Subtle Signs You’re Being Held Back

Support vs Validation: Are You Being Challenged Enough?

If nobody around you challenges you, pushes you, questions you, or raises your standards…

are you really supported?

Or are you just comfortable?

In this episode, I talk about the quote:

“If you’re always the smartest person in the room, you built the wrong room.”

But this episode is not really about intelligence.

It is about environment.

The people you surround yourself with — professionally and personally — shape your ambition, your standards, your habits, and your growth.

Your team.
 Your friends.
 Your relationships.
 Your mentors.
 Your training partners.
 The people you ask for advice.
 The people you complain to.

They are not neutral.

They are either raising your standard, keeping you still, or quietly pulling you backwards.

I explore the difference between genuine support and easy validation, and why the right people do not just protect your feelings — they protect your future.

Because comfort can feel like loyalty.

But sometimes, the wrong room is not supporting you.

 It is protecting you from growth. 

Standout Quote

“The wrong room will protect your ego. The right room will protect your future.”

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to The Way I See It. Short thoughts on work, life and the decisions in between and why we tend to overcomplicate all three. Straight from the front line of modern business, grab a coffee, grab a pad, and let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of The Way I See It. We're on episode 6. Are you the smartest person in the room? So if you're always the smartest person in the room, I feel like ultimately you've built the wrong room. But the deeper version reads like if nobody around you challenges you, disagrees with you, pushes you, questions you, or raises your standards, you might not be surrounded by support, you might be surrounded by comfort. And comfort feels good, but it doesn't always make you better. And this to me, I suppose a little bit more of a personal one because it was always a suppose a quote or guidance or something that always stuck for me when I first started in my sales career. And I don't have many little anecdotes or key metaphors, but this is something that I've tried to build my circle, both personally and professionally. And in my opinion, it's been bulletproof. So if you are always the smartest person in the room, you've not necessarily won. You've potentially just built the wrong room. And I think this is one of the quotes that sounds a bit more like a motivational wallpaper at first, but one of those things that you hear early on in your career and you think, yep, fair enough. Somewhat cliche, but it is what it is. However, if you are constantly the most ambitious person, the most prepared person, the most commercially aware person, the most disciplined person, or the only one asking difficult questions, you're not going to stay short forever. Eventually the room will start to lower you, or you'll start to lower yourself to match the room. And I think this applies to business, but I also think it applies personally with friendship groups, relationships, training partners. Um there's the people you speak to every week, the people you get advice from, the people you complain to, the people you celebrate with. Because if no one around you challenges you, you might just think you've you've built a really supportive circle. But sometimes what you've really built is a comfortable one. And there's a big difference between the two. So I think a lot of people say they want growth, they want to become better, they want to earn more, they want to build something, they want a bigger career, they want better opportunities. But then they surround themselves with people who never really challenge them. So people who agree with everything, people who make excuses with them, people who validate an easy option, people who say, Yeah, you're right, even when you're probably not. And it becomes dangerous uh in a really subtle way because sometimes the things you need most are not necessarily encouragement. It's sometimes to be challenged, it's sometimes someone saying, Are you sure that's the real reason? Are you actually working hard enough? Is that person really the problem? Are you avoiding a difficult conversation? Are you blaming the market when the activity's poor? Are you saying you want more but behaving like someone who's comfortable? And it's it's uncomfortable to hear, but it's normally where growth starts. And I think this is where the smartest person room problem comes in because when you are the strongest voice in the room, you stop being sharpened by the room. And I guess I suppose I guess you can have multiple rooms. So I'm not telling everyone to evaluate, kind of yeah, evaluate and fire off all your friends, but I'm talking about evaluating and starting to take stock of what and who is around you and who's influencing you. But personally, say it's something that I heard early in my career, can't really remember exactly who said it to me, it could have been a manager, it could have been someone more senior, or it could have genuinely just been one of those lines that gets passed around in the sales environment. But it always stuck with me. And I just feel that if you are the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room, or you're at the wrong table, or however you want to say it. And I've always taken that quite personally and not in the sense of intelligence, because