The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 278 - SMEP

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hi, Peter.

Pete: I want to talk to you about something that keeps coming up in leadership development workshops and coachings that I've been doing of late. I feel like I need a fun, clever name for it like you always have, like a phenomenon. So maybe I'll just call it Subject Matter Expertise Phenomenon.

Jen: Catchy.

Pete: Working title: SMEP.

Jen: Subject Matter Expertise Phenomenon, alright. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Hearing it said back to me, I heard how absurd it was. Ah, SMEP, ol' SMEP-y. So, let's see if I can explain. So Subject Matter Expertise Phenomenon goes a little something like this: I am coaching very senior leaders in very large companies a lot of the time. (Not always, but a lot of the time.) And often, at some point, we'll enter a conversation around coaching their team, leading their team, and trying to empower their team, and how their role as a senior leader is not to get too in the weeds with specific things because they need to be able to empower their team, who are awesome, to get in the weeds of specific things. That's what teams are for. That's why we have different people in different roles. And gosh, I feel like this comes up every day. Some version of what will come up is their realization that the thing that got them into the senior leadership position is their subject matter expertise. So maybe they were a subject matter expertise in human rights in a large retail environment, and they have used that subject matter expertise to work their way through an organization, to then be given a team, to then get promoted to general manager. And all of a sudden, they're general manager of human rights, for example. (I'm making this up.)And they have so much specific knowledge and understanding and expertise about human rights, and like very specifically in the weeds about human rights. And yet, now they have a team of people whose job is to be in the weeds and get very specific and understand human rights, in this example, and the tension for them becomes, "I know the answer to so many of the things my team might be working through. I know the path forward because I have the expertise. But I also know that I can't get in the way and tell them what to do. And I need to empower. And so, I have this Subject Matter Expertise Phenomenon where I'm realizing it's not as important to be an expert in my subject matter when I'm a general manager, for example, than it is if I'm in a different role. And the extension to that, which I want to get to, is, what is my subject matter expertise when I'm in this senior role? My assertion is the subject matter you need to be an expert in is coaching and leading your team, which is actually a different skill set than being a deliverer on something like human rights, in this working example. So, does that make sense? That's kind of the phenomenon I'm experiencing a lot of.

Jen: Yes. And it's so funny, just as you were saying the thing you want to get to with leading the team needing to be the new expertise, I was literally writing down these four words (which we've unpacked on a different episode): teacher, coach, mentor, facilitator. That sometimes as the person with the knowledge, you may have a legitimate teaching moment where you have to adopt the role of teacher.

Pete: Yes.

Jen: But sometimes, the role you must adopt is coach. And maybe I needed to put "leader" on that list as well.

Pete: Yeah, I think "leader" would be the overarching word. And then, what does a leader look like? It's like all of these different roles within "leader", I think.

Jen: Yeah. And then mentor, you know, you've walked the walk before and you're offering some guidance. And then facilitator is you're not getting involved, but you're guiding what it's going to kind of look like.

Pete: Yeah. Or you're casting the vision, but then you're facilitating the how we get there with the team.

Jen: Thank you, that was a much better description of "facilitation". Thank you for mentoring me through that moment.

Pete: Ah, that's good. Okay, so part of being a leader is a teacher, coach, mentor, facilitator. Yeah. So this I agree with, and I think becomes the real opportunity/tension point/gap where you see someone grappling with this reality that what got them to where they are was being a really specific expert in a really specific thing. And what will set them up for success? My assertion, in being a senior leader, is actually not being so specific about the knowledge that you have. It's actually more broad than that. It's, "Can I be a leader? Can I teach? Can I coach? Can I mentor? Can I facilitate? Can I cajole?" And we can get to this when we get this, but I actually think in knowing that, it's like the subject matter expertise is actually overrated. That you could take that skill set of being a leader, and then actually go into an industry or into leading a team that you don't know the specifics of (and there's so many examples of this, which I'm happy to share) and be a really successful leader. Because you don't know what you don't know, and so you're requiring your team and empowering your team to help you fill your gaps, if that makes any sense.

Jen: Are you aware that you just described yourself?

Pete: I don't, I have no idea. What do you mean?

Jen: You go into these organizations where you have no expertise on their weeds.

Pete: Right.

