Lewis Howes: The Know-It-All Mask – Introduction

“Have you ever noticed how people tend to fill the dead time in a conversation or a meeting by rambling on about some random topic? Have you ever watched someone you work with try to impress the people around them by going on a long rant about something you can’t even pronounce? Have you ever seen someone in an important setting suck the air out of the room by making it all about them? They always have a response, they can’t let anything go, and they have to show you how smart they are.”

Excerpt From: Lewis Howes. “The Mask of Masculinity.” iBooks.

Welcome to the Know-It-All Mask!

Not off the top of my head, but I’ve worked with quiet a few people in the past and present who can just ra-ra-ra the world with their impeccability of BS – LOL. It took me a while to think about it, but there were times I would be around individuals and they can talk about just a bunch of bs that would go on and on when I was in the midst of doing something.  Luckily towards the end of my tenures, I stopped talking to these particular beings, resulting in a lot of free-time.

One of my students, who was a brilliant speaker, said to me, “ummm teacher _________ knows a lot.  He knows everything.” Yeah, he knows everything so much that he doesn’t allow you to speak, huh?

Sometimes you do have to just take the seat in the back, as a teacher, and shut the heck up.

Now, I won’t put his name out there, but obviously there are a lot of entrepreneurs who just don’t shut up and listen, even when interviewing men who have amassed over 50 billion USD over their lifetime.  From philanthropists — to Hedgefund leaders — it just always seems that they need to be the center of attention.  We love talking, especially people who know a lot about everything, but there comes a time when you just have to be a listener.

I’ve done 8 podcast interviews, starting from last year, and I really just allow my guests to speak.  That’s the sole purpose of doing the interview…..you asking the questions and getting the best out of them, such as what Larry King does.  Larry King is a superb interviewer because all of his questions are so centered/focused on the person sitting across from him.

One of the funniest instances I had was four years ago.  I had to go to a meeting at a language center where the staff looked at me in more bad ways than one, and the owner of the language center looked down upon me for even more obvious reasons.  Anywho, I sat in a room with three teachers throwing ideas out there for an English camp, and when I came around to give my two cents (after asking to do so), a teacher by the name of Nicole ran all over me and shot me down.  She wanted to do ALL THE TALKING and then later told me that I tried talking too much during the meeting, although I counted 1-2 sentences in the 30-minute session.  She was absolutely one of those people who would run over me from left to right.  From the first day I met her at one of the worst English camps, to this particular one where the commute was much longer.

She was right about one thing.  I wasn’t changing my mindset about Thai women — and was losing fast.  That’s about it.  Having a strong personality like that around is unbelievably draining.

I need to get much better at listening, too.  I get easily distracted, but now I go back to the previous conversation and ask deeper questions.

“It’s like the line in Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho: “That’s what the world is like: People talk as if they know everything, but if you dare to ask a question, they don’t know anything.”
Here’s the thing: If we’re being honest with ourselves, then we’d admit that none of us know anything. I think Coelho would even agree that nobody really knows what the hell they are doing. We’re all just making it up as we go along. ”

Excerpt From: Lewis Howes. “The Mask of Masculinity.” iBooks.

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