes to this fact. [Harvard Business School] professor Amy Edmondson, known for her research on “teaming,” was conducting a game for five teams to climb a mountain together in a step-based scenario.

My competitive juices were flowing, and I took charge and guided all of my team’s deliberations closely from the start. I felt pretty good about how it all went. And then the scores came out, and we were second to last. My directive approach had failed to surface multiple important pieces of information at multiple different steps, leading to multiple subpar decisions. What the heck?!

As we debriefed the exercise, I realized that no matter how knowledgeable you are, your best individual answer will never be better than the answer that combines what you know with what others have to add. I’ve found that to be a powerful mantra ever since: more perspectives lead to better insights and better decisions.

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