A few nights ago I was chatting with someone about blogging and Twitter.
And he asked me: “Are you a social media expert?”
I panicked and mentally back pedaled.
Uh oh! I stepped out of bounds and was talking about something I have no right to talk about. I was worried the police of Social Media Expertise might suddenly jump out of the woodwork with a pop quiz about <insert social media stuff I know nothing about here>
I quickly deferred: “No. No I’m not.” (Then I breathed a sigh of relief as the Credentialing Police retreated.)
But hang on a second…
What exactly is an expert? And who defines it?
Dictionary.com defines an expert as: “a person who has special skill or knowledge in some particular field.”
When I hear the word “expert” – I immediately think of the people who know more than I do. In this case, people like Chris Brogan and Scott Stratten.
And the person I was talking to would not have heard of either of these two people.
I’m not sure he even knew exactly what “social media” was. He’s not on Twitter. He’s not on Facebook. He doesn’t blog. (He later asked me: “What’s a teleclass?”)
From his perspective, I was a social media expert.
There are degrees of expertise. Levels.
I picture it as a ladder. The ladder represents All There is to Know about a Given Subject. (In many cases, there is no “top” – it expands infinitely into the sky.)
Once we decide to learn about something, we start climbing the ladder. We look up and ahead to people who know more than us; our teachers and mentors. We look sideways towards our peers.
If we’re keen on the subject, we’ll climb past our first teachers and seek out new guides higher up the ladder.
And when we’re at the very bottom of the ladder? All we see are the people ahead of us. We may even mistakenly think that those people are at the top.
As a woman I spoke with recently said: “To a 3rd grader, a 4th grader is a God.”
Somebody has to teach the beginners
The bigger the knowledge gap between learner and teacher, the harder it is to communicate.
You’ve probably had this experience. You were new at something and you asked for help from an “expert” – and they overwhelmed you with jargon and left you more confused than you were to begin with. (Remember your first computer? First time on the internet?)
Sometimes the best person to teach someone is the person just slightly ahead of them.
(Hint: if you are capable of overwhelming someone with jargon, you know enough to teach them something.)
I can’t teach! I can’t write an ebook! I don’t know enough yet!
I’ve been talking to a lot of people lately. I keep hearing the same things over and over again:
- I’m still new at this. I need more experience.
- I need to get <insert Official Certification here> before I start.
- I can’t charge that much (or at all) because I’m not an expert yet.
Sometimes that “newness” is expressed in *years* – and the “certification” is *yet another* one, not the first one.
I get this.
As a life long learner, the more I learn…the more I know what I don’t know.
It’s almost like the more expert I become, the less expert I feel.
Interestingly enough, in every case, when I ask: “So, have you *helped* anyone?” there is no hesitation. (It’s usually a confused…or even defensive: “Of course!”)
I hate to break this to you: you will *never* know everything.
We need teachers at all levels of the ladder.
You can start teaching as soon as you know more than other people. In fact, teaching other people is a great way to cement and accelerate your own learning.
If you have any desire to teach, speak or write about a subject, I suggest the following “test” to determine whether or not you are “expert enough.”
1. You know more about the subject than the people you’re going to help.
2. You feel confident you can help them.
3. You’re aware of the limitations of your expertise. You know when to refer people to someone with more knowledge/experience.
No matter where you are on your path right now, there is someone behind you who looks to you as the expert.
Go ahead. Teach them something.
Doubting your expertise? Need some help figuring out what, who and how to teach it? Sign up for an Idea Bouncing session and I’ll help you sort it out!
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{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Too true, Patty! The label “Expert” is so subjective. When we let fear of the label keep us from helping and supporting others who need us, we do both of us a disservice.
Thanks for the reminder to get off our not-good-enough story and get out there helping people!
Yes. It is subjective. I think, too, that there’s a huge difference between declaring oneself an expert vs. allowing a client to think of you as an expert.
Patty, you have expressed this absolutely perfectly. It’s all relative. And you’re so right about trying to learn from someone who is too far above your level. I love your point about how the more expert you become, the less expert you feel. That’s a dirty, rotten trap! Great one to be aware of.
