How to Lead People With More Experience and Expertise

Have you ever found yourself unsure of how to lead people with more experience and/or more expertise than yourself?

You are not alone.

Three common situations cause this to happen:

You are young. You are early in your career and have demonstrated an aptitude for leadership.
You are part of a reorganization. You inherited a team with members who are accountable for areas outside of your subject matter expertise.
You are an entrepreneur. You are hiring people with more experience and expertise on purpose to round out your team.

Despite its prevalence, this situation is still challenging, especially if you find yourself in it for the first time.

Fortunately, no matter how you got here, there is a well-defined pathway for navigating this leadership challenge successfully.

In this newsletter, you’ll learn:

The most common mistake leaders make when leading experienced experts.
The right strategy to take instead.
How to implement the 4-Part Experienced Expert Leadership Strategy.

The Most Common Mistake Leaders Make When Leading Experienced Experts.

When clients ask me how to handle leading someone with more experience or expertise than them, their question is usually followed by one or more of the following statements:

“I don’t want my lack of experience and expertise to hold them back.”
“I don’t want to micromanage.”
“I don’t understand what they are doing well enough to comment on their actions.”
“I brought them in so I don’t have to deal with this topic.”
“I am relieved that I don’t have to learn this stuff.”

Underneath these statements are two key assumptions:

The leader assumes they have little to offer experienced experts.
The leader assumes that experienced experts would prefer to be left alone.

As a result of these underlying assumptions, they take a hands-off approach.

The hands-off approach is a mistake.

Let me explain why.

The Hands-off Management Approach Hurts Experienced Experts.

Experienced experts need the organizational perspective. Experienced experts are clear on how to apply their skills accurately and efficiently to a wide array of challenges. However, they are unclear on how best to apply that wisdom to the team. That is what leaders are for. Leaders have insights not only on the organization’s goals and priorities (the what), but also on the organization’s processes, power structures, and unwritten rules (the how).

I talk more about the three lenses of organizational perspective here.

Leaders acquire this understanding from meetings, reports, and stakeholder discussions that only they are privy to. Without an organizational perspective from you, experienced experts are often underutilized.

Experienced experts need leadership engagement. Nobody likes to be micromanaged, least of all people who know they have more experience and expertise than you. However, they don’t like to be ignored either. Letting someone “do their thing” can easily be perceived as a lack of interest or as playing favorites. When you don’t spend enough time engaging with experienced experts in ways they find meaningful, they begin to wonder if their expertise is needed in the organization.

Without engagement from you, as the leader, experienced experts are often disengaged.

The impact on experienced experts includes:

Decreased Productivity: When employees lack interest in their work, they may not put in their best effort, leading to a decline in overall productivity.
Low Morale: When individuals are not engaged or passionate about their work, it can create a negative atmosphere that affects the entire team’s motivation.
Poor Team Collaboration: Communication and teamwork can suffer when individuals are not actively engaged in their tasks.
Poor Mentoring of Junior Staff: Disengaged experts may not actively share their knowledge and expertise with the team. This can lead to a loss of valuable institutional knowledge, making it challenging for the team to solve complex problems and address technical challenges effectively

The Hands-off Management Approach Hurts You, as the Leader.

Leaders need experienced expert input. Leaders need to know how best to bring expertise to bear in their team. It is often the experienced experts who drive innovation and growth and who know what has been tried and failed in the past. If they are sidelined, they can’t provide the necessary inputs.

Leaders are accountable for the performance of their entire team. Your stakeholders expect you to manage the status, budget, timeline, and deliverables, of all aspects of your area of responsibility. It isn’t acceptable to say, “I don’t know anything about that part, you’ll need to ask Kelly.” If that is the case, what do they need you for? Furthermore, if experienced experts flee, you will be held responsible for the loss of institutional knowledge.

The impact on leaders includes:

Decreased Organizational Performance: Ultimately, the negative consequences of disengagement among experienced experts can extend to the overall organizational performance. This may lead to missed opportunities, decreased competitiveness, and challenges in achieving strategic objectives.
Limited Career Advancement: Organizations may be hesitant to promote leaders who struggle to display mastery over their area of responsibility to create a positive and high-performing team culture.
Increased Stress and Burnout: The leader may experience increased stress and burnout trying to manage a team that lacks engagement. This can negatively impact the leader’s well-being and ability to make sound decisions.

Given that you don’t want your experienced experts to be frustrated, disengaged, and underutilized, and you don’t want to be seen as an ineffective leader, you absolutely can’t take a hands-off approach.

Yet, the fact remains that you are more junior or less knowledgeable than experienced experts. So, how can you proceed?

The Four-Part Experienced Expert Leadership Strategy

Own Your Role as the Leader and the Organizational Expert.

The first step begins with taking ownership of your role.

