Commentary: We’re wrong about what makes someone ‘smart’

This week, my second grader, Eloise, came home from school and, as I do most days, I asked her what she learned. She said, “I learned that I can count on my fingers, I don’t have to have all the math memorized.” I was ecstatic. When she was in first grade, in spite of the fact that math is a very strong subject for her, she had a lot of anxiety about it, because there were other kids in her class who got to the answer before she did. 

Until this week, I hadn’t realized she’d been operating under the expectation that she had to memorize everything. She was operating under a paradigm that equated intelligence with memorization. Because of that, she wasn’t allowing herself to use her resources, she wasn’t giving herself the necessary repetitions that lead to memorization. She was simply giving herself grief that she couldn’t hold it all in her seven-year-old brain.

I had a related conversation with my four-year-old daughter this week. Cora’s personality is different in many ways from Eloise’s. While she’s equally bright, it expresses differently. Cora has a wicked sense of humor and a real gift for making people smile. She cares significantly less about achievement than her sister, and is always most interested in doing something fun. 

As I talked with Cora about her week at preschool, I shared with her that her teacher thinks she’s pretty smart and is ready for more challenging work. She responded, “It’s not that I’m smart, it’s just that the work we do is easy.” 

Meet the Author

Colleen Cook works full-time as the Director of Operations at Vinyl Marketing in Ashland, where she resides with her husband Mike and three young daughters. She’s an insatiable extrovert who enjoys finding reasons to gather people.

In my work, I often find myself having similar conversations with our employees. When something comes exceptionally easy to them, rather than acknowledge it as a superpower, they’re much more inclined to downplay the difficulty of the skill or, in converse, be confused why it’s not coming as easily to their peers. I’ve done this too: discounting my strengths, while drastically inflating the significance of my weaknesses.

Smart people know their strengths, their weaknesses and use their resources well. It’s not that the smartest among us don’t have weaknesses, it’s that they are familiar with what those weaknesses are and actively seeking resources and adaptations. It’s not that they think their strengths are average, it’s that they recognize where they are exceptional and seek out opportunities to use their powers for good.

If as preschoolers we’re more inclined to downplay our abilities, how does that magnify in adulthood? How does our identity shape around that self-understanding? What if we were truly honest with ourselves about what we bring to the table and gracious with ourselves for what we don’t? Joyful when someone else brings complementary strengths to the table? How much added stress do we give ourselves for not being more [insert weakness here]? Let’s embrace the fullness of what we bring to this one life we live here on Earth and see what that looks like.