Lots of people are afraid to say "I don't know" in my experience. Although, sometimes people ask me a question where I have to work out in my head what the answer is and it feels weird to sit there in silence for 15 seconds as I do so.
A mentor of mine once told me to never be afraid to say these powerful words: _"I don't get it."_ I've said that in countless meetings and technical discussions, and I've found 2 typical outcomes: The person talking doesn't get it, either; they're just hand-waving. Or, others in the room/discussion also don't get it but were afraid to ask (they often thank me later for speaking up).
I make a point of being forthright when I don't understand something, or am not familiar with what someone's talking about, both at work and among friends. As far as I know it has never hurt me, and I've often had people follow up with sentiments like, "oh thank god, I thought I was just dumb since everyone else seemed to get it".
It's pretty damn uncommon for me to have been the only one in the room who didn't understand, and surprisingly often it turns out some of the others thought they understood, but a little digging prompted by my question or chain of questions reveals they in fact did not, so speaking up helps avoid problems later.
It's worth noting that if you're the only one who spots some problem (or potential/opportunity) with an idea or plan or approach, that can feel a lot like being the only one who's not following ("why is everyone else nodding along? What am I not getting?"), but in fact it means you understand it better than anyone else present and really, really need to say something.
Guessing the right answer in school was always acceptable. Just sitting silently always made the teacher upset. People are trained for ~10 years to just guess/make stuff up when they don't know.
> Guessing the right answer in school was always acceptable. Just sitting silently always made the teacher upset.
Yes. This was problematic. I remember my first semester in grad school taking a (for me) tough course. On a midterm, I didn't know how to answer a question, and I thought it was disrespectful to pretend to solve the problem (random relevant equations I could think of) and waste the grader's time with it.
The professor called me into his office and said "Look, I can't give you points if you write nothing. Next time, write something and you'll probably get some partial credit."
Certainly any time where the work output could potentially harm someone if it's incorrect. Arguably also any time where producing incorrect output or wasting a bunch of time could adversely impact your or a colleague's career. All in all, rather often.
My high school math teacher explicitly designed exams where answers were brief if you recognized the shape of the problem, but you could also just start doing the math and arrive at the answer about 1 page later. It was obvious who understood the problem and who was just stabbing in the dark.
My university CS intro course labs always had an extra "and see if you can do it in O(log n) instead" or such bonus question. The bonus part always "impossible" if you didn't get that a-ha moment.
I think you had bad teachers.. (which is unfortunately much too common)
Unless there's something particularly special going on, presumably you could tell them the truth as it is initially (ie you don't know at that point) and not have that jeopardise dedicating yourself to solving their issue as soon as possible, when you'll give them a final answer.
> Although, sometimes people ask me a question where I have to work out in my head what the answer is and it feels weird to sit there in silence for 15 seconds as I do so.
I've had to train myself to actually respond in this situations "let me think about that for a second". Because although the silence is awkward it is way better than rambling off and getting something wrong or having someone interrupt your train of thought by trying to ask again or saying something else before I've actually had time to think about it. For that last part, I've also found it helps if you make really exaggerated "thinking gestures" (look up with a very quizzical expression on your face, tap your had, stroke your chin, etc.).
> I've also found it helps if you make really exaggerated "thinking gestures" (look up with a very quizzical expression on your face, tap your had, stroke your chin, etc.).
Yup pretty sure this is the simplest answer here. Lots of people just BS on the fly if they're expected to have an immediate answer, but it would do better to keep meetings short if people honestly said IDK
"I don't know" or variations such as "why do you ask?" or "how did you come to that?" (note those are questions in response to a question). In my experience it's increased by an order of magnitude in the last 30 years.
I don't know why that is. I suspect it may be partly being uncomfortable with uncertainty and racing to build an internal map, or having been trained to do so by (real or perceived) unhelpfulness in increasingly automated and disembodied tools.
There is also the phenomenon of perceiving a different purpose for gestures and the act of speaking: does it serve them, or does it serve the audience? Preference or even awareness of this latter issue may be due to old age, life experience, I dunno; seems like people who used to be in the "serves the speaker" camp used to more generally talk about "art" or "expression", and now they talk about "internal truth" and "narrative"; dunno if that means anything or helps.
> and it feels weird to sit there in silence for 15 seconds as I do so.
This is what filler words like "so..", "um", "ah.." are for. They mean "I'm thinking and will respond in a moment". I'll also often start the answer sentence even if I'm still thinking, but very slowly to stretch out the thinking time. "Soo.. if.. the... thing does.. that.. then we have to foobar."
I find myself often explaining that I need to think about something for a moment, and then often coming to the conclusion that I need to think outside of the conversation and telling them that. Because the conversation stream is a drag on the thinking process.