I don't think it's really about being the most intelligent person in the room. It's about standards, it's about ambition, it's about exposure, and it's about being around people who make you think bigger. So coming from a relatively small town in the north of England, it's easy to find comfort in the routine and comfort in your surroundings. There's almost that big fish, small pond analogy that somewhat rings truth. I've always tried, both personally and professionally, to be around people who would make me feel slightly stretched, people who know things that I don't know, people who've done things that I've not done, people who are further ahead in business, people who are further ahead with money, people who are more disciplined, who train harder, more emotionally balanced, better at communicating, because those people expose gaps. And that's not always comfortable, but it's always valuable. So the wrong people make you feel impressive and you get that dopamine hit by feeling validated, but the right pay the right people make you feel aware. Aware of what you don't know, of what aware of where you're still soft, aware of where you're potentially coasting, aware of where you need to level up. And I think it's one of the biggest differences people who actually grow versus people who talk about growth. Now, when I first started in sales, it's very easy to compare yourself to the wrong people. You look around and think, well, I'm doing well because I'm making more phone calls, I'm bringing in more leads, I'm maybe more confident on the phone, I've maybe had a better month than the person next to me. Um but the issue is if you only compare yourself to the people beside you, you can become comfortable very quickly and you start measuring yourself against the immediate room, not against the market, not against the best people in the industry, not against the person who's five years ahead of you, not against the version of yourself you're supposed to become. And that's where your standard can quietly drop because you you start to coast. And because if you're number one in a weak room, you can convince yourself you're further ahead than you actually are. And that's why I've always found it valuable to speak to people above my level and above their level, senior salespeople, business owners, top billers, CEOs, etc. Because people who are operating with that level of commercial maturity that I didn't necessarily possess at that time, they showed me the gaps. They showed me where I was going wrong, where I needed to sharpen up. And those people typically don't have a problem telling you that as well. And the gap's useful to know, and the gap stops you getting arrogant and it gives you something to chase and it keeps you honest. And honesty is one of the best things you can have around you people to keep you honest. I suppose a second example would be starting the business. It it kind of almost becomes more obvious because when you're employed, there's often a structure around you a manager, a team, assistant, targets, reviews, internal pressures. But when you build your own business, especially early on, you have to create your own standards, you have to be careful with who you surround yourself, who you go into business with. Um, people can say, listen, you mean you're doing something that a lot of people in your group might not have done yet. So it's amazing. You're smashing it, you're so busy, you've got loads going on. And that support's great because you need people to believe in you, but you also need people who ask the better difficult questions like here's like, how's the activity going for the business? Is the pipeline real or is it hopeful? Are you spending time on the right things, the right clients? Are you being honest about cash flow? Are you building a company or just creating yourself a job? Are you making decisions based on strategy or on emotion? So they're not always fun conversations to have, but they're always the ones that matter and the ones that can help you. Because when you start something yourself, your own blind spots can become the business's blind spots. Your avoidance becomes the business's avoidance, your personal lack of discipline becomes the business's lack of discipline, and your ceiling becomes the company's ceiling. And that's important because if you're not if you don't bring people, advisors, clients, partners, friends into the world who can challenge you, challenge your thinking, you end up building something limited by your own perspective. And none of us are good enough to be the only perspective in the room. And then let's go to the kind of friendship groups. And this is where I think it becomes even more relatable because it's not just about business, it extends to our friendship groups and who we surround ourselves with. So for me, I I think that both can be linked. I was toying with the idea of setting up the company um kind of 15, 16 months ago, and I got offered a really interesting directorship in Vietnam where the financials were great, new adventure, new place somewhere I'd not been before, reporting into the C-suite team, being responsible for the whole PL and everything like that. And I went for coffee with three of the girls, and they all immediately turned the nerves up to this. And they almost just wanted me to go and be better and create my own path. And they'd seen kind of the obstacles that I'd had and and and what I had to deal with, and ultimately just wanted me to go and be great on my own. And that's ultimately led to