Every once in a while, you may find yourself stuck in an odd situation where you don’t know how to respond. These One Minute Manner posts are designed to help you out of those awkward moments!
Today’s Lesson: When to Stop Being a Know-It-All.
You know the type. The girl who keeps piping up knowledge whenever she feels like it’s relevant – even when it’s just useless trivia. The person who thinks they’re the authority on every subject, even when they’re just blatantly wrong. The gung-ho intern who thinks he knows it all, when in fact… he should sit down, zip his mouth and learn something.
Today’s technology makes it extremely easy to share everything you know, whenever you want to. It’s also easy to read up on everything that interests you. The downside to this is that it’s easy to come off as a know-it-all, and not even realize it.
I’m guilty of this. I’ve always been a bit of a know-it-all, spouting random bits of trivia like “Hey, did you know that whenever you execute a google search, their servers generate enough power to boil one cup of water?” See? I just did it. I’ll probably do it again on Twitter later tonight.
While it’s fine and dandy to share what you know, there’s a time and place for it. These bits of information and trivia are great for conversation starters, but they’re not always appropriate. In fact, trivia tidbits can be downright annoying when you’re not playing Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit, or any of those trivia games.
So how do you stop? How do you edit what you say in conversation when the conversation’s moving at a pretty quick pace? If you stop and think for too long, people might think you’re an idiot. If you just say what comes to your mind at the time, you might offend the wrong person.
The trick is to keep your audience in mind. If you know the person you’re conversing with won’t mind your quirky trivia tidbits, then go ahead and spout them off. However, if you’re in a meeting with your superior, don’t make them look bad or make them second guess their choice in hiring you. Sometimes, it’s best to just keep what you know to yourself, or to disseminate information in a diplomatic way.
The only time you should spout knowledge off is if someone asks you for it, or if you’re actually an authority on the issue. Even then, it’s important to keep an open mind when discussing things – just because someone does something a particular way doesn’t mean that they’re doing it the wrong way.
