Knowing Isn’t a Finish Line: Rethinking Mastery in Leadership

The other day, on the walk from my daughter’s school to the car, we overheard a teenager listing her instruments: “I know how to play piano. I know how to play clarinet…”

My daughter, who’s been studying piano for 5 years, looked up and asked, “What does it mean to know how to play the piano?”

Such a simple question. Such a revealing one.

We say “I know” as if there’s a finish line. But most meaningful skills don’t work that way. Knowledge expands. Context shifts. Our craft (and our abilities) keep evolving.

The Problem with “I Know”

“I know” can quietly close a door. It suggests there’s nothing left to learn, nothing new to consider, no other way to see it. In reality, there’s always a next layer - technique to refine, patterns to notice, blind spots to uncover, context to rethink. 

The language of certainty can make us less curious, less open, less adaptable, and ironically, less connected. That’s not great for leadership or culture or innovation.  

Mastery Is a Moving Target

Think of great cooks, even at a gourmet level, they’re still experimenting. They’re exploring new flavors, new ingredients, new methods, new tools. 

The same is true in music. My mom is a professional pianist and a teacher; she still attends masterclasses, learns from peers, and sharpens her craft. 

Mastery isn’t a certificate. It’s a relationship with learning.

When I worked closely with computer programmers, I watched juniors assume seniors “knew everything.” Senior programmers didn’t. 

What they knew was how to learn - how to teach themselves, spot patterns, test hypotheses, debug thoughtfully, and ask better questions. Those meta-skills matter more than memorized answers, especially in fields where the landscape continuously changes. 

Regulated, reflective leaders cultivate those same muscles - pause, assess, choose the next move wisely.

False Certainty Feels So Good, and Bad

A rigid “I know” posture invites black-and-white thinking: right/wrong, good/bad, in/out. That’s our survival brain craving certainty. 

Under pressure, we tighten around conclusions and stop listening. It’s human, but costly. Teams feel it as defensiveness, one-upmanship, or a rush to fix instead of understand. 

The antidote is nervous-system awareness and choice. It starts by noticing your activation, so you can name it, and then navigate toward a more intentional response.

In my own experiences, taking a posture of “knowing” is an ill-fated attempt to quell my own anxiety or fears. I feel relieved by the false sense of certainty because our brains are wired for prediction and pattern-making. But the illusion doesn’t hold. And as it crumbles, I’m left picking up the pieces as the very thing I was desperately avoiding intensifies. 

From Expert to Co-Creator

When I first started my business, I provided solutions to clients. I felt the pressure to “know” how to solve their problems. And I agonized over the work product I delivered. 

A decade ago I shifted my consulting from “I’ll bring the answers” to “let’s uncover the answers together.” That’s when our proprietary Co-Creating Experiences process was born. A shift I resisted at first because it felt too easy, like I was cheating. 

But the impact was immediate. The transformations were far better than I could have catalyzed as the “knower of all things.”

Clients had more buy-in. Implementation stuck. We moved from performative agreement to shared ownership, because people support what they help create. 

Co-creation isn’t chaos; it’s a craft - container first, clarity second, choreography third. It’s a craft that’s grounded in the simple truth that there’s more going on than any one of us can “know” at any given moment.

Planning Isn’t Knowing

And this truth is not only present in our relationships with others. It’s also part of our relationship with self. We can easily trick ourselves into thinking we know because we crafted a plan to solve a problem or reach a goal.

I’ve seen (and been a) high-performing professional crumble when their well-thought-out plans don’t come to fruition. When deadlines are missed, milestones are not met, and outcomes differ significantly from the initial forecasting spreadsheet. Suddenly, we face feelings of failure.

The illusion of knowing is shattered. And we have a choice. Let our egos take a hit, sink into despair, and beat ourselves up. Or, acknowledge the learning opportunity, and explore the assumptions we had that led to the plan not aligning with reality.

This isn’t to say we should not craft plans. Like co-creating, we must learn to look at planning as an emerging, ongoing process. A series of small experiments to test hypotheses, along with the space to reflect and course correct.

Knowing isn’t a finish line; it’s a posture. Leaders who treat mastery as living practice - who regulate before they respond, who favor discovery over declaration, who design for co-creation, who engage in planning as a continuous process - build cultures where learning (and results) compound. That’s the kind of “knowing” worth pursuing.

The next time you notice the urge to know emerge within you, get curious. What if letting go of knowing enables you to strengthen your muscles of mastery and adaptation?

If you’ve found value in what I wrote here and you want to support me in continuing to create, guide, write, and make space for deeper transformation, I invite you to buy me a tea.

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