The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 217 - Expert Syndrome

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter Shepherd.

Pete: Hello, Jennifer Waldman.

Jen: I have recently experienced a psychological phenomenon that I think is maybe a close cousin or maybe even an evil stepsister of imposter syndrome.

Pete: Ooh, an evil stepsister.

Jen: And I don't think this thing has a name, so I'm going to hopefully come up with a name for it by the end of this episode, but the current working draft is "expert syndrome".

Pete: Expert syndrome...okay, color me curious. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Sidebar, I feel like I've run out of responses to tee up episodes. I feel like I always say, olor be curious.

Jen: That's fine. That's fine. It's a perfectly reasonable response.

Pete: I'm always trying to think of something witty, "Think of something witty, think of something witty...color me curious."

Jen: Well, maybe that bit is even usable, because it kind of points toward this expert syndrome idea that, "You should be an expert at this by now, so why don't you have better remarks to say?" So here's the deal, earlier this week, I began rehearsals for a play that I'm working on. And I have assumed the role of Resident Director for this play, so I'm not the actual director. The actual director is my husband, the very brilliant and talented Mark Shanahan. But his play that he wrote and directed, called Sherlock Carol, is currently rehearsing in two cities at once. There's a London production and there's a New York production. So he's over in London doing the London production, and he needed someone to remount the hit production that ran here in New York last year and is running again this year. So he asked me to do it, and I said yes.

Pete: Yeah, you did. What a team, by the way. Can I just say, what a dynamic team. And the two cities that you casually mentioned, these are not just two small cities...you're talking about London and New York City. Wild.

Jen: Yeah. Just, you know, the two biggest theatre cities in the world. That's it, no big deal.

Pete: Right.

Jen: The show was in New York Times Critic's Pick last year. It's...I'll put stuff about it in the Box O' Goodies, if anyone's in the New York area and wants to come check it out, or in the London area. But in any case, once upon a time when I was a younger person, this is the kind of job I used to do and used to really excel at. At the time, I was working mostly as a dance captain, which is basically for the choreographer, what the resident director is for the director.

Pete: Gotcha.

Jen: So when Mark asked me to do this, he was like, "You are the only person I trust with this. You're expert at this. You're going to be so amazing." And I was like, "Yeah. Once upon a time, I would have been amazing. And now, I don't know." I don't know if I'm going to be amazing, but I also know that everybody in that room expects me to be an expert, which is why it feels like the opposite of impostor syndrome. Like when I'm feeling like an impostor, my assumption is that everyone is going to find out I'm an imposter.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: But I haven't also assumed with that, that everybody thinks I'm an expert. In this case, I'm like, "Oh god, everybody thinks I'm an expert. What am I going to do?" Because on one hand, I actually should be. And on the other hand, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, what am I doing? I don't know what I'm doing. I don't remember how to do this."

Pete: Oh, this is wild and juicy. And like, I mean, it makes me think of...this is such an obvious summary because it's literally what you just said, but it's like things that we used to be good at that we haven't done for a while, muscles that we used to flex every day that we haven't flexed for a long, long time. So you know, for me that might be like, I was one of those kids that played every single sport I could possibly make time for (tennis, cricket, footy, basketball). You name it (hockey), I played it (swimming). And I think I...it's so funny, like ten year-old Pete was probably better at so many of those sports than current day Pete, which is so wild because I was a kid. So yeah, it's like because I haven't flexed those muscles of those particular sports over so many years, I've atrophied. I've gotten worse. And so that's a slightly comical example of what you're describing, but it's like, yeah, there's something to do with the expectations of our former selves and our relationship with that.

Jen: Yeah. So I'm going to be real honest with you, going into this rehearsal, younger Jen and I had to have many conversations.

Pete: Oh my gosh, tell me more.

Jen: Many fights with each other, where younger Jen was like, "Present Jen, you know what you know. And remember all those times you said, 'If I knew then what I know now?' Well, now you know, so go in there and be the person you say you know how to be now." And then present Jen is like, "Listen, younger Jen, you were much more resilient. You didn't have all these other responsibilities." So I've been having these very interesting conversations with myself. I don't know, maybe it would be helpful for me to share. And it kind of feels like I'm laying on the therapy couch right now with you, but it might be helpful to share that I really went through a process and I've come out on the other end with like, I think some insights about experts syndrome.

Pete: I think it would be helpful, because I actually...I'm scanning my brain right now. Other than like basic sports examples that I had, but I feel like this would be more common for folks listening than maybe we realize.

