These people aren’t afraid or ashamed to tell you when they don’t know anything. I’ve had more than one doctor try and fake his way through a conversation when I knew more about a medical condition than he did. When I found a doctor, who said, “I don’t know. I’ll research that.” — I kept that doctor.
They never feel the need to prove to other people how smart they are. They don’t brag about it. Casual acquaintances probably don’t even know. I think this is because they are so secure about their intelligence that it’s a non-issue to them. My father went to Harvard and had a stunning memory. He never used his IQ as a way to make other people feel inferior. People who want to let everyone know how smart they are — yeah, I doubt they are.
Brutally honest
I think a common trap that many people fall under is trying to pretend we understand something that we don’t know while nodding our heads meaninglessly. We do this because we don’t want to appear uninformed and unknowing. (I’m still working to improve on this myself)
I think intelligent people get straight to the point. They say “I don’t understand this, can you explain it to me like I’m 5?”
They could care less about what others perceive their understanding or intelligence to be. What they do care about is catching up and learning so that they can understand in the first place.
Leonardo Da Vinci called it “sfumato” or “smoke.” The idea is that not everything is clear, and the desire to have an answer now can lead someone into error. Intelligent people have patience with difficult, dense, or even ambiguous or vague subjects. Patience is defined as “the ability to endure, ” and in this case, a sign of intelligence is enduring not having a clear, definite answer.
Good listeners
They read and go to talks. A sure sign of intelligence is reading and listening. The average CEO reads 50 books a year. Warren Buffett spends most of his time reading. He’s fond of saying “the more you learn, the more you earn.”
Are consistently curious
They ask questions. I guess they realize that the way you learn things is often to ask.