where I've been or where I am now 16 months further along. And it was great advice, but it's tough advice for them when I was excited about a position to talk to them about over coffee and they flipped it into almost, well, that's the negative, because we think you should just do this. And I think people underestimate how much their environment shapes them. So if you are around people who constantly complain, you start seeing complaints everywhere. If you're around people who blame everyone else, you start to justify the blame. If you're around people who avoid responsibility, you start becoming more comfortable avoiding it too. And if you're around people who laugh at ambition, you eventually start shrinking your ambition so you don't look different. And sometimes the problem's not that your friends are bad people, they're they're probably great people, they care about you, they might be funny, loyal, kind, and great company. And you know, you can't take that for granted. But they might not challenge the part of you that wants to grow, and that's okay. And that's where it gets difficult because not every friendship in your life has to revolve around ambition. Not every friend needs to be a business mentor, it would be exhausting. Not every dinner that you go to needs to turn into a quarterly performance review, but you need to have people around you who raise your standard because some people who make you think, who call you out, who inspire you, who take risks, who give unsolicited advice, sometimes overstep, people who are unapologetically themselves but say with good intentions. And to be fair, I've just listed off probably all of my traits, and I wonder if my friendship group actually thanked me for how I am with them. But the right people challenge you without belittling you, and the wrong people either flatter you or diminish you, and neither helps. So, probably one of the main takeaways from the episode: there's a big difference between support and validation. Support sounds like, I believe in you, but I think you're avoiding the hard bit. Validation sounds like, yeah, you're right, it's kind of everyone else's fault or issue. Support sounds like you can do better than this. Validation sounds like, yeah, you're doing fine as you are. Support, that decision does not match what you said you wanted. Validation, whatever makes you feel comfortable. And this matters because a lot of people think they want support, but they actually seek validation. So they want someone to agree with a version of events that protects them. They want someone to confirm an excuse, they want people to make an easy option feel like it's feel like a sensible one. But the people in your life do not just protect your feelings, they also protect your future. And sometimes that means telling you the truth. And I think that this is where I would land the episode because it's not really about intelligence, it's not about walking into every room and asking, Am I the smartest person here? That's the wrong way to look at it. It's about asking, is this room making me better? That's the real question. Because the people around you are not neutral, your environment's not neutral, and the conversations you keep having are not neutral. They're either raising you, keeping you still, quietly pulling you backwards. Most of the time, it's not dramatic to see. It's it's slowly, but you become accepting of weaker standards, just if justifying bad habits are easier, avoiding difficult conversations, start the blame game, you start repeating the same frustrations because everyone around everyone around you is agreeing, it starts to feel normal. And that's why you have to evaluate the room and not from a place of arrogance, not from a place of thinking you know best, but from a place of honesty. Who actually challenges you, who actually makes you think differently, who actually calls you out, who helps you raise your standards, who wants you to do better. There's always that line that, you know, sometimes people want you to do good, but not better than them. And I've experienced that so many times along the way, and it's super, super dangerous to just let that slide. So after this episode, the takeaway is relatively simple. Audit your room, look at your professional room, might be your team, your business, your colleagues, your clients, any mentors you have, the people you learn from, then look at your personal room, your friends, your relationships, your training partners, the people you speak to when things get difficult, and the people you go to for advice. And just ask honestly, do these people make me feel better? Do they challenge me properly? Do they tell me the truth? Do they raise the standard? Or do they just make a comfortable version of me feel justified? It might so it could also mean you've built a room that protects you from growth, and it could be a you problem. So the goal is not to surround yourself with people who criticize you. That's not the message. You do not need constant negativity. You don't need people picking holes in everything you do. You don't need every friendship to become a performance with you, but you just need people in your life who are strong enough, honest enough, and secure enough to tell you the truth. And that people will support you without agreeing with everything you say or do. And that's the room you want because the wrong room will protect your ego, the right room will protect your future. That's the way I see it. If it resonated, share it with someone who wants to hear it.