Jen: Yeah. Well, I went into what I would call hyper-Jen Waldman mode. When I am feeling uncomfortable about myself or my work, I go crazy with the research and the organizing and the prepping and the color-coding and the, you know, making sure I know my shit, to the point where you could wind me up and I would function like a machine. Like, I know all the things. So I did that, and then I got to rehearsal and it was almost like I had this wave of wisdom fall upon me, and I was like, "No one in this room wants to interact with a machine." That was all for me.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: But I'm not here for me. The whole reason I said yes to this...I'm here for Mark, I'm here for this cast, I'm here for the audience. Like, why am I making this all about me?

Pete: Oh, that's good.

Jen: And then what I decided to do, Pete, was tell everyone how I was feeling.

Pete: Oh, nice.

Jen: So they all know that I'm feeling a little insecure, that I'm feeling a little rusty, that it's really important to me that I don't allow my ego to take over and suddenly start making it about me, and that I'm there to bring Mark's vision to life. So I've spent a lot of time talking to them about how moved I am by what my husband created and how honored I feel to get to put it on its feet. Just constantly saying things like that for them, but also as a reminder to myself, like, "This is why I said yes. This is what I'm here to do." And it has helped so much.

Pete: Yes. I have forty three thousand questions, Jen. I feel like what you did is you lead with humility, which is something that I've been particularly obsessed with in the last probably twelve months or so, is this idea of humility being some sort of superpower that, you know, the great leaders possess. So we, you and I, have talked a lot about some of our thoughts on leadership. And I've talked a lot about how I think empathy is a really important superpower. I think curiosity is a really important superpower. But I think humility sometimes gets missed. And I feel like what you did by leading with, you know, I guess vulnerability, which is very closely related to humility (I feel like you can't have humility without some vulnerability), is you gave everyone else permission to do the same. You helped everyone else relate to you by acknowledging that, yes, you have a particular set of skills. And yes, you might have a particular set of expertise. And you're also a human being with doubts and insecurities and fears and hopes and dreams. And you shared that, which is just, I can imagine for the people...I mean, I'm curious if you've had any feedback from the people that you shared that with, but I can just imagine how much more free they feel, how much more relatable you probably feel to them now, because you're not, like you mentioned, this super genius robot that is going through the robotic process.

Jen: Yeah. I don't think this is solely my doing. I mean, we have such good people in the room, but there's been so much laughter and so much love and so much support in the room. It's just a total joy to be there every day. But I think the part that future Jen needs to learn from present Jen, because I'm experiencing this right now, is like, "I'm actually not as good at this as I was when I was in my early 20s." I have made a lot of mistakes. There have been times in rehearsal where I'm like, "I'm so sorry, I have no idea what my notes mean right now. Like, I cannot read my hieroglyphics." And nothing has fallen apart. I've been completely imperfect, which has been a big fear. You know, I wanted to get it right. I wanted to make sure that everyone thought I was so good at my job. And I've screwed up multiple times, and it's been totally fine.

Pete: Yeah. I feel like that's a profound lesson that maybe only comes with time and experience and like life wisdom. You know, it's like you recognize the stakes aren't as high as perhaps we tell ourselves they are.

Jen: And if I was doing it all by myself and I screwed up, maybe it would be a disaster. But everybody is there wanting to do a good job, people are being helpful. Like, I'm not expected to do this all by myself. And that has been just a really important lesson. And it's made me want to look at other areas in my life where I experience this expert syndrome, where I'm like, "Well, I'm expected to be absolutely excellent at this so I'm going to push myself so hard and go to the ends of the earth to make sure that I live up to this expert idea," but I don't need to do that.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. It strikes me as, in doing so, in taking the current approach, you know, leading with the humility, you're making space for these other people in your team to have a chance to demonstrate their expertise and their skills and how they can support you. And without that posture of, again, humility, that you might not even know that they're capable of helping you in all those ways, because you don't even give them space and room and permission to help you in those ways. Which, you know, for me, that just like is so relevant to leaders within organizations, is, how often do I hear a leader ask a question like, "How do I know if I can trust my team? Because we need to deliver on these results." And it's kind of like, "Well, have you given them permission to try? Do you know what they could help you with? Have you opened up a space for them to show you how they might be able to support and help and grow the organization or the project and ultimately build trust by doing so?" Yeah. The other thing this is making me think of is just, you know, you and I have done a lot of episodes recently, in particular, about skills, about practices, and then I think projects as well...I guess, more specifically to skills and practices. You know, to me, this is just a great reminder of why skills need to be practiced and honed and worked on every single day. Or we have to have practices if we want to improve on things every single day, or every single week, or whatever. Because without them, our muscles atrophy, our skills atrophy. We get...worse seems like a harsh word, but like we get worse at things if we don't practice them, basically. Or we stagnate in our skill set if we don't practice and improve on skills with deliberate and intentional practice, which I think is what you've experienced. Which is totally okay, because we can't practice everything all the time. There's going to be moments where we have to dip in and out. But it just strikes me as an example of, "Oh yeah. Of course I'm not as good, because I haven't practiced this skill for a long time."

