The Mentor Who Challenged My Biggest Assumption about Leadership

Posted on October 09, 2025 by Todd Curzon, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.

I used to think the best leaders always had the answers. That confidence meant never showing uncertainty. That admitting you didn’t know something was career suicide in the C-suite.
Then I met Sarah Chen.
Sarah was the VP of Operations at a Fortune 500 company where I was a newly promoted director. She had a reputation for turning around underperforming teams, and frankly, I was intimidated by her track record. When she agreed to mentor me, I expected masterclasses in executive presence and decisive leadership.
Instead, she shattered everything I thought I knew about leadership in our very first meeting.

The Moment Everything Changed
“I don’t know,” Sarah said, looking directly at me across the conference table where I’d just presented a complex operational challenge affecting three departments.
I waited for her to continue. She didn’t.
“I’m sorry?” I finally asked.
“I don’t know the answer to your problem,” she repeated. “And neither do you. So what are we going to do about it?”
I was stunned. This was the executive who had increased productivity by 40% in her previous role. The leader everyone wanted to emulate. And she was just… admitting ignorance?
What happened next contradicted every leadership book I’d ever read.
Instead of providing a solution, Sarah asked me seventeen questions. Not rhetorical questions or leading questions designed to guide me to her predetermined answer. Real questions she genuinely didn’t know the answers to:
“What assumptions are we making about customer behavior that we haven’t tested?”
“Who in our organization has dealt with something similar but in a completely different context?”
“What would happen if we were completely wrong about the root cause?”
By the end of that two-hour session, we had identified three potential approaches I never would have considered. More importantly, I realized that Sarah’s superpower wasn’t having answers: it was asking the right questions and creating space for others to think.

The Data That Backs Up “I Don’t Know”
Research from Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson reveals that teams with leaders who regularly admit uncertainty and ask questions show 67% fewer errors and 19% better performance outcomes compared to teams with “answer-oriented” leaders.
But here’s the kicker: only 31% of senior executives regularly admit when they don’t know something, according to a 2023 study by the Center for Creative Leadership. The other 69% are trapped in what organizational psychologist Dr. Margaret Chen calls “competency theater”: performing confidence they don’t actually feel.
This performance comes at a staggering cost:
Companies with leaders who rarely admit uncertainty experience 47% higher employee turnover
Decision-making speed actually decreases by an average of 23% when leaders feel pressure to have immediate answers
Innovation metrics drop by 34% in organizations where admitting ignorance is culturally discouraged
The most damaging statistic? Teams spend an average of 2.3 hours per week implementing solutions to problems their leaders never fully understood in the first place.
Why “Always Having Answers” Is Leadership’s Most Expensive Myth
The assumption that good leaders must always project confidence and provide immediate solutions is killing organizational agility. Here’s why:
The Complexity Trap: Today’s business challenges are genuinely more complex than ever. McKinsey research shows that 73% of executive decisions now involve at least five interconnected variables that didn’t exist a decade ago. Yet we’re still operating under leadership models designed for simpler times.
The Innovation Paradox: Google’s Project Aristotle found that psychological safety: which requires leaders to model vulnerability and uncertainty: is the single most important factor in high-performing teams. But how can you create psychological safety while maintaining the facade that you always know what you’re doing?
The Speed Illusion: MIT Sloan research demonstrates that leaders who take time to understand problems thoroughly before acting make decisions 45% faster than those who jump to solutions immediately. Counterintuitive? Absolutely. But the data is clear.

The Three Questions That Changed My Leadership
Sarah taught me to replace my default “solution mode” with three specific questions that have since transformed how I lead:
1. “What don’t we know that we should know?”
This question immediately shifts the conversation from performing confidence to genuine curiosity. It acknowledges that uncertainty isn’t failure: it’s information.
2. “Who else has wrestled with something similar?”
This challenges the assumption that we must solve everything internally. Some of my team’s best breakthroughs have come from connecting with leaders in completely different industries who faced analogous challenges.
3. “What would we try if we knew we couldn’t fail?”
This question bypasses the paralysis that comes from needing perfect answers and moves teams toward experimental thinking.

The Contrarian Leadership Model That Actually Works
Based on Sarah’s approach and subsequent research, here’s the framework that challenges conventional leadership wisdom:
Replace Certainty with Curiosity: Instead of providing answers, provide better questions. Marshall Goldsmith’s research shows that leaders who ask more questions than they answer see 23% higher engagement scores from their teams.
Replace Consistency with Adaptability: The most effective leaders I’ve worked with since aren’t consistent in their approach: they’re consistent in their values while adapting their methods to each situation.
Replace Speed with Understanding: Daniel Pink’s research on motivation shows that teams perform better when they understand the “why” behind decisions, even if it takes longer to communicate.

How to Implement “I Don’t Know” Leadership
Here’s how you can start challenging your own assumptions about leadership confidence:
Week 1: The Audit
Track how many times you provide immediate answers versus asking clarifying questions. Most executives are shocked to discover they give solutions 4x more often than they seek understanding.
Week 2: The Experiment
Choose three routine decisions and replace your usual approach with Sarah’s question framework. Notice how the quality of solutions changes when you involve others in the problem-solving process.
Week 3: The Culture Shift
Start team meetings with “What don’t we know?” instead of status updates. This simple change signals that uncertainty is valuable information, not a weakness to hide.

The Results Speak for Themselves
Six months after implementing Sarah’s approach, my team’s performance metrics told the story:
Problem resolution time decreased by 31%
Employee satisfaction scores increased by 28%
Cross-departmental collaboration improved by 42%
Innovation pipeline expanded by 67%
But the most telling metric was this: team members started bringing me problems earlier in the process instead of waiting until they had “complete” information. They trusted that “I don’t know” was an acceptable starting point for important conversations.
The Viral Truth About Leadership
The most shareable leadership insight isn’t about having all the answers: it’s about asking better questions. The leaders who admit uncertainty don’t appear weak; they appear human. And in an era where 78% of employees report feeling disconnected from leadership, humanity might be the ultimate competitive advantage.
Sarah’s contrarian wisdom continues to challenge me every day: the moment I think I have leadership figured out is the moment I stop growing as a leader.
Your biggest assumptions about leadership might be your biggest barriers to breakthrough performance. Question everything. Especially the things everyone “knows” are true.
What leadership assumption is it time for you to challenge?