How to Identify a Smart Person in 3 Minutes

This two-question combo can help you look past the validation-seekers and find the most intelligent thinkers on your team

Photo: Morsa Images/Getty Images

What’s the fastest way to identify the most intelligent people in a group? Start with an easy question. Then ask a complex one.

Say you’re on a Zoom call with your marketing team. You need ideas on how to spend the last unallocated $5,000 of your campaign budget. There are a lot of different directions you can go, so whose ideas do you trust? Shailesh Panthee, a doctor in Nepal, suggests that opening with an easy, straightforward question is a quick way to reveal who’s eager — maybe too eager — to prove themselves.

For example, you could say, “Remind me again, what does CTR stand for?” (CTR means click-through-rate, the percentage of people who click on an element after viewing it. Most people in marketing know the term.) And then sit back and listen. Who’s blurting out the answer?

Overeager responders are often so desperate for brownie points that they forget to consider whether their contribution is even all that valuable and skip the fact-checking and analysis to go straight for the win.

There’s another reason why smart folks might hesitate to answer obvious…