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How many times have you been asked by someone at work whether you know about a particular project, are familiar with a specific concept, or know a person? Chances are, you have answered yes to that question a few times when you did not, in fact, know what they were talking about. There are several reasons why people will say the know things they dont. For one thing, there is a desire in conversations to be cooperative with your partner. When they ask a question, the default cooperative answer is usually yes, so you often go with that default. On top of that, it you may feel deficient if youre lacking knowledge or awareness that someone else has. Despite these temptations to overstate what you know, there are good reasons to admit when you lack the information you have been asked about. Opportunities for mentorship Admitting that there is something (or someone) you dont know creates a vulnerability. You have demonstrated a potential weakness to someone else. However, it also opens up a chance for someone to teach you something you dont know. Most colleagues would like to be helpful, and when they know you have a gap in your knowledge they might be willing to teach you. This willingness to admit ignorance to others also enables you to be more honest with yourself. You can’t begin to fill gaps in your knowledge until you do a reasonable inventory of what you do and dont know. This honest appraisal opens you up to the lessons that others may have for you. It may also help you to recognize gaps in your understanding of projects going on at work and people you need to know. All of this is likely to make you more effective in the long run. Building trust Often, you dont want to appear to have a gap in your knowledge, because you believe that will decrease your value in the eyes of others. But merely saying you know something or someone doesn’t have much of an impact on how other people view you. It’s your ability to use knowledge or to engage your social network that provides value. In fact, your willingness to admit what you dont know often increases peoples trust in you. When people know that you are willing to be clear when you dont have knowledge or connections, then they are better able to rely on you for the knowledge you claim. In general, owning your limitations gives other people more confidence in your abilities and your work. Setting an example A true learning organization is one in which people strive to improve their knowledge and skills. When you admit what you dont know, you also open up the opportunity to learn something. It’s a great example for the people around you when you hear about something new, acknowledge that it is new to you, and then go out and find out more. This cycle of admitting a lack of knowledge and getting educated is particularly important for senior leaders in an organization to go through. People across an organization are looking to leaders to set the tone for the way the organization functions. When senior leaders portray themselves as knowing everything, then they are treating knowledge and skill gaps as a weakness rather than an opportunity. That attitude will trickle down in ways that limit the learning of all team members. Bonus: Flip the default on questions If you really want to know what other people know, you should ask your questions differently. Rather than saying, Do you know . . .? which has the cooperative answer yes, start your questions with things like I find a lot of people are confused by, . . . or Something that took me a long time to understand is . . . These phrases create the presumption that the cooperative answer is to admit that you have a gap in your knowledge. This framing of questions increases the likelihood that people will let you know when they dont know something.
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E-Commerce
Youre applying for a job and made it to the next step in the hiring process: the dreaded personality assessment. Few people like to take these testsespecially when a job offer hinges on it. And are these tests even legit? You want to showcase that youre right for the job, and some of the questions seem like no-brainers. For example, if youre asked to assess statements such as I like to learn new skills by choosing from strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree, youll likely choose strongly agree. Others are more nuanced, such as being asked to complete this sentence: When I set goals at work, I choose . . . Objectives I feel confident I can attain Objectives that feel challenging but attainable Objectives that are part of a bigger goal Objectives that would make me feel good to achieve Um . . . all the above? While you can answer questions based on what you think the company wants to hear, doing so comes with significant risks, says Matt Poepsel, vice president of talent optimization for The Predictive Index, a behavioral assessment tool. In psychology circles, we call it impression management, he says. You try to dress your best and show up on time, even if you don’t always do those things. It also extends over to behavioral or personality assessments that employers give. What Happens When You Game Tests Pretending on an assessment sets you up for problems later if you tilt your answers toward what you think the employer might be looking for but theyre the opposite of your true self. Its the ultimate career self-sabotage, says Poepsel. If you actually get the job, that’s almost the worst thing that could happen, he says. Now the types of tasks that they bring to you are going to be for this person that you’re not. When you land a job through falsified test results, you could feel like you must curtail certain parts of your personality that are natural for you, which could cause stress, anxiety, and eventual burnout. In addition, you will need to expend a tremendous amount of energy to do the types of tasks that weren’t a great fit for you in the first place. For example, if you present yourself as detail-oriented and youre not, youll need to bring a level of concentration to your role that’s unnatural to you. When that happens, especially for early career people, imposter syndrome begins to set in, and then performance begins to take a hit, says Poepsel. All of a sudden, you’re having those difficult conversations with your employer, and it’s really on you, because you decided that getting the job was more important than being a great fit for the job. Its like walking around in the wrong shoes, thinking this is what the employer wants me to wear. But wearing shoes that are too tight is not a comfortable way to go through your workday. What Employers Need to Do While its important that candidates answer questions honestly, employers have a responsibility in how they use assessments, too. Their misuse can be detrimental to the company in the long run. Poepsel recommends using a live interview to cross-check a candidates answers. For example, if an employer needs someone detail-oriented for a job, they may look for assessment answers that demonstrate formality and compliance. A behavioral affirming interview question might be, Tell me about a time when you’ve had to bring a tremendous amount of detail orientation to a project that you’re working on. Someone who authentically has these traits should be able to provide a detailed answer to the question. Assessments are just one tool employers can use to find their next great employee, and answering behavior test questions honestly shouldnt necessarily exclude someone from getting a job offer, says Poepsel. Ultimately, the manager owns the gaps, he says. If theyre hiring somebody for a role that’s highly detail-oriented, and youre detail-oriented but not super detail-oriented, that’s totally fine. The manager can provide coaching, training, tooling, and support to overcome that natural gap. We don’t need a 10-out-of-10 person. If somebodys an eight out of 10, they just need different types of resources and support.
