How to deal with low IQ people successfully

The Elephant Strategy

Elephants carry immense weight, strength, power, capacity, capability and talents but they rarely hurl their weight around. They are super gentle giants who never brag about themselves to smaller animals nor scare them, intimidate, threaten, or ridicule them. They go their own way without bothering much about them. If they started dealing seriously with every mewing cat, barking dog and hopping rabbit they would become extinct.

An elephant lets a dog be a dog, never becomes a dog himself, yet wins the dog whilst the dog thinks he won.

Hence, avoiding, not engaging, 'not dealing,' and 'let them be as they are, I will be as I am' is their best strategy.

It works perfect not just for high IQ people, but wise, mature, seriously determined, ambitious or focussed people who need to concentrate on their aims without getting distracted, derailed or annoyed.

If you have to deal with Low IQ people, you can, just like an elephant, do the following:

1. Don't discuss with them. Their discussion skills/information/ experience level may be inadequate to fully understand your point. But, here's the thing: they cannot understand you but you can. Imagine an elephant entering into a strength contest with a bunny!
2. Don't argue and don't debate with them. They may not be able to understand your point and both will feel frustrated. Why go down an obvious dead end road?
3. Don't correct them. They may not know if they are wrong (if they are), and may feel affronted if you tell them they are. They will learn in their own time at their own pace and you don't have to feel responsible for their learning.
4. Don't show them logic and reasoning. They may not understand them and feel you are being rude.
5. Don't expect them to see your logic. Everybody has a different perspective. They may be right in theirs.
6. Don't prove your point. Proving point never helps anyone; the least in this situation. Just as the elephant never tries to prove he is very strong or big. People either know this or they don't.
7. Accept everything they say. If someone is not prepared to learn, it is best not to force them and accept their limitation gracefully. Just like dogs bark and they think they have bravely chased the coward elephant away and the elephant lets them think that.
8. Don't advise them. If someone needs advise and knows you are capable of advising they will ask you. Unsolicited advise is usually freely given and rarely respected.
9. Don't give them wisdom. They will probably not take it and even feel insulted, infuriated, disgruntled and degraded about your giving it.
10. Don't criticise them. Criticism is not easy to accept for most of us irrespective of one's IQ range. Even high IQ people have serious problems with being criticised.
11. Don't tell them their fault. Same as above. And besides it is impolite.
12. Praise their folly and stupidity. This should ideally only be reserved for very dumb, irrational, illogical, argumentative people who think they are very smart and everyone else is a fool.
13. Hear them instead of them listening to you. Low IQ people usually have a lot to say and they don't want to hear. They feel happier talking and making others listen to them, rather than listening to others (it's a kind of ego, boasting, feeling important, showing off superiority thing).
14. Let them talk. Most of the times this is wonderfully enough.
15. Tell them/ make them feel you aren't smart- they are. This does the trick beautifully. They immediately relax down and stop feeling threatened by you and stop feeling inferior to you. If it makes you feel bad, think again about the mighty elephant.
16. Let them win. Or let them believe they are winning, profiting, getting advantage.
17. If they think you are a fool, let them. You know you aren't and convincing them is not going to be worth the trouble. Besides, what's the point? The elephant uses his strength when he needs it, but never tries to prove it to anyone, does he?
18. Remember: A good fighter is one who can fight well, but the best fighter is one who can solve the issue without even fighting.
19. Remember: Thinking about your IQ while dealing with other people is not very helpful. There's a popular saying: Intelligence is like your underwear: You have to have it but you don't have to show it.
20. The win-win rule: If you have high IQ use it to learn other people/situations better. If you can understand how low IQ functions, you may be better able to deal with them without problems.

There's much to learn from elephants, but this lesson is by far the best one. It always works and plus makes you a very good person as well!

But that's just my opinion. Thanks for reading!