I find such willingness very helpful in many meetings with difficult vocabulary. Instead of nodding to sentences which make no sense to me I like to take the risk and admit that I have no clue what is going on. More often than not I'm not the only person who got lost so it ends up beneficial to the meeting as a whole.
Yeah. Its weird but I find doing this makes people respect you more.
If you ask dumb questions, the person speaking (if they’re any good) will start looking to you to figure out if they’re pitching their language correctly. The other people in the room who didn’t understand will be relieved and quietly thankful of you because they didn’t have to be the ones to ask. And people who understood already are usually way more chill about this sort of thing than you would expect. Especially if you give them the opportunity to explain something in front of everyone. And then thank them for doing so.
I don’t think I fully understand why, but asking dumb questions is often a subtle act of leadership.
> I don’t think I fully understand why, but asking dumb questions is often a subtle act of leadership.
Very much so. It helps establishing an environment with less ego, more helpful people, and people who aren't afraid to learn. It also diminishes feelings of imposter syndrome in other people, by showing that not everyone knows everything.
All of those are things leaders should incentivize.
