Be Smart, Play Dumb

The following chapter is from Speak Easy: How to Be Articulate, Assertive, and Audacious Around People

Dumbing down may seem like a tall order for someone who is smart. It shouldn’t be. Dumbing down means to simplify the message.

Truly intelligent people don’t need to constantly make others aware of how smart they are. It’s because intelligence and communication are a lot like searching for things on Google.

If I go on Google looking for a recipe for chicken biryani, then that’s what I expect to be outputted in the search engine.

Imagine if Google gets cute with it and gives other recipes in addition to the chicken biryani. Noodles, meatloaf, Shepherd’s pie etc.

Great Google, I’m happy you have all this other information. But please simplify for me. Give me the output that I initially requested!

Communication works a lot like that.

Give people their chicken biryani, rather than all the unneeded recipes.

It’s tough to do this when you are a smart individual. You’ve been working so hard to build yourself up and create your value. Every last bit of you wants to share how smart you are with others. Is that so wrong?

It’s not wrong, however, it’s not strategic either.

Did you know people love breaking the news to other people? They want to be the first to share an insight with someone else.

You know how annoying it is when they finally have some great information locked and loaded to share, and the other person they want to share it with is like, ‘I already heard that.’

It’s very annoying!

On the other hand, what’s the person who actually did hear that information to do? Act like they didn’t hear?

Every now and then, yes.

Pretend like you didn’t hear the news. Let them feel the empowering emotions. Then allow them to attach those empowering feelings to you. There, you just became more charismatic by showing restraint and barely saying a word.

That restraint is what’s needed to ‘play dumb.’ You’re not acting like a jackass by any means. Just not being pompous either.

Great communicators are borderline genius’s not only due to their book smarts, but their application of the street smarts.

Both are required.

My philosophy is to never get fancy with it.

• Don’t use 50 words when you could have used 5.
• Don’t use high school words when you could have used kindergarten words.
• Don’t sound smarter than you need to.

Competence speaks for itself.

Allow your ideas to be packaged with utter simplicity and others can’t help but listen to you.

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– ArmaniTalks