As I gained experience and grew into leadership roles, I expected to have more answers and ask fewer questions.
Turns out, the opposite is true.
The more I’ve learned, the more aware I’ve become of the limits of my own knowledge. That’s led to more doubt, more tension, and sometimes, less immediate action. But I’m a better leader and problem solver because of it.
This lesson applies to all leaders and problem solvers. But the stakes might be the highest for those of us who aspire to serve where the need and the impact are greatest.
Like many idealists, I began my career eager to change the world. Armed with education, drive, and a belief in the power of good intentions, I threw myself into solving problems that mattered, especially for vulnerable communities. But I failed… a lot.
Not because I didn’t try. Not because I wasn’t capable.
But because I lacked something essential: humility.
More precisely, I lacked intellectual humility. Think of intellectual humility as recognizing the limits of our own knowledge; that no matter how educated or smart we might be, there are things we don’t, and can’t, know on our own. This becomes especially critical when solving problems involving people. Because we can’t reason our way into understanding people’s lived experiences. And we can’t predict with certainty what will happen when creating something new.
I made far too many mistakes—painful, cringeworthy mistakes—before learning this lesson. I didn’t overestimate my skills; I overestimated how important they were. I didn’t underestimate the scale of the problems; I underestimated how critical the knowledge I lacked was to solving them.
Although I learned it the hard way, I came to understand that intellectual humility isn't just a nice trait, it’s often the missing ingredient in the recipe for transformational change.
Part of what makes intellectual humility so hard to embrace, especially in leadership, is the popular myth of what great leaders should be: lone yet heroic geniuses who know the answers, dismiss dissent, and bring brilliant ideas into existence through sheer force of will. That expectation is everywhere. And when you don’t feel like that person—flawless, fast-thinking, and always right—it’s easy to feel like you’re failing.
Early in my career, I questioned whether humility really mattered. And I behaved accordingly. I wasn’t intentionally dismissive or abrasive—I just gave far too little thought to the importance of the experience of the people I worked with and for.
My first leadership role offers a particularly cringeworthy example: two weeks into the job, I stood up in front of the entire organization and articulated what I saw as the failings of the organization's analytics efforts. The long-tenured analytics lead, whom I had never met, was sitting just a few seats away. Needless to say, our relationship was strained from that point forward. And I missed a great opportunity to learn from someone who knew far more than I did about why things were the way they were.
I was in that role for years and poured in a lot of energy—real, inspired, and unsustainable amounts of it—for marginal impact. The young people I aimed to serve needed transformation. My contribution maxed out at incremental improvement.
That’s the cost of ignoring what we don’t know. It’s not that leaders who lack intellectual humility can’t make a difference. It’s that they fall short of real transformation.
Jim Collins, author of From Good to Great, calls humility the “X-factor” of great leadership. When the goal is to create transformational solutions that improve the human experience, success depends on uncovering what can’t be known in isolation. That begins by admitting we don’t have all the answers.
Discovering the gaps in our understanding is crucial for transformative solutions. Knowing what areas will consistently require external input can act as a guide.
I've realized that developing innovative solutions for societal issues inevitably hinges on two truths that require further investigation:
The first is probably universal. Can anyone be an expert in someone else’s experience? The second is a product of trying to create something that doesn’t exist yet. We have no precedent to rely on.
These realities drive what In Tandem does—and how we do it.
Because we are building something that doesn’t already exist, we routinely confront our inability to predict the future. We embrace the fact that nobody knows the answers upfront. We try, learn, adjust, and adapt. Every idea becomes a hypothesis. Everything we try is an experiment. Admitting we don’t know what will happen is not a weakness—it’s one of our core strengths.
Our other core strength is leaning into the fact that we aren’t experts in others’ experiences. To create value for both our Youth Partners and our partner organizations, we need to understand what problems young people and the organizations that aim to serve them are trying to solve. That involves talking to them. A lot. We ask a lot of questions. If our conversations involve us talking more than listening, we’re doing it wrong. And we co-create everything we build. Our users are our partners in every experiment we run.
Young people are the only experts in their experience. Yet they are rarely engaged in the things that affect them. Programs are created for them, not with them. Decisions are made in rooms where they aren’t present.
In other words, the fields that serve young people—education, technology, healthcare, etc.—are collectively making the same mistake I made in my first leadership role: trying to solve problems without engaging the people who experience them. We are missing the opportunity for transformational change. And the costs of our collective lack of humility are borne by everyone.
We need an ecosystem where adults and organizations have the humility to admit they aren’t experts in young people’s experience.
That’s why In Tandem is co-creating a world where young people have a voice in everything that affects them. We make it safe and easy for organizations to talk to, learn from, and co-create with young people. The better we get at it, the more space there is for young people to participate, and the more likely their experiences are to actually work for them. And when that happens, we all benefit.
If you’re wondering what this looks like beyond words, check out how we’re partnering with students through The Rithm Project to reimagine how technology can foster human connection.
Dave Hersh is the Chief Executive Officer at In Tandem, a nonprofit that makes it easy and safe for organizations to engage with young people to improve the programs, products and services they experience.