The thing I always forget is that many people are not self-directed learners the way we are. If they have a problem or question, they *don’t* go out and research it, devouring all the information they can get their hands on. They just live with not knowing. That makes those of us who have done our homework very valuable to those who haven’t.
Sue Mitchell´s latest ..Is It Time for You and Your Business to Get Hitched
It *is* a dirty rotten trap. And I’ve been aware of this trap for years…yet I keep finding myself in it!
I think you may have supplied my new tagline: “I do your homework for you!”
Patty, well said! I have been plagued by the “I don’t know enough yet” syndrome and am happy to say I’m in recovery
. One day I realized exactly what you point out: that there are people who still have to learn what I’ve already learned. We lose touch with what we know that’s unique or relatively advanced, because we’re often hanging out with people who have the *same* level of knowledge. We forget that there are LOTS of people who want the information, but for lots of reasons just don’t have it yet.
So, the flip side of knowing what I don’t know, is sometimes not knowing what I know!
And I love your “test.” For myself, I’d add one more criterion: 4. A level of curiosity about your subject that compels you to continue learning and adding value for others.
Oh, and I, too, find so many of my fellow solopreneurs who say “I just need to do this one more class/workshop/certification/test run before I’m ready”… and as an introvert who likes to be super-duper prepared (being able to teach the class before taking the class!), I completely understand. Eventually, though, we need to trust that we know way more than we think we do… that to someone else, what we have to offer is new, exciting and valuable.
So excited for YOU and your brilliant display of expertise in the world, my fierce friend!
Beth Buelow, ACC, The Introvert Entrepreneur´s latest ..You Wanna Piece of Me!- The Fierce Introvert
Hell, Yes!
I saw this in IT all the time. We hang out with people who speak our language and are interested (and well educated) in a specialized subject – and we start to assume the entire world is too. Not only do we start to lose the ability to speak to “normal people” – but we judge our own competence by comparing ourselves to our peers.
I find myself in this same place quite often when I dip into Reader or on Twitter. I find myself in “the land of teachers” where everyone knows more than me and I start to doubt my competence. Until I go out “into the wild” and talk to real, live people in my community. The kind who ask: “what’s a teleclass?” or think I said “logger” instead of “blogger.”
There was a great episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” last week with a story line involving Twitter. The Chief of Surgery had no idea what Twitter was, and so he sat down to explore. He was in his office at the computer, and another surgeon walks in behind him and asks “What are you doing?” The Chief answers very seriously, eyes glued to the screen, “I’m reading Bailey’s teets.” LOL!
Beth Buelow, ACC, The Introvert Entrepreneur´s latest ..You Wanna Piece of Me!- The Fierce Introvert
Patty, what a beautiful explanation! I have often wondered about this and, at times, struggled with it myself. I have never seen such a rich exploration of this whole issue, that really addresses it from many angles, and actually hits the spot.
It’s clear you have *so much* to offer, and I look forward to seeing how your unfolding brilliance and creativity continue to express!
@Sue: I love your point about those who are self-directed learners and research devourers. So easy to take ourselves and all we do and know for granted, eh.
@Beth: And, I have been on the receiving end of your amazing expertise (at our 3-day visioning retreat last year), so I can vouch for how powerful all you know is, and your amazing presence, which feels like a natural outflowing of who you are and all you’ve lived and learned in this life.
Thanks, Laila. I think you’ve encapsulated it nicely here: “So easy to take ourselves and all we do and know for granted” this is *so* common!
Patty,
Right there with you, every step of the way. This is such an interesting (and timely) subject for me. Because with my increase in blog subscribers, I am having to figure out just who my audience is.
I think when you hang around with “experts,” (I HATE that word) on Twitter, on Facebook, etc., you have get a skewed view of the world-at-large. You are right. Many people do not even know who they are!
A reader left an enlightening comment on my last blog post, which was about releasing your perfectionism demons, writing your post and just letting it go.
He said something like,” I’m so tired of the posts that are written for bloggers and content marketers. They point fingers at me and make me feel like an idiot for masking certain writing mistakes. Thank you for this encouraging post.”
There are many, many beginners out there and they need encouragement and advice that is right for THEM. And advice from the “experts” isn’t always right for them. Sometimes, as you say, it works better coming from someone who is “just one rung (or two) ahead of them on the ladder.”
Fantastic post, Patty.
