What People Hear When You Say “I Know”

A Viewpoint on Coachability, Details, and the Leaders Who Shape Us Early

One year for my birthday at Morton’s, my boss Mary handed me a gift bag. Inside was a Food Lover’s Companion, a copy of Windows on the World, a really nice wine key, and a nose hair trimmer. I laughed when I pulled it out. She smiled and said, “Don’t worry, you don’t need it now, but you will one day.” It was classic Mary. Thoughtful, direct, and just a little ahead of where I was.

At the time, I didn’t fully understand what she was giving me. Looking back, it had very little to do with the items themselves. It was her way of reinforcing something she believed deeply. If you want to be great in this business, you have to care about all of it. The knowledge, the tools, the presentation, and the details most people overlook.

Mary had a way of seeing those details and making sure you saw them too.

We wore tuxedos to work every day, and she made sure I understood what that meant. She sent me to a specific dry cleaner and told me exactly how much starch to ask for. My shirt felt like cardboard, but it looked right. And in that environment, how it looked mattered. She believed that standards were not something you talked about occasionally. They were something you lived consistently.

Around that same time, I had a habit I didn’t even realize I had. I said, “I know.” A lot. Especially after I came back from eight weeks of training at another store. I felt confident. I had seen a lot. I thought I had it figured out. So when Mary would explain something, I would respond quickly, almost instinctively, with “I know.”

One day she pulled me aside. “The real learning starts now,” she said. Then she added something that has stayed with me ever since. “Every time you say ‘I know,’ what you’re really saying is ‘stop teaching me.’” It caught me off guard. Here she was, investing time, energy, and attention into helping me get better, and without realizing it, I was shutting her down. Instead of saying thank you or asking her to keep going, I was signaling that I had already learned enough.

“Every time you say ‘I know,’ what you’re really saying is ‘stop teaching me.’”

That moment changed how I listened.

Mary didn’t just focus on the obvious parts of the job. She paid attention to behaviors that most people would ignore. I used to smoke, a terrible habit, and one day she pulled me aside and said, “I know you walk the floor before you go take a break, but every time you step out, it sends a message that you’re not present.” She connected a small, personal habit to a much bigger leadership signal. She was right. I quit smoking on July 1, 2001, and I’ve never picked it back up.

That was the kind of leader she was. She didn’t just correct behavior, she connected it to something bigger.

One of Morton’s core values was that we offer the finest product anytime, anywhere, and at any cost. Mary didn’t just talk about that, she reinforced it constantly. I remember a guest asking me about our jumbo lump crab. It wasn’t a dish I personally cared for, and I said that. Mary overheard me and stepped in, reframing it immediately. “It’s the best crab money can buy.” Same product, completely different message. In that moment, she wasn’t correcting me for the sake of being right. She was teaching me how to represent the standard.

She also made sure I was prepared in ways I didn’t fully appreciate at the time. If I had a tough conversation with a guest coming up, she would remind me to take a mint first. If there was a corporate call, she would tell me to listen more than I talked. “Let others ask the questions. If you have one, we’ll talk about it after.” She was right about that too. Most of the questions I thought would make me sound curious probably would have made me sound unprepared.

Over time, I began to understand what she was really teaching me. The small things are not small. They are the work. And just as importantly, how you receive coaching matters just as much as the coaching itself.

Saying “I know” feels harmless. It feels efficient. It can even feel confident. But more often than not, it lands differently than intended. It signals that you are closed when you think you are open. It suggests that you have already decided you have learned enough.

I was lucky. I had someone early in my career who was willing to call that out, to push me, and to invest in me anyway. And I am glad she got that out of my system early.

Because better leadership, for me, has mostly been the result of better teachers.