Why I Stopped Aspiring to Be an Expert
I don’t think that, “You know nothing Jon Snow,” was meant to be anyone’s mantra, but it's become mine.
So before I fully delve into this topic, I need to do some scene setting.
From 2016–2019 I worked in the Food and Beverage industry in a fast casual breakfast/lunch restaurant. Initially, this experience was just supposed to last for my final semester in college, but I found myself sticking around after graduating and shifting my career aspirations because I really enjoyed everything the company stood for. Obviously, as a graduated student with a mountain of student debt and living expenses like housing, bills, and insurance I wasn’t going to be able to live off my hourly rate so I wanted to pursue any growth opportunity I could, and after months of working my way up this led to me becoming a Restaurant Operator for this company.
It was an amazing opportunity, I was challenged to think like a business owner, I handled payroll, hiring, ordering, operational optimization, limitation of food waste — I really ran the whole ship. My location was top three in sales within the company of about 30 stores so we were exceptionally busy and we had a seasonality to our business as Tallahassee is a college driven town. I grew in ways I could only have imagined when I started and eventually was asked to travel to Texas to help with some staffing issues.
Now, on a resume, this looks really great — I was so good at my job that Corporate trusted me to travel and run these other stores as I had my own. I had become an Expert in the company’s policies, procedures, and recipe execution.
Texas was single handedly the most challenging job I had been assigned to. I stepped into an understaffed store. I couldn’t hire because starting hourly wages couldn’t compete with comparable positons in other restuarants. I was in an entirely new market with no brand recognition. I didn’t have anyone else that was a certified food service manager and so I got no days off. I lived in a hotel for a month. I was away from my family. I was away from the home we had just bought. I was in a city I had never been in. I was alone.
Then I was sent to Atlanta. Texas suddenly seemed like a cake walk.
Atlanta was a two month long assignment. I wound up having to cut half of the staff due to lack of professionalism and ability to uphold the company’s core values and build back. I needed help. Desperately.
Now, I’ve never been discouraged or afraid to ask for help, but I am an extremely solution oriented person, and don’t like to present a problem unless I’ve already brainstormed a potential solution. So it took a lot for me to address the CEO, who I was reporting directly to, and tell them I needed help. While I did receive help and another member of the corporate team was sent to help, ultimately, it was communicated to me that in needing help I had indicated to the company that I wasn’t fit for the role. My role as Operator had already been back filled so that wasn’t an option for me to return, and so we decided to part ways.
So there I was, dumbfounded, that asking for help was my undoing. And then it clicked — you were supposed to be the Expert. You shouldn’t have needed help because the company was relying on you to fix things with your Expert level knowledge. We all operated under a fixed mindset.
So this brings us full circle to where I am now. I’m in a distinctly different career field within a sales organization focused on freeing people from mundane business processes. I actually sit at a desk, my work only ocassionaly leaves the office, and I get to enjoy my weekends off! But I refuse to ever think that I’m an Expert regardless of however senior my position may become, and this is why.
Initially, I started in prospecting which involved a lot of cold calling. After about a year, I moved into our sales operations department and I think that’s when I really began to have to become comfortable with the idea that I didn’t have all of the answers because… well I didn’t have most of the answers. I was fresh in a new role and had several different product stacks to learn, entire systems I hadn’t had to use in my previous role, and how to hold our sales team accountable to our business practices. Even after spending quite some time in this role, I still question if I have all of the answers because I really want to do the right thing.
I believe it’s important that we resign ourselves to be open to the idea that things around us are in a constant state of flux. Even the best written policy and procedure can be susceptible to an exceptional case, and it’s vital that we maintain a demeanor that allows us to be flexible rather than rigid.
I’m tasked often to consider a process and how it can be improved or optimized and I run into these exceptional cases frequently as I contemplate changes. Of course, I try my best to do my research and consider the consequences of a change or improvement, but it never fails that once we get a new process stood up — we run into growing pains. A few years ago, I would have taken this as a sign of failure: my knowledge failed me, my research wasn’t thorough enough, and I failed to consider all sides of an issue.
However, I actually relish in these opportunities now because ultimately, I’m learning something and gaining perspective. By resigning myself to the fact that however versed in something I may feel I am, or however much praise I may receive from my peers, I have liberated myself from the pressures of having to be “the Expert.” Now that’s not to say I don’t have specific knowledge and skills that I excel in, but I have adopted the posture that I do not posses all of the answers, my word is not gospel, and that I am eternally a student and receptive to change.
In doing this, I feel it’s improved my outward demeanor and made me a better person all around. Where there was a sense of pride before, there’s now humility. Where there was defensive action, there’s now a willingness to meet conflicting information with a desire to learn and understand. Rather than rest in a state of comfortable expertise, I have realized that it’s much more beneficial, personally and professionally, to adopt a growth mindset.
Each day, I come into the office, I usually start by checking emails, consulting my calendar to prioritize my to do list for the day (If I didn’t already do it the day before), and identify if there are any red flags that need addressing. Rather than let an issue detract from my morning and sabotage my workflow, I approach these opportunities with gusto and I often come out of it knowing a lot more than if I had acted adversely. And that is why I have stopped aspiring to be an Expert, because I think putting yourself in that box — in that prison — locks you out of so many other opportunities, and I’d much rather be taught something new then insist I know best.
