It was never meant to be a leadership philosophy. It was a push against the limiting belief that you need to check every box before you’re allowed to level up. You don’t need to know everything today. You just have to be open to learning. That’s a genuinely useful idea.
Somewhere along the way, it got hijacked.
The market got flooded with coaches and “leadership experts” with no real credentials and a lot of confidence in their own authority. They leaned in hard. Fake it till you make it became less about permission to grow and more about permission to perform. Tangle that with ego, which happens fast, and it stops being a tool for personal growth and starts being a liability for everyone around you.
Performing certainty you don’t have isn’t strength. It’s noise. And your team can hear it.
Last week I was working on a proposal to take over an AI product built by another development team. No code access, no visibility into the architecture, a product that wasn’t delivering the results it needed to. I am not a developer. No computer science background whatsoever.
I could have nodded along and hoped nobody asked the hard questions. Instead, I told my team exactly where my edge was. I’d own the methodology, the framing, the structure of the proposal. The technical side — how we’d audit the product, what we’d hypothesize about what’s broken, how we’d price the work — I needed to lean on them for that. I said it plainly.
Spoiler alert: they didn’t panic. They stepped up. They audited the documents, refined the estimates, and sharpened the hypothesis. The proposal got better because I got out of the way of the parts I couldn’t carry.
Surround yourself with smart people
The team you build is the most important decision you make. Smart people who feel safe will carry the parts you can’t.
Say it plainly
Telling your team exactly where your edge is isn’t a confession. It’s an invitation for them to step into the gap.
The team grows. You grow with them.
Normalizing not knowing doesn’t slow the work down. It opens the door for everyone to do their best work.
This is what happens when you’ve surrounded yourself with smart people who feel safe enough to have a voice. They want the chance to prove themselves. They want to put their expertise to use. Normalize not knowing, and you’re not showing weakness. You’re giving them the opening they’ve been waiting for.
The team grows. You grow with them.
Fake it till you make it? Keep it for the days you’re figuring yourself out. The moment you’re leading other people, put it down.