YES! I think sometimes we write to try to impress our peers instead of for our readers/customers. And it’s the beginners who feel overwhelmed and left out.
I’ve experienced this myself. I have a very tiny, new interest in raw food. I follow a few raw food bloggers. Rather. I used to. They’ve become way too advanced for me. And frankly, I find the information discouraging. Because what I’m doing (like taking the small step of drinking a green smoothie each morning) isn’t enough. Or it’s wrong.
Yet, here’s the thing: whatever your subject, if, like Beth suggested, you have a keen interest in continuing to learn about it, you naturally advance up that ladder and lose interest in talking about the “introductory level information.” Which is why I’m advocating that people start to teach at a lower level of expertise.
Which brings up an interesting situation for you, Judy. If you target “new bloggers” exclusively, your audience will move on and you’ll have to continue to get new readers. I’m wondering if the answer might be to build up to a certain level of readership, then start to lead them through higher levels (and package the lower level stuff into an ebook or jump start course.)
Patty – Thank you for giving us this opportunity for discussion. have a “Yes, me too!” to add to each comment.
For me knowing what I know that others could benefit by learning takes perspective. It is SO easy to assume that if [little old me] knows something, so does everybody else. But they don’t. Even marketing, which it seems everyone knows something about.
How do I share what I know in ways that are effective for people who want to learn something? I’m afraid I tend to lecture, but some subjects are pretty straight information, while others need a more personal treatment.
If you can overwhelm someone . . . as the daughter of an engineer who could easily overwhelm me with technical jargon, and who was not effective at explaining all those nine dollar words, being able to overwhelm someone with information does not make an easy transition to teacher without some communication intervention, in my experience. I love my father, and respect him as an accomplished man, but he couldn’t teach me to drive.
In my own blog, I have been writing about social media while I learn about it, because I know that most of the architects and engineers I work with aren’t using it, don’t know how they would use it. As a marketing, ahem, expert, I also figured I HAD to learn how social media works. And so I have a blog with a varied audience of readers. I’m not sure what the answer is to that, but will stay tuned to you and Judy’ blog with interest on that topic.
Barbara Breckenfeld´s latest ..Marketing toolkit
“It is SO easy to assume that if [little old me] knows something, so does everybody else.” <- Yup.
And I definitely agree: teaching isn’t necessarily for everyone and certainly not everyone is naturally good at it. I’ll be writing on this subject quite a lot! As for the “nine dollar words” (love that term, haven’t heard it before) – when working with people who are new to what you’re teaching, trying to explain everything as if you were speaking to a six year old (respectfully!) goes a long way.
Writing about stuff as you learn it? Perfect. At this stage we remember all the little details we had to figure out and we can empathize better with the overwhelm and frustration that sometimes occurs.
Great Article! It is very confidence building. I often find myself looking up at others that know more than me and thinking “I don’t know enough” and “who would want to pay ME when I clearly don’t know as much as these people”. What really hit home with me here is that if people on the bottom of the ladder are looking for help, sometimes it is the person one or two rungs above them that are the most helpful. It’s often the people one or two steps above them that can best speak their language because they can better relate. They don’t always want to learn from someone at the top of the ladder.
Thanks, Jessica. Exactly! Learning from someone at the top of the ladder can be intimidating and sometimes there’s just too big a gap in knowledge. And usually the people at the top don’t have the time or desire to teach people who are just starting out.
You said this SO well. I’ve been thinking about it ever since I read it a couple of days ago. This is something I really struggle with. I’ve worked in a lot of different industries doing a lot of different jobs. I know I have a lot of skills, but have trouble sometimes figuring out how to convey to others that they do in fact add up to something. Tricky to do on a resume sometimes.
I start to call myself a jack of all trades and master of none, and that depresses me. I think your post gives me a new way to frame the discussion for myself to think about it in a different way. Thank you!
Hey Susan – I know that “jack of all trades, master of none” thing only too well. And I’m not convinced it’s a bad thing. A lot of specialists are so concerned with their tiny piece of something that they can’t step back and see the larger picture of how what they do interacts with the rest of the system.
I think having broad experience in multiple industries suggests an ability to learn and adapt – which I would think should be valuable to employers. Especially seems things change so damned quickly these days.
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