You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room to be a strong leader. In fact, trying to convince everyone that you are might make you a less effective leader. One of the challenges of becoming a school administrator is that suddenly you’re responsible for things you don’t know that much about. Maybe you taught high school PE, and now you’re observing an elementary reading lesson. Maybe you taught chemistry, and now you’re having conversations about special education, grading practices, or elementary math. Maybe you're sitting in a meeting listening to teachers discuss an instructional strategy you’ve never used. You have two choices. You can pretend you know more than you do. Or you can say: “I don’t know much about this. Help me understand.” I think the second response requires more confidence than the first. One principal I interviewed for "The Instructional Leader in You" told me, “You can’t always be the smartest guy in the room.” Exactly. Your teachers don't expect you to know everything. And they probably know when you're pretending. Great leaders are comfortable saying: “I don’t know.” “Tell me more.” “What do you think?” “I need some help understanding this.” “I was wrong about that.” There is vulnerability in those statements. But there is also tremendous strength. Insecure leaders can feel threatened by what they don't know. Secure leaders get curious about it. And perhaps that's one of the great paradoxes of leadership: The more confident you become in who you are, the less you need everyone else to believe you have all the answers. You don't have to be the smartest person in the room. You just need to be humble enough to keep learning from the people who are.

At some point in the near future, you will get a break that you don't really deserve. Someone will cut you some slack when they could have laid down the hammer. When that happens... it will remind you to extend grace to others. We all appreciate grace.