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E-Commerce
Just 48 short years ago, movie director George Lucas used the phrase A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away as the opening to the first Star Wars movie, later labeled Episode IV: A New Hope. But at least four important aspects of the Star Wars saga are much closerboth in time and spacethan Lucas was letting on. One, the ability to add blue food coloring to milk, was possible even at the time the first film came out. But in 2024, Star Wars-themed blue milk became periodically available in grocery stores. And we, an environmental health engineer and a civil engineer, know there are at least three more elements of these ancient, distant Lucas stories that might seem like science fiction but are, in fact, science reality. Moisture farming In that first movie, Episode IV, Luke Skywalkers Uncle Owen was a farmer on the planet of Tatooine. He farmed water from air in the middle of a desert. It might sound impossible, but its exactly what experts discussed at the second International Atmospheric Water Harvesting Summit hosted by Arizona State University in March 2025. Each day, a human needs to consume about the equivalent of 0.8 gallons of water (3 liters). With more than 8 billion people living on the planet, that means engineers need to produce nearly 2.6 trillion gallons (10 trillion liters) of clean drinking water every year. Taken globally, rainfall would be enough, but its distributed very unevenlyincluding landing in the oceans, where it immediately becomes too salty to drink safely. Deserts, which cover about one-fifth of the Earths land area, are home to about 1 billion people. Researchers at places such as Berkeley have developed solar-powered systems that can produce clean drinking water from thin air. In general, they use a material that traps water molecules from the air within its structure and then use sunlight to condense that water out of the material and into drinkable liquid. But there is still a ways to go before they are ready for commercial distribution and available to help large numbers of people. Space debris When the second Death Star was destroyed in Return of the Jedi, it made a huge mess, as you would expect when blowing to smithereens an object at least 87 miles across (140 kilometers). But the movies mythology helpfully explains that a hyperspace wormhole briefly opened, scattering much of the falling debris across the galaxy. As best as anyone can tell, a hyperspace wormhole has never appeared near Earth. And even if such a thing existed or happened, humans might not have the technology to chuck all our trash in there anyway. So were left with a whole lot of stuff all around us, including in space. According to the website Orbiting Now, in late April 2025 there were just over 12,000 active satellites orbiting the planet. All in all, the United States and other space-faring nations are trying to keep track of nearly 50,000 objects orbiting Earth. And there are millions of fragments of space debris too small to be observed or tracked. Just as on Earths roads, space vehicles crash into each other if traffic gets too congested. But unlike the debris that falls to the road after an Earth crash, all the bits and pieces that break off in a space crash fly away at speeds of several thousand miles per hour (10,000 to 30,000 kph) and can then hit other satellites or spacecraft that cross their paths. This accumulation of space debris is creating an increasing problem. With more satellites and spacecraft heading to orbit, and more stuff up there moving around that might hit them, space travel is becoming more like flying the Millennium Falcon through an asteroid field every day. Engineers at NASA, the European Space Agency, and other space programs are exploring a variety of technologiesincluding a net, a harpoon, and a laserto remove the more dangerous pieces of space junk and clean up the space environment. The Force itself To most Earth audiences, the Force was a mysterious energy field created by life that binds the galaxy together. That is until 1999, when Episode I: The Phantom Menace revealed that the Force came from midi-chlorians, a microscopic, sentient life form that lives within every living cell. To biologists, midi-chlorians sound suspiciously similar to mtochondria, the powerhouse of our cells. The current working hypothesis is that mitochondria emerged from bacteria that lived within cells of other living things. And mitochondria can communicate with other life forms, including bacteria. There are many different kinds of mitochondria, and medical professionals are learning how to transplant mitochondria from one cell to another just like they transplant organs from one persons body to another. Maybe one day a transplant procedure could help people find the light side of the Force and turn away from the dark side. May the Fourthand the Forcebe with you. Daniel B. Oerther is a professor of environmental health engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology. William Schonberg is a professor of civil engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
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