Is there a curse to being an expert?

Transcript

Hi there, it’s Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and here’s the idea that I want to share with you today, and that’s this:

Do you, as an expert, as an author, as a thought leader, suffer from the curse of being an expert?

Let me unpack this a little bit. What do I mean by that? Well, oftentimes, in my experience talking with world-renowned experts and thought leaders and such, I’ll ask them a question, and they just so quickly get to an answer or solve a problem or get to the end, and they don’t think anything of it. It’s just the way they’re wired—it just happens.

And I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow that down. Yeah, I get the outcome. I get what your point of view is and what your perspective is, and actually, it’s brilliant. But let’s pretend that we’re in fourth grade doing math, and I’m the teacher—show your work. How did you get there?

What I mean by this is that experts, because they’ve seen so many similar patterns, so many similar situations to what you’re presenting to them, they’ve got the answer. But part of showing the value that you create for your clients is to be able to show them how you got there—to break down the solution into sort of the Lego pieces.

“Well, here’s one variable I considered. Here’s another thought that I took into account. Here’s the macroeconomic factor. Here’s the impact of the culture of your organization on the situation.”

And I synthesized all these things because they all matter as it relates to whatever the problem is we’re solving. Therefore, I came to that conclusion by actually applying my framework, my model, my methodology to it.

The point of doing it in that way is to move from positioning yourself as just “the person that has all the answers” to that plus “the person that has a teachable framework, system, model, or methodology” that others inside of your organization can embrace to solve problems for themselves.

So, I’d love to hear your thoughts—have you ever felt yourself suffering from being the expert to the curse of the expert?