Listening is learning.

Choosing to learn is superior to choosing to be the smartest person in every room you enter.

It's born of our curiosity. How curious are you? To learn and understand things you don't yet know...or understand?

Have you ever stumbled down a rabbit hole to learn something that suddenly jumped onto your radar and it was as though you entered another dimension, a world you didn't even know existed?

If you're super curious it happens to you often. It happens often enough for me to make me realize that my experiences, knowledge, and insights are tremendously narrow. Narrow doesn't mean useless. It means limited.

When I was a high school kid I got a job selling stereo gear. I had never done it before. I knew plenty about the equipment and about what constituted a good system. But I hadn't really sold stuff before. And I had never worked in a retail store. But I was brought up to be polite and I knew how to interact with people. Still, there was an awful lot I didn't know. Imagine teenaged me trying to figure it all out on my own!

Remove the people who showed you the ropes. Remove the people who taught you in school, at home, and on the job.

Talk about living in a matrix. Having to figure everything out without relying on anybody who knows something you don't. What a royal pain that would be. And think about how long everything would take to figure out. Even basic things.

I can't even imagine life without YouTube videos showing us how to do all sorts of things. We're learning home repair, car repair, how to play musical instruments and how to speak a foreign language thanks to complete strangers willing to put videos up on YouTube.

Then why are CEOs, executives, leaders and entrepreneurs sometimes resistant to seek insights and knowledge from others? Especially in areas where they think they've got a pretty good grasp of the subject?

I mean, it's easy to listen to others when we admit we're outside our lane of expertise. I remember being quite young and negotiating my first lease. I was young, but I wasn't stupid. So I hired an attorney who specialized in commercial real estate. Absolutely worth his weight in gold. When you're operating retail companies and you're smart - and I was both at one time ;) - good real estate attorneys can be among your favorite people. Well, it's easy to do that when you know how clueless you are.

But what about when you're not so clueless? Or you don't think you're clueless at all?

Regularly I have a curious conversation. It goes something like this:

Me: "What would you most like to protect yourself from?"

CEO: "Blindspots. I'm fearful of what I may not be seeing."

Me: "What are you currently doing to protect yourself?"

CEO: "I'm not quite sure what to do about it."

I've got grandkids. The youngest will be 4 this summer. The oldest will be 12. Every single one of them knows the answer. I'm working hard to contribute to helping them maintain the quality they naturally have to protect themselves from blind spots.

Questions. These kids ask TONS of questions.

Curiosity. They're obnoxiously curious.

Fearless. They're not bashful to ask any question. Their quest to know trumps any fears they may have to appear foolish. Truth is, except for the two older of my grandkids (about 10 and 12 respectively), that doesn't even cross their mind. Funny how the older kids grow the more intimidated they can be to ask questions that may make them appear foolish. I don't think that's a positive thing!

This week the two oldest grandsons have been attending football camp at a nearby high school, conducted by the high school football coaches. It's about 2 hours every morning.