You are accountable for the outcomes, engagement, and retention of the experienced experts on your team. You also have the expertise (organizational perspective) that experienced experts need to do their jobs well.

When you embrace those two facts, then all you have to do is find the best ways to deliver on those two aspects of your role.

As you implement the rest of the strategy, ask yourself,

“How can I leverage my role as the leader and organizational expert to help experienced experts work at their best?”
Your guiding principle

Set and Manage Engagement Targets

You need to engage with experienced experts as much as you do your other staff, and, in some cases, more. Review the communication channels and modalities that you have with the rest of your staff and set a target to engage with experienced experts in a similar manner.

Two types of engagements work especially well with experienced experts, weekly one-on-ones and ad hoc tutorials.

Weekly one-on-ones.

Weekly one-on-ones are scheduled check-ins with your staff. They are widely known for being a management best practice. If you are not conducting weekly one-on-ones with your direct reports, I recommend you start immediately. Here is an excellent overview of how to get started with them.

When the experienced expert reports directly to you, you should have weekly one-on-ones with them, the same way you do with your other direct reports.

During one-on-one meetings with an experienced expert, in addition to the goals of a typical one-on-one, you want to make sure to:

Display interest and curiosity about their work.
Reinforce your role as the operational expert. Share insights on the inner workings of the organization that can be best leveraged to support the experienced expert’s goals.
Reinforce your role as a leader. Inquire about the status of deliverables, and give feedback on actions and outcomes.

When experienced experts don’t report directly to you, work with your direct report to arrange tutorials.

Tutorials.

Tutorials are simply short meetings where you ask the experienced expert to teach you something about their work. This has two benefits.

It demonstrates your interest in and respect for the experienced expert’s wisdom by acknowledging that you don’t know something and asking for their help.
It builds your baseline knowledge of critical topics.

Here’s how to request a tutorial:

“Hey, [experienced expert’s name], I’m interested in learning more about [topic]. Would you be willing to give me a tutorial on the topic? I’m especially interested in understanding (A, B, and C). Is that something we can schedule soon? It is very informal, just the two of us, so you don’t need to prepare anything fancy. I’m just finding that I need more baseline knowledge in this area.”
Tutorial request script

When the experienced expert reports directly to you, proceed with making the requests.

When the experienced expert reports to your direct report, talk with your direct report first. Depending on your work culture, your direct report might request on your behalf or might want to give you insights into timing based on what is going on in their team.

Set and Manage Performance Targets

You might be thinking, “OK, I understand that I need to step up and manage this person, but how can I possibly establish goals and evaluate performance metrics when I haven’t done that kind of work before?”

That is a very valid question. Here’s how to approach it.

Understand the Role and Expertise: Gain a comprehensive understanding of the employee’s role and the specific expertise required. Identify key responsibilities, tasks, and skills associated with the employee’s expertise. Use your engagement strategies from above to glean what you need to know to increase your confidence.
Align with Organizational Goals: Ensure that performance metrics align with the broader organizational goals and objectives. Identify how the employee’s expertise contributes to the overall success of the team or organization.
Collaborate with the Experienced Expert: Engage in open communication with the employee to understand their perspective on the role and their performance expectations. Seek input on what they consider essential performance indicators.
Get External Perspectives: Use benchmarks or industry standards to help guide performance indicators when applicable.
Establish both Skill-Based and Results-Based Metrics: Develop metrics that focus on key skills relevant to the employee’s expertise. Consider both technical skills and soft skills necessary for success in the role.
Ensure Continuous Feedback: Establish a system for regular feedback and check-ins. Encourage ongoing communication to address any challenges or adjustments needed in the performance metrics.

When you look at this process, you are likely to find that it isn’t that different from what you are doing with team members who have similar or less experience and expertise than you. The difference is how you feel about it.

Monitor and Adjust

As with all of your leadership responsibilities, you need to approach them with a sense of being open to feedback and adjusting as necessary. Leading experienced experts is the same. The important thing to remember is that you have multiple inputs you need to consider:

Feedback from the experienced expert
Performance of the experienced expert
Feedback from the overall team
Performance of the overall team
Feedback from your leadership

Oftentimes, I see leaders overweight the feedback they get from experienced experts. In other words, one or two negative comments from the experienced expert and you revert to the hands-off approach. Rather, it’s important to go back to the first step of this framework and reinforce your role. Then, analyze feedback from all your stakeholders.

Only then should you make adjustments to your strategy.

TL;DR

Leading experienced experts is challenging. Whether you find yourself in that situation because you are a young leader, you are part of a reorganization, or you are an entrepreneur, this is a common situation that you must learn how to address. Most leaders make the mistake of taking a hands-off approach, out of fear of holding the experienced expert back or being seen as a micromanager. This approach leads to underperformance by both the experienced expert and you as the leader. With the 4-Part Experienced Expert Leadership Strategy, you can build a relationship of mutual respect and high performance.