Never be the smartest person in the room
📅 Sun 23 November 2025 at 05:54 GMT
- A counterintuitive but highly effective leadership philosophy
Emergency Medicine is the ultimate team discipline. As an Emergency Physician, it would be impossible for me to deliver the care patients need on my own. Especially in one of the largest Emergency Departments (A&Es) in the country.
When you come to the Emergency Department as a patient, you may not realise it, but your doctor or nurse is the final link in a chain of highly skilled, trained, and motivated doctors, nurses, allied healthcare professionals, managers, and administrators. All of whom bring their own unique competences, experiences, and perspectives. Each individual link is vital for the Emergency Department as a whole to function.
As a team leader, one of my leadership philosophies is that I want to be surrounded by the smartest, best trained, most competent, and most highly motivated colleagues. And I will do whatever it takes to ensure that happens. Not only is that great for our patients, but it also constantly challenges me to be at the top of my game, both from a competitive instinct, but also so that I can remain a credible role model and leader for my team. However, I know that living up to this philosophy can be challenging.
It takes humility to accept that your junior colleague knows more, or is better than you in some aspect. When you see your subordinate behave in a way that you, yourself, can learn a lesson or two from – moments when the student, becomes the teacher. Finding that balance between empowering your team members, while you remain in control and accept responsibility for their actions. High-performing individuals constantly need highly stimulating challenges, otherwise they get bored and under-perform – so you have to always be one step ahead and keep them productively entertained.
– Wait, did you think that being surrounded by prodigies would be easy? It’s not something covered in the standard leadership training!
But these challenges are exactly why I want my team members to always be smarter, more knowledgeable, and better than me. And why I don’t ever want to be the smartest person in the room. Ultimately, and selfishly, it’s better for me as a leader, and it makes my life easier!
This is not a leadership philosophy I invented. You’ll see it talked about a lot on LinkedIn. But a friend explained it to me today in a highly formulaic way which really crystallised my thinking:
“First class people hire first class people;
Second class people hire third class people”
…which means that great leaders surround themselves with great people so that they can all improve and grow, while bad leaders surround themselves with people who are worse than them, so that they can never challenge them.
And that’s A Deeper Thought.
Image credit: Wikipedia.
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Previously, on A Deeper Thought
 | Air Traffic Control (ATC) Principles for Area Leads in the Emergency Department 2 Apr 2026 |
 | Is Trump Serious??? 21 Feb 2026 |
 | “A Roman, a Hellene, and an Abbasid walk into a café…” 3 Feb 2026 |
 | Qaṣr: A tiny word, a big meaning, and an apology 2 Feb 2026 |
 | What My Mechanic Taught Me About Medicine 23 Dec 2025 |
 | Diagnosing a personality 8 Dec 2025 |
 | ChatGPT mistakes: a glitch in the matrix 7 Dec 2025 |
 | I label, therefore I am 6 Dec 2025 |
 | “I am not a donkey, I don’t have a field” 5 Dec 2025 |
 | Perfect is the enemy of done 4 Dec 2025 |
