Day five: You are the SAUCE - Expertise
Today in the last of the 5 part series, on you are the SAUCE to your professional success we will review the E, which is expertise.
It is interesting and great that the thing that people tend to focus on the most as it relates to advancing professionally is the last in this series. We spend years getting and education, building our skills, increasing our knowledge and getting training so that we can acquire the expertise needed to get hired and remain credible as well as effective in our jobs. If we want truly become an expert, we must dedicate time to studying, learning from others, being an apprentice and ultimately practicing skills so that they become second nature to us. It is hard work and it takes time but it does pay off.
Expertise is essential to getting your foot in the door on the job and to keep one’s job. You can use expertise to establish yourself as an authority and to get the respect you deserve, so its extreme importance is not to be undervalued. In her book, Executive Presence Sylvia Ann Hewlitt quotes Linda Huber’s comment on expertise and gravitas in a way that perfectly sums up my sentiment. She said, “substance must be the bedrock in order for someone to be taken seriously,” but if you have that depth of experience and those vital (expertise, etc.) skills, gravitas is all that’s between you and that top job! Expertise and experience is the foundation but in order to fulfill your potential professionally, you need more.
We won’t go too much in depth with what gravitas is, since it is not the focus of this post, but I will briefly relay the 6 aspects of gravitas from her book: 1. Confidence & grace under fire, 2. Decisiveness & showing teeth, 3. Integrity & speaking truth to power, 4. Emotional intelligence, 5. Reputation & standing/pedigree, and 6. Vision/charisma. This expertise I believe gives us the inner confidence to know that we know that we know our stuff and that same sense of credibility with others, but it is not enough.
In my decades of working with women, and something I have been guilty of myself in the past, is over emphasizing expertise because it is what we are comfortable with and not challenging ourselves to develop the other skills sooner that requires us to get outside of our comfort zone. Expertise in this way can become a crutch, hindering our further growth and development. When we over rely on our expertise, we hit a glass ceiling and become stuck in our careers.
So how do you know when you are over relying on expertise? Here are a few signs:
People skills such as influence and communication are suffering
A very common sign of this is always getting too much into the weeds and details when communicating to leaders because you have focused on the quantity of information and not context, key points or broad perspective.
When you hide behind the data rather than giving your perspective (often because you are afraid of a reaction or failure)
When you always fall back on expertise to prove yourself, when everyone else already knows that you know (a way some people deal with imposter syndrome and feeling as if they don’t belong at the table)
When you are in a leadership position and you are still focusing on the details rather than focusing on leading your team and helping them go deeper, get smarter and better.
When you focus on giving information while ignoring the opportunity to build connection and deepen relationship with your audience.
It is often easier to hide behind data and information because it can’t reject you, but developing those softer skills is what will accelerate you professionally and round out the rest of your sauce.