For most of my career, leaders were rewarded for having the answer. The best boss was the one who had seen it all before, knew the right call and could vet every piece of information that crossed their desk.
That model is breaking.
The all-knowing leader is obsolete
With AI and the pace of change today, no leader can keep up with everything. Brian Glaser, Google's Chief Learning Officer, argues that leaders now add value less as all-knowing experts and more as transparent learners — people who help their teams make sense of fast change and move forward together, even without complete answers.
I'd go further: pretending to know everything is now actively dangerous. When the leader always has the answer, the team stops thinking, stops questioning, and stops telling the leader what they're seeing. The organisation becomes exactly as smart as one person.
Three shifts
1. From expert to sense-maker. Instead of being the source of every answer, block regular time to step back, scan what's changing outside your team, and connect it to your team's priorities. Then share what you're noticing — including what puzzles you.
2. From certainty to honest uncertainty. Use part of your leadership or team meeting to say, plainly: here's what we know, here's what we don't know, and here's how we'll move forward anyway. Practise saying the sentence many leaders find hardest: "I don't have the answer to that yet."
3. From process manager to architect. Look for places where work gets stuck between tools, teams or approvals — and let the people closest to the problem build practical fixes, rather than waiting for a top-down solution.
Why this builds culture
When a leader learns out loud, they give everyone else permission to do the same. Questions become normal. Admitting a gap stops being risky. People start sharing half-formed ideas early, when they're still cheap to change.
That's psychological safety in practice — not as a slogan, but as a behaviour the team sees every week.
A caution from the research on vulnerability: openness lands best when people also see you deliver. Learning out loud is not the same as being unprepared. It's being honest about the edge of what you know — and curious about what lies beyond it.
Try the ritual: Known / Unknown / Next · Related: Competence Earns the Right to Fumble · Crack the Egg
Sources: Your team doesn’t need an all-knowing leader. They need a transparent learner. (Google re:Work). Material from Google re:Work is attributed to rework.withgoogle.com. Google is not affiliated with and does not endorse Rituals of Work.
