The quiet one who read about it

A family in Alexandria is deciding whether their grandfather should get a hearing aid, and which kind.

Around the table, two things happen at once. The grandson, who spent a week reading about the options and asking a specialist questions, says very little. He is not quite sure, and his uncle is older. The uncle, who has read nothing, has firm views, delivered loudly, about how these devices never work and how a cousin regretted his.

Both are a problem. The family needs what the grandson knows, and he is keeping it to himself because he does not feel entitled to speak. Meanwhile the uncle has decided that confidence will do instead of knowledge, and his certainty fills the room.

The same pattern turns up wherever decisions are made out loud. In the comments under a product. In a neighbourhood argument about a new road. In a family choosing where to send a child. The people who have done the reading tend to defer. The people who have not tend to dominate. Somewhere along the way, holding forth without knowing stopped being embarrassing and started being a kind of identity.

There are two remedies, and they point in opposite directions. Those who know need to say so, even when they are not the most senior or the most certain. And those who want to speak need to find out first, which has never been easier and is still rarely done.

Knowing helps. Saying what you know helps more. Most of what gets better around us gets better when both happen in the same person.