At Community & Company, we talk with a lot of smart, successful entrepreneurs and professionals from a range of industries. They often tell us about how they’d love to post about the topics that make them so passionate about what they do—and then give us a list of reasons why they don’t.
You might be in a similar boat.
Why aren’t you writing and sharing your expertise? Is it a lack of time? The unpredictability of your weekly routine? A sense of perfectionism that makes you reluctant to publish content that won’t quite capture your insights the way you want to share them?
There’s merit to all these reasons. But it’s also possible that something else is holding you back: your expertise.
Don’t take that the wrong way. We’re not suggesting you lack expertise.
Rather the opposite, in fact. Intrigued? Then read on.
Why knowing more makes you feel like you know less
At the tail end of the ‘90s, social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger documented a peculiar phenomenon, which we now know as the eponymous Dunning-Kruger effect: that, often, those who know little about something tend to think they know a lot.
The other side of the coin is impostor syndrome, where high-achieving experts tend to doubt their own skills, talents, or accomplishments, or to believe that their success is a result of luck rather than skill.
This quirk of the mind might just be what’s holding you back from sharing your insights and expertise with your network.
Why do experts’ minds play this cruel trick on them? You might already have a piece of the answer. Dive deep enough into any field, and beneath the simple surface you’ll find a vast, ever-shifting sea of nuance and complexity. Simple questions become complex issues and the devil resides in the smallest of details.
Albert Einstein himself, father of the theory of general relativity, once lamented, “Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore.”
Einstein, like many an expert, was condemned to realize a truth: that the more you know, the more aware you are of how little you actually know. Once felt, this is difficult to un-feel. There are other sociological factors that contribute to this feeling—systemic, cultural, environmental and so on. But it’s also, simply, incredibly easy to believe that you can’t speak as an authority because of everything you still don’t know.
The know-nothing newbie, though? Armed with the most rudimentary of understandings, oblivious to the unseen and unknowable depths, they buy into the idea that, because they can answer a few easy questions, they can answer them all. They therefore feel entitled to peddle their limited knowledge as profound expertise to the many hapless customers desperately seeking guidance.
What you can do to shake off paralysis and position yourself as an expert
More important than the “why” of impostor syndrome is what you can do to escape its clutches.
Knowing is, as the saying goes, half the battle. Once you realize this nasty little inner voice isn’t telling you the truth about the value you offer, you’ll find it easier to ignore.
Adjust your perspective towards the idea of “not knowing.” A child does not know what dark matter is. Neither do the astrophysicists at CERN. The two levels of “not knowing” aren’t the same. The CERN physicists are still renowned experts who continue to smack particles together and publish papers about what they find.
Consider, also, the nature of “expertise.” It’s not about being omniscient. It’s about having a deep understanding of a subject built through years of knowledge, experience, and unrelenting curiosity. History’s greatest thinkers never proclaimed to know everything about their areas of study—but what did know, they shared. The resulting discourse shaped history, drove progress, and created the world we live in today.
We encourage you to let go of this idea that you need to know everything, and instead to embrace the timeless intellectual traditions of searching, learning, questioning, iterating, discussing, and discovering. Enjoy the eureka moments, bask in the glow of those who share your ideas, take in stride the moments where new discoveries might disturb your existing knowledge, and keep putting yourself out there.
Remember, too, that staying silent only creates space for those with less expertise and more audacity to speak out. With the speed at which information moves, public discourse can very quickly become clogged with inaccurate, incomplete, and even dangerous misinformation. You might not be the final authority—but you have enough knowledge and experience to give meaningful guidance to those who need it.
If you don’t feel ready to pull out all the stops, you don’t need to. Start small: a handful of articles, some LinkedIn discourse, a lecture or a newsletter. Soon, you might just be leading the conversation. A blog post today, a sellout talk tomorrow—who knows?
The next step: putting your thought leadership out there
Even if you’ve now resolved to making and sharing thought leadership content, you might still feel daunted by how much work it is to turn your ideas into publishable material. We’ve put together a few guides on how to build up a healthy content bank. We’re huge fans of working with ghostwriters to supercharge your content creation practice.
If you’re not sure of what the next step is, where to find the best possible writer, or need some additional guidance on how to implement your vision, reach out to us.
We’d be happy to chat through your goals and partner with you as you embark on your thought leadership journey.
Because the world could use a little more real expertise like yours in it.
