Before I chose to pursue a career in technology I came very, very close to pursuing a career in music. I was pretty good in my younger years. I was semi-professional and learning a lot about the industry. One thing I learned was this: you might know about the legacy greats, for example Hendrix, Santana, Slash, Van Halen. And don’t get me wrong, those guitarists are truly incredibly amazing. But I am utterly convinced that hidden away in some random small town venue, or some community band, or even just in someone’s garage or basement, are other guitar players that are just as incredible in their own right. They just never got the opportunity, or didn’t have the luck or happenstance, to succeed. Or maybe they didn’t pursue music professionally.

This is an important lesson because it relates to business and tech as well. The lesson is this: the leaders in your organization, and other organizations, even people that are considered the “greatest leaders, CEOs, or developers/engineers of all time”. This is not to take away from their accomplishments or talents; they may legitimately be very intelligent and hard-working. But are they necessarily any more intelligent and hard-working than some unusually talented line engineer buried away in your org chart somewhere?

(Note that I’m not saying EVERY line engineer tucked away is just as smart as the CEO. What I’m saying is that there MIGHT be a person lower in the organization hierarchy that is just as smart as the CEO.)

Why is this important? Because if you end up in a leadership or senior role in your organization, be aware that there is certainly the possibility that there are people in your organization that are just as smart, if not smarter, than you are, perhaps even on the topics that you are a SME in.

And again, this is not to take away from your talent or hard work. This is just important for you to recognize this and have humility, so when ideas or opinions come up in your organization that you take them seriously, and not just think, “I’m here because I’m smarter than they are, so their opinions don’t really matter.”