In my business, I've worked with many brilliant people. Like, world-class, triple digit patents, state of the art, leader in the industry, wrote the RFCs kind of guys. I like to think I'm pretty smart, but I don't hold a candle to them. I've learned to listen very carefully to what they say and not as much as how they say it.
On the flip side, you have to be very careful as to who you expose them to. Sometimes customers or business types don't like being told how wrong they are in explicit and great detail. There is the message and then there is the way you deliver the message. These brilliant types get mad at me because I step in and say "what he really means is blah blah blah" and phrase things in a more palatable way. They go "yeah, that's what I said". But in the first case, the customer is ready to call security to throw us out and in the second case, they are happy as clams. Comes with being a middle child.