Jen: Right. Exactly. And there's a lot of grace that I've had to give myself, to go like, "Yeah. Yeah, you're dusting off a way of thinking that was like breathing to you twenty years ago.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: "But you haven't even really thought about since then.

Pete: Right. I'm curious too...because, again, I'm naturally thinking about this through the lens of like organizational leadership or working in a company. And I'm curious if the same applies for you in this example, where it closes the door to innovation if we go, "Oh, I'll just do it the same way that I did it twenty years ago."

Jen: Right.

Pete: Like, hasn't the creative world moved on, just like the business world has moved on, in the last twenty years?

Jen: Well, that's really funny, because it's a two-way street. On the one hand, in preparing to go into this rehearsal process, I was like, "Well, I know all the people who are doing this job now use this app to do it." And when I was doing this, everything was analog. So I was like, "I'm going to learn how to use the app." So I'm looking at the app, and I'm like, "Huh, um, okay." So I found someone who said they could be my app coach, and I was going to do several sessions with them and pay them and all of this. And then I was like, "What am I doing? I'm making my job harder by trying to learn this new technology while improving my skills. Like I need to just focus on, how am I going to organize this information and communicate it to the cast? It doesn't matter if it's in an app or in a notebook, I just have to do it in the way where I'm going to get it where I need to go." But to your point about innovation, I see ways where my last twenty years of experience are informing the way I'm doing this job now, in a way that's totally different than I would have even thought about doing it when this was what I primarily did.

Pete: Right. Also, I think you just made a beautiful case for the argument that you and I have made a few times on this podcast about real human skills of leadership and making change, as opposed to technical hard skills of being a manager and making change.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: You know? Like you mentioned that, at the crux of it, what you actually need to focus on is not the technical skill of understanding an app, not the hard skill of understanding how to use a technology, but actually go back to the real skill of organizing information and communicating in a way that resonates with the people that you're serving.

Jen: That's right.

Pete: Which is just like, ah, thank you for making another business case for why real skills are so important.

Jen: You're welcome. You're welcome. You know, I want to share that this company, since this is their second year together, they have reignited some traditions that they came up with last year. And one which I find so beautiful is, each day, we come into the rehearsal studio and a different person from the company leads the group in a warmup. And every day, the role of leading the warm up shifts to someone else in the room. And everyone in the room then is an expert. So everyone gets the chance to be the leader, to share the thing, to share their own process for warming up, to be an expert at the way they prepare. But then the next day, it's going to be someone else leading the warmup, and yesterday's expert is a beginner in this person's version of what a warm up looks like.

Pete: Oh, that's good.

Jen: And it's just such a beautiful passing-the-baton practice, giving everyone who wants to a chance to lead and everyone a chance to follow. It's just really beautiful.

Pete: Wow, I love that example so much. So, I'm trying to piece together...like we've talked about, if one of the ways to navigate impostor syndrome is to dance the two-step by acknowledging what your imposter is saying to you and then saying something back, giving yourself a voice, giving yourself permission to navigate your imposter, I wonder if one of the ways to navigate expert syndrome is to like leverage everyone else's expertise, like you just described, is to pass the baton of the expert syndrome onto someone else. I don't know if that's a tweetable summary, but I feel like that's what you just described. You heard it, you acknowledged it, and you said, "Okay. But I also have a roomful of experts here, so what if I gave them permission to demonstrate their expertise?"

Jen: That's right. And honestly, Pete, one of my core values is collaboration...it's believing that we do better when we are working together. So, I prepared for this as if I was a soloist. And now that I'm in the thick of it, learning every day, falling flat on my face sometimes and soaring in other moments, I'm realizing that it's all about the people who I'm doing it with.

Pete: Collaboration as a tool for navigating expert syndrome. That is The Long and The Short Of It.