In an effort to avoid making a poor impression on management and coworkers, too many people try so hard to look smart that their efforts backfire.
It happens often among new employees, according to Lynn Taylor, a national workplace expert and the author of "Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job."
"People make this mistake in their first 100 days on the job: They try to impress their boss and everybody, including their CEO," Taylor previously told Business Insider. "So they might use fancy language— words they don't understand the meaning of. They ask questions for the sake of asking a question, but they haven't done their homework. They try to sometimes seem like they've come up with the answers to everyone's problems or a solution, when if they had done their homework, they would have seen it's already in place."
A better bet? Stay humble until you really know what you're talking about.