Not the expert in the room

Most days I work with people who are much better than me at what they do. Some have PhDs in the exact field we’re discussing. Some have spent ten years on one system and know every corner of it. When they talk about their area, I can follow, mostly, but I couldn’t do what they do.

I’m not the best at anything. I’m okay at quite a lot of things: a bit of code, a bit of infrastructure, a bit of product, a bit of people. For a long time I thought that was something to hide, or a gap I’d eventually close by picking one thing and going deep.

I don’t have this figured out. But I’ve started to see it differently, and I’m writing down where I’ve got to, in case it helps someone else who feels the same in a room full of experts.

What it feels like#

There’s a particular kind of quiet I’ve learned to recognise. A discussion goes deep into something I only half understand. Everyone around the table seems to be speaking fluently, and I’m translating in my head, one sentence behind. I nod. I write down a couple of words to look up later. I wait for the moment where I can add something useful, and sometimes it doesn’t come.

Afterwards there’s a small feeling of being alone. Not left out: people are kind, and nobody makes me feel small. It’s more that I can see the outline of what they see, but not all of it, and I know I won’t catch up on that topic the way they have, because tomorrow I’ll be in a different room on a different topic.

And then there’s the familiar voice: one day they’ll notice. That I don’t really know the details. That I’m in the room because I’m good at sounding like I belong. The name for it, impostor syndrome, makes it sound like a condition you get over. In my experience it doesn’t go away with seniority. If anything it gets louder, because the more senior you are, the more topics you’re expected to have an opinion on, and the more experts you sit with.

I’m not writing this to complain. I’m writing it because for years I assumed I was the only one who felt like this, and I’ve since found out I wasn’t.

What I bring, if I’m not the expert#

What helped me most was noticing what actually happens when things go well. It’s rarely me knowing the answer. It’s usually one of these:

• Translating. Explaining what the specialists are worried about to the people who need to decide, and the other way round, in words each side cares about.
• Connecting. Noticing that two teams are solving the same problem from different ends, or that an idea from one area fits another.
• Seeing the whole. The slow page that’s really a data problem. The “process issue” that’s really two teams optimising for different things. When you know a little about every layer, you sometimes see the joint that’s failing.
• Asking the naive question. The one everyone else assumed was already answered.

None of these need me to be the deepest person in the room. They need me to be roughly fluent in many rooms. My side projects are the clearest example I have: to build my finance tracker I wrote the backend and the frontend, set up the release pipeline, the monitoring and the small home cluster it runs on. No single part of it would impress a specialist. But I could build the whole thing, and understand how each part affects the others.

A book that helped me make peace with this was Range by David Epstein. One line in it describes exactly the tension I feel:

“The challenge we all face is how to maintain the benefits of breadth, diverse experience, interdisciplinary thinking, and delayed concentration in a world that increasingly incentivizes, even demands, hyperspecialization.”

— David Epstein, Range

That’s the job, as I see it now: keeping the breadth, and making it useful, in rooms built around depth.

What I’m trying to do about it#

These aren’t rules. They’re what I’m practising, with mixed success.

Separating “I don’t know this” from “I don’t belong here”. The first is usually true and usually fixable: I can ask, read, or rely on someone who knows. The second is a story I tell myself, and it’s rarely backed by any evidence.

Being the least expert in the room, on purpose. I used to see it as a risk. Now I try to see it as the best seat for learning. Sitting with people who are far better than me at one thing is how my “okay” slowly becomes “good” across many things. It also changes how I lead: when I’m not the expert, I have to listen, and let the people who know decide what they’re best placed to decide.

Asking the question anyway. “Sorry, can you explain that part?” costs a moment of feeling exposed. Not asking costs weeks of building on something I misunderstood. Half the time, someone else in the room wanted to ask it too.

Leaning into what comes naturally. I’ve spent time trying to become great at things I’ll never be great at, because a role description or someone I admired said I should. Some weaknesses do need to get to “good enough”. Past that, I’m learning to invest more in what I’m already good at: the curiosity, the connecting, the translating. And to look for the places where that’s exactly what’s needed.

Keeping a short list of things that went well. On the days the voice is loud, facts help more than reassurance.

If you’re the generalist in a room of experts#

You’re probably not the only one feeling this, even if nobody says it. Being okay at many things isn’t a failure to specialise. In the right place, it’s what holds the specialists’ work together.

I’m still learning this, and I expect to keep learning it for a while. If it resonates, I’d like to hear how you deal with it.

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The book: David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (2019).