On asking questions

There was a meeting early on where someone kept referring to something called a "comms matrix." I nodded along for twenty minutes. I had no idea what a comms matrix was.

Afterwards I spent probably forty-five minutes trying to work it out from context and then quietly googling it. It's basically a document that maps out who communicates what to whom and when. I could have asked in thirty seconds.

The reason I didn't ask was the usual one: I didn't want to look like I didn't know something everyone else apparently knew. Which is a completely understandable thing to feel, and also a fairly useless way to operate.

What I've noticed since then is that the people who ask questions in meetings — including questions that might seem obvious — are almost never judged for it. If anything, it signals that they're paying close attention. The people who never ask anything are usually either genuinely ahead of everyone else (rare) or have made a decision that appearing to know things matters more than actually knowing them. That's an expensive trade-off.

I still sometimes catch myself hesitating. Something comes up I'm not sure about and I do the quick calculation — is this too basic, will this make me look like I'm out of my depth. Usually I ask anyway now. Maybe one in ten times it was something I should have known. The other nine times, asking saved me time and usually helped the person next to me who also wasn't sure but also didn't want to ask.

If you're new somewhere, questions are also just a reasonable way to show you're engaged. Silence reads as either total confidence or total absence. Most of the time it's not total confidence.