The fastest way to lose credibility is to treat your first thought as your final answer. You’re in a meeting, someone asks a complex question, and your brain immediately serves up a response. It feels right. It sounds confident. And it’s probably wrong. The nightmare isn’t that you had the thought—it’s that you believed it without scrutiny and shared it. Professionals who confuse thinking with knowing make decisions on hunches, give advice based on assumptions, and wonder why things blow up later.
Your initial reaction to a problem is rarely your best analysis. That gut feeling about what a contract means, what a client needs, or how to handle a personnel issue is just your brain’s rough draft. It’s working with whatever information is quickest to access, which usually means stereotypes, recent experiences, and emotional associations. Smart professionals recognize this and instead say something such as: “Let me think about that and get back to you” or “Let me research the issue and get back to you.” This isn’t weakness. It’s the difference between being responsive and being reckless.
The trap is believing that certainty equals competence. You think clients want immediate answers, so you provide them—even when you’re uncertain. You think colleagues expect decisiveness, so you commit to positions you haven’t fully thought through. But the reality is that people respect professionals who verify before they assert. Telling someone you need to research an issue or consider it more carefully doesn’t diminish your authority. It demonstrates you understand the stakes and won’t gamble with their interests to protect your ego.
The antidote is simple but uncomfortable: treat your thoughts as drafts requiring revision. When you feel certain, get curious. The best professionals build time into their process to challenge their own thinking before they present it as advice. Not everything that crosses your mind deserves to be trusted or shared. Stop confusing what you think with what you know.
As always, this post and others can be found on my blog, Business Law Guy.