Title: Common Sense Isn’t So Common Author: Reyna Monson, President Date: August 31, 2026 Category: Leadership / Team Culture
“I wish they would just use some common sense!”
How many times have you said something like this as a leader?
A True Story
Last Friday someone threw leftover fish tacos into the kitchen trash can. Normally, that wouldn’t be worth mentioning. Unless your office turns the air conditioning up to 80+ degrees on the weekend. Monday morning, we almost couldn’t breathe!
Leaving fish in the garbage over the weekend — maybe common sense isn’t so common?
This fishy example aside, people often make decisions that we (as leaders with years of experience behind us) find unbelievable!
- They said WHAT to the client?
- They left for the job site WITHOUT their most basic tools?
- They thought THIS was a good use of their time?
- How could they not KNOW that?
- It’s just COMMON SENSE!
But is it really?
Common Sense or Lack of Experience?
Is it truly a lack of common sense? Or is it a lack of experience? The things that seem obvious to me today weren’t obvious when I was twenty-two.
Last weekend, I was telling my grandson about a safari I was on in Tanzania when I was twenty-two. It was an amazing experience, but when I look back on it I feel like that blushing emoji with a hand over its face shaking its head.
Things Twenty-Two-Year-Old Me Thought Were Reasonable
- Wanting to walk over to a herd of elephants so I could get a better look.
- Trying to get out of the truck to get close-ups of the cheetahs eating their kill.
- Wandering around by myself and ending up next to a snake that was either very poisonous — or the one pretending to be very poisonous.
Fortunately, I was with people who had way more experience in the African savannah than me who kept me safe.
Looking back now, I can’t believe some of the things I thought were perfectly reasonable. I suspect most of us have stories like that. Luckily someone taught us. Some corrected us. Someone let us make mistakes and learn from them. Somewhere along the way, we forget that.
What we call “common sense” is actually knowledge we have from experiences we forgot we had.
No One Starts Out Knowing
No one starts their career knowing how to handle an angry client. No one instinctively knows how to prioritize work or navigate office politics.
How many times have you walked into a group discussion at work and solved the problem they’ve been struggling with by simply giving them the answer? It’s not that they weren’t smart enough to figure it out by themselves or that they didn’t have enough common sense. It’s because you’ve been there before.
Teaching Is Part of the Job
Leaders must teach what seems obvious to them. That’s literally part of why you are a leader in the first place: to share your experience. And don’t forget that it was hard-won experience. You didn’t always just know the answer.
Teaching these things can be frustrating and exhausting. Not only does it seem obvious and common sense to you, but you have to teach it over and over again — both to new team members and existing ones. Realistically, you will never stop teaching those lessons. Just like the people who taught you.
The Takeaway
So, the next time you find yourself saying “I wish they would just use some common sense!”, take a minute.
Ask yourself whether it’s really common sense… or whether it’s experience.
Leaders don’t expect people to show up with twenty years of experience. They spend twenty years passing theirs on.
Reyna Monson, President