The Three Words That Build Credibility
"The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know." — Albert Einstein
You know the moment. You are sitting in a meeting, someone asks you a question, and the room turns to you. You know about half the answer, or maybe a third of it. The space between what you actually know and what you are expected to know feels suddenly enormous, and you are tempted to fill it.
So you try — constructing an answer that sounds confident, maybe pivoting to something you do know, leaning on phrases like "well, broadly speaking" or "what I would say is" to give the impression of fluency, and of course, hoping nobody notices. The truth is that in those moments, when we keep talking past what we know, we are bluffing.
Beneath the bluff is a miscalculation — a quiet, almost reflexive belief that admitting we don't know reduces us. It makes us feel we should have prepared better, paid more attention in that meeting last quarter, read the report more carefully, kept up with the industry, been ready at all times.
And some of that is true. We should prepare. We should pay attention. We should keep up.
But what is also true is that nobody can know everything, and the people who pretend otherwise lose more than they gain — credibility, trust, and the future doors they don't see closing.
Three simple words are almost always the better move: I don't know. The most credible people in any field use them on a regular basis — in meetings, in interviews, in boardrooms, in front of clients, in front of people they very much want to impress. And the room respects them more for it, not less.
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The full version on Substack includes The Playlist — six practical moves with scripts for how to pause before you answer, name the gap cleanly, pair the unknown with what you do know, show your method, follow through on time, and own it when you should have known. Plus this week's B-Side: what I learned about silence when my son went viral.
Leilani M. Brown is the founder and CEO of Giant Steps, LLC. She is the author of Your Next Giant Steps, From Campus to Career, and Your Next Giant Reset: A Career Comeback Guide. She hosts the Giant Steps with Leilani Brown podcastand writes a weekly Substack newsletter for professionals navigating career transitions, leadership challenges, and workplace belonging.
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