The Strange Power of the Word “Expert”

A single word can change the way people think, feel and act surprisingly quickly.

In business, one of the most powerful may be “expert.”

I heard an interesting story years ago from someone working at a large global pharmaceutical company.

The company had brought in a man to lead an innovation team. On paper, he was an obvious choice. He had successfully led two genuinely innovative projects at his previous company and had built quite a reputation. He was borderline famous.

He was the innovation expert. 

From the stories I heard, that label seemed to follow him into every discussion like a strong perfume. Nobody needed to mention it. Everyone could smell it. 

Over time, he became something of a gatekeeper for which ideas were worth pursuing. Maybe he felt pressure to live up to his reputation. Maybe he simply became very sure of his own judgment. I don't know.

But the people around him were affected too, in their own individual ways. 

Some deferred immediately. Some became defensive. Some hesitated to speak in ways they hadn’t before. Others sought to challenge the expert and prove him wrong. Still others stopped talking altogether. 

In that pharmaceutical company, the innovation team apparently never accomplished much of note.

There were probably many reasons for that. But I've always wondered how much mental energy in that room was being spent on the actual puzzles they were supposed to be exploring, and how much was being spent reacting to the presence of “the expert.”

None of this means expertise isn't valuable.

Expertise means someone has accumulated a great deal of knowledge, experience and judgment. It doesn't mean they know all the answers. 

Companies have perfectly good reasons for using the word. Externally, expertise builds trust with customers. Internally, though, I think we need a more conscious relationship with the word.

Perhaps the challenge is learning to notice what happens inside each of us when expertise enters the room — including when we are the expert — and not let our first reactions take over. 

After all, innovation is the goal. If anyone already had the answer, there would be no need for discussion in the first place. 

When someone in the room is “the expert,” what happens to you?

#HumanDevelopment #Innovation #Expertise #Leadership #OrganizationalDevelopment #LearningAndDevelopment #CriticalThinking #WorkplaceCulture #BEMi