Jen: And you're such a good leader for them, because it's not about you knowing more than they do. It's about you listening, asking questions, holding space, offering support. So, thanks for describing yourself.

Pete: That's okay, but now I'm like questioning whether I'm just full of confirmation bias, that that's the skill set I think a lot of senior leaders need to be leaning on more and more. Is that just because that's the skill set that I like leaning on more and more? It's your existential crisis right now. Don't worry about it.

Jen: Yeah. But I think it is a very real tension point. And if we were to lay these leaders down on Freud's couch and analyze what's going on there, you know, it feels good to be smart, it feels good to be looked to as a person who has all the answers and can be counted on to have the missing link. And when you adopt a leadership posture, when you adopt a curiosity posture, one of the things you're committing to is not knowing everything, and on an emotional level that can feel like an identity crisis.

Pete: So true, so true. Which is why I think humility is a superpower, because it's so uncomfortable to leverage it, to lean into it. And I think my argument would be...I feel like I'm just making the case for coaching. I feel like my argument is that it feels good to be smart, I absolutely agree with that, and to know what you're doing and to be able to give direction. It also feels really good to be able to coach someone to do something and have an aha moment and like deliver a result that is actually maybe even better than what you could have. Like, that feels awesome. So it's like, the gap is helping them see that it or maybe experience that as the leader, so that they realize that's now their currency. I think that's the challenge, is like, how do you help them see, "Your currency now is coaching the others to do the thing that you just spent, you know, the last ten years or five years or whatever it was, doing." And that's a gap for some.

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: I want to get like your take on whether this phenomenon comes up in your industry, because I feel like there's a lot to learn from whether it does.

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: I just want to share, the other way into this that I experience a lot is like imposter syndrome, which is when a senior leader is in a position that they were put in where they weren't a subject matter expert on the team they're leading. So maybe I spent my whole career working my way up as a marketer, and all of a sudden, I'm put in a role as the GM of sales. And I'm like, "Well, I never worked in sales, I worked in marketing. I am an impostor. I have absolutely no right to be leading this team." And what I often say to them is, "That's okay, because your role isn't to be the subject matter expert in sales. It's to be able to coach and lead the team, who are subject matter experts in sales." So, that's like the other way in that I see this coming up a lot.

Jen: So you asked about any overlap with my industry, and the first thing that came to mind, for me, is a very interesting transition that happens within every production. So before you cast your actors, as a director, you've got to be the subject matter expert on the play. You are the one who is casting the vision. You have to know as much as you can possibly know. You've done all your research. You're working with your designers. You have to know everything. And even in the audition room, you've got to be a subject matter expert on all of the characters. But once you have cast, the actors, they need to be the subject matter expert on their own characters. You are still responsible for the vision.

Pete: Right, yes.

Jen: Like, the big picture. But if you get in the weeds trying to out-know what the actor knows as they are creating the character, the entire production can become lopsided, it can become inconsistent, and you lose the overall message because you're focusing too heavily on one thing and not being able to step back and look at the whole.

Pete: I think that is exactly right. Not only does it create a potential to be lopsided, but it also makes the actor in that example, I imagine, feel undermined, feel like they're not valued and their contribution isn't important. And it makes the person doing it, the micromanaging person perhaps stepping in, feel like they are overwhelmed because they're trying to do so many things and like, "I have to do this thing for this person, and it's because they can't do it themselves." And there's all this story we create about why we need to, you know, like the hero complex of why we need to step in and help. But it's just so unhelpful and creates an environment where people aren't seen and valued and heard, which, you know, I think is the ultimate goal of a leader. So, thank you for that example. I think that's a great one.

Jen: So something that is coming up for me that is really a question about how things are done internally within an organization, what would need to change in order for someone who is ascending through the ranks to know that the reason they are receiving this new promoted position is because of their capacity to be a great leader, as opposed to their knowledge, their subject matter expertise? Because it sounds like there's some disconnect there, that someone thinks they were put in this leadership position because of their subject matter expertise, but what you're having to coach them through is understanding that that's not actually the why behind it, that, "You're in this role now because you have the capacity to lead."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: "You might not be great at it yet, but the potential is there to be a great leader."

