Simple idea, that could boost your confidence and get you that next position.
When you are going through a selection process, or indeed, pitching for an opportunity, there is a great temptation to do all that you can to present yourself as an expert.
Why wouldn’t you? They want you to do a job and you need to show them that you have the required experience, skills and knowledge to get it done.
The trouble is, what if you don’t believe that you have enough expertise?
Perhaps you’ve been out of the loop a little, or are stretching your expertise into new areas. This can dent the confidence of the best of us – actually, it is the best people who will naturally be hard on themselves, and suffer a dip in their confidence.
So, let’s frame it a different way.
You have a huge amount of knowledge, skill and experience, but you don’t know everything. Actually, in virtually all cases this is the best opportunity for both you and the people who are hiring.
What is needed in most situations is an engagement process where the new person can help the organisation, the stakeholders, to explore what needs to happen, benefit from your experience and wisdom, and together, you can find the most appropriate solution to their problem.
The last thing any organisation needs is some newbie coming in and telling them what to do, even if it is the right thing to do.
So, instead of presenting yourself as a subject matter expert, you show up as someone who is an expert in engaging their experts, contributing your own (extensive) experience and driving hard to get a solution that everyone can buy into.
Maybe it’s also time to refresh your memory on Peter Senge’s Learning Organisations (The Fifth Discipline).
Okay, yes I do realise that in some situations they are hiring the expertise, as they would seek the opinion of a barrister.
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