As leaders, we all reach a point where we are asked to lead teams that may have more domain expertise than we do. As a matter a fact, if we are doing the job right, our teams should develop more domain expertise than we have. This can create an interesting managing/leading environment, especially for early career leaders who feel like the need to have all (or most) of the answers. I think to lead teams with deeper knowledge in the domain than you there are 5 principles you can follow that will aid in your ultimate success. The basic list:
- Hire actual experts
- Give plenty of autonomy
- Ask lots of probing questions
- Challenge assumptions underlying their expertise
- Focus on most efficiently solving issues – not overly complex or overly solved
Hire Actual Experts
While all the points are important, the first is the most critical. Make sure you hire actual experts who know the subject matter deeply and thoroughly. Today, information is readily available to everyone in easier to consume ways than ever before. Why does this matter? Because it can allow someone with a passing knowledge of a topic to appear to be much more knowledgeable on the surface than they really are. It’s easy to fall in love with a well spoken candidate who says all the right things only to find out they had surface level knowledge that they embellished during the interview process. The candidate isn’t a bad person for doing this…heck, they are investing in the interview by trying to learn as much as possible, which is great. But, if you need an expert to solve your problems, the onus is on you as the hiring manager to make sure the candidate truly is an expert. Make sure your interview process both allows the candidate to show off their expertise and questions them enough to validate that it isn’t just memorized information.
Give Plenty of Autonomy
Once you have experts in house and onboarded properly, spend time outlining the challenges you’d like them to solve and then do something that can be really challenging: let them go free and work on solutions. The worst thing you can do is start burdening them with unnecessary constraints, lists of what hasn’t worked for you, or “suggesting” how you’d solve the problem. You’ve hired a validated expert. Let them use that knowledge and experience to look at your challenges from their unique perspective and devise potential solutions. The only guidance I would offer is to create regular checkins on the process so that you can understand their progress, answer their questions, and ultimately do the rest of the things on this list before they proceed too far and potentially have to backtrack significantly.
Ask Lots of Probing Questions
In the regular checkins you have on the expert’s progress, the best thing you can do for you and them is to ask specific, deep probing questions about their understanding of the challenges and the implementation of the solutions. It’s critical that you probe on both of those areas. Far to often we focus on the solutions and don’t realize that we are getting an amazing solution to a problem that didn’t exist. In the early checkins, spend time confirming the depth of understanding on the challenge/problem. Make sure you are on the same page relative to the size and scope of the issue. Once that is confirmed and reconfirmed through multiple conversations/questions, then you can start to probe on the solution. The intent is not to find fault with the expert or their process/decision making; it is to gain understanding of why the solution was chosen and help the expert reflect on their choices to confirm there wasn’t a better option upon further review. Often times, the act of answering your probing questions will lead the expert to reconsider their choices and create new options that weren’t originally on their mind.
Challenge Assumptions Underlying Their Expertise
Every expert gained that title by having deep knowledge and experience in a related field. That experience likely created and crystalized some assumptions in their mind about the area that they have deep expertise. This isn’t inherently good or bad, it just is. With this knowledge, you want to try and tease out underlying assumptions and then challenge them – have the expert confirm that the assumptions they are bringing with them are still valid in your environment. They may be. They may not. Neither is good or bad. It’s just more a chance to open the expert’s mind to the possibility that they may need to unlearn/rethink some of their experience in this new world. Validation is just as powerful and disapproval of an assumption. Either way, both of you can move forward confidently knowing that the assumptions you adopt have been tested and are true in your situation. A mistake here can send you quickly down a path that turns out to be faulty, since an underlying premise could mislead both of you.
Focus on Most Efficiently Solving Issues
This last point is often where you can earn your money as a leader of experts. From my experience, experts often feel the need to prove their expertise in the early stages of working together. This often manifests in overly complex solutions to challenges/issues. While the intention here is good, the execution is not. I would encourage each of you to make sure two things: the solution is the most streamlined it can be and it is only as comprehensive as needed. Far too often, you’ll find an expert who wants a solution that works for every single edge case along with the 80%-90% of cases that are normal. If the 80%-90% solution is enough, then make sure to work with the expert to ensure they don’t spend excess time, energy, and effort coming up with the “perfect” solution when good enough is good enough. Both of you will sleep easier once there is a clear understanding on how far to go on a problem as to not drive the other crazy!
Overall, leading experts is incredibly rewarding as you can conquer problems together that you couldn’t do alone. With the above common sense guidance, you can get the most out of your partnership and also create a lower stress environment for both of you. All win-win situations are good win-wins, if you ask me!
View from the Middle 