10 ways you know you’re with smart people

1. They don’t talk as much as you, because they know they got smart by listening.

2.
They know lots of things other than what they’re specialised in. Theirs
is the gift of a broad mind, constantly fed with the stimulant of being
interested in what everyone else is doing.

3. They juggle home,
work and personal interests with dexterity and never fall back on the
tired old refrain about “work life balance”. And when they’re juggling,
they somehow manage to seem 100% engaged with what they’re doing, on all
fronts simultaneously, even though you know they’re taking appropriate
steps behind the scenes to make sure their lives are perfectly, serenely
balanced.

4. They probably do social media. Not always, but
probably. It is not only another chance to listen, but one they use to
ensure they can feed their brains with things they otherwise wouldn’t
have come across.

5. Even when things go very badly wrong,
they’ll be smiling. Smart people never get ruffled because their smart
brains present them with alternatives faster than the bad stuff can
happen.

6. They know they are usually the smartest person in the
room, but they don’t spend their time dwelling on that. Instead, they
take it as a personal challenge to see if they can make everyone else
the smartest person in the room too.

7. If they are managers,
they will make every effort to get people smarter, more connected and
more popular than them in their teams. They’re not threatened because
they know that smartness is synergistic. They also make sure that their
smart people get to look smarter than them for the same reason.

8.
They have hidden skills that never get rolled out until they’re needed.
They don’t have any need to show their full capabilities for reasons of
proving they’re better than others. 

9. They may or may not
have expensive educations. You’d never know, just by being with them
unless you had their CV in front of you.

10. They never, ever, under any circumstances, make you
look stupid, even though it would be easy to do so. They’ve learnt
through bitted experience that the only thing that happens when you make
someone look bad is you look bad yourself.