Pete: Yeah. So I can't speak to whether they're told on the way through that, "The reason you're in this position is because we see you really valued as a leader." I don't know if that's said. I know that if you looked for the actions, though, they there, i.e., "You are part of our rising talent leadership program, which is why you're actually talking to Pete in the first place. You know, you are leading this project that's worth this amount of money for the business and has this many stakeholders. And we put you in that because we trust you." So like there's examples that, if you ask them, so I often do, "Why do you think you were put in this role? Or like, have you led a team like this before? Or what do you think makes a great leader," and they basically describe attributes that they have. (I guess, kind of like I did before.) And so in my context, you get them to realize it by coaching them to realize that, "Oh, yeah, I have been a subject matter expert for so long and I don't want to be necessarily always a subject matter expert. So, I do actually want this change in position. And oh, yeah, I guess I do have a level of experience and understanding and desire to lead people." But maybe because of things like impostor syndrome or maybe because of stories we tell ourselves like you joked about with Freud's couch, it's like you could tell them all the way through, but until they actually are in that situation with their, like you mentioned, identity at question of like, "But I've been this person as this subject matter expert for so long." It's really hard to get them to just flip a switch. So I feel like there's no easy, definitive answer to your question, I don't think.

Jen: A very old episode of ours is coming to mind. I will have to fact check the title of the episode, but the content was about the difference between resume virtues and eulogy virtues.

Pete: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I recall.

Jen: Yeah. Is that striking a memory chord?

Pete: Eulogies...there was something about eulogies that you talked about.

Jen: Yeah. And so it's the idea that we assemble lots of these resume credits, like, "Knows the most about X, Y, and Z, and brought in this much revenue or this many new clients, or launched these products," and those are all resume things. But at the end of your life, as you are being lowered six feet in to the ground, is that what you want someone to say about you? You know, "They brought in this many millions of dollars for the company." And the eulogy virtue is something about your character, who you are to people, how you make people feel, what kind of a person you are. And so I'm coming up with this exercise on the fly, but I'm thinking that if someone says, "But I feel valued because of all of my knowledge," you could ask them, "What does having acquired all that knowledge say about you as a person?" "Well, I'm tenacious. Well, I'm intelligent. Well, I'm curious. I am a life-long learner." Like, you could potentially help them see how to turn their resume virtues into eulogy virtues. Or one might, you know, if you wanted to steer clear of the whole death metaphor, you know, maybe character traits.

Pete: Well, I love this line of thinking because it's sort of like, "What's the skill behind the skill that you're describing, or the skill behind the knowledge?"

Jen: Right.

Pete: And so it's like, can you help them see that acquiring specific knowledge or subject matter expertise required a certain amount of character traits and/or skill, like the ability to ask great questions, the ability to learn, the ability to solve problems, to make mistakes, to give and receive feedback? I would call these the real human skills of leadership, as opposed to the high technical skills that we learn along the way.

Jen: Right.

Pete: And so you're trying to get them to see that the skills they've used to become a subject matter expert are actually the same skills they can use in a leadership position to solve problems, to ask questions, to guide other people, to give and receive feedback. Like it's the same set of skills, I think, in the right context.

Jen: Mmm, yeah.

Pete: Which I think, just to close that loop in my own head, I think that's a really important one for those that I mentioned earlier...it might have been had a background in marketing, I think was the example I used, and now they're in sales. And it's helping that person see the skills they acquired along the way to become a subject matter expert in marketing in that particular company are the same skills they can use to lead a team that is a sales team, like asking questions and having humility and admitting, "Look, I'm not the expert here. You're the experts. But my goal, my role is to set you up for success, to not be in your way, to give you what you need, to coach you along the way, to facilitate where required," like you mentioned, "to mentor if I can. If you have questions about marketing, I'm pretty confident I could answer them," those kinds of things. So I feel like I'm coaching myself in a way now, or mentoring myself.

Jen: Well, you are a subject matter expert when it comes to coaching, Pete.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: Okay, so the acronym might not be the sexiest acronym I've ever heard. What do

Pete: What do you mean? SMEP. It was pretty good.

Jen: ...SMEP. But it is real, Subject Matter Expertise Phenomenon.

Pete: It is. And I think one of my hopes from this episode, and just in conversations I have about this, is helping people realize that they have more expertise than they give themselves credit for. And that the subject matter they think they might be an expert in might actually be like the cover for the skills that sit behind that, which is actually what's required to be a better leader, and to guide a team, and to facilitate, and to teach, and to coach, and to mentor.

Jen: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.