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The limiting belief of expertise
I’ve been thinking about the word EXPERT a lot lately.
When I worked for Procter & Gamble as an engineer eons ago, I became a trainer for a software I’d learnt to use only a few months prior. Correction : I was FORCED by my mentor to become a trainer for that software.
I was a 25 year old newbie then. Imagine the imposter syndrome.
But then I realised that EVERYONE at that company (at least in the engineering department) was a trainer in SOMETHING.
It didn’t matter how experienced you were in the thing you were training other people in.
It didn’t matter if you were STILL learning that thing you were officially recognised as a trainer for. Like I was.
What mattered was that even if you thought you knew little, you already knew A LOT MORE than most people.
That was even a running joke around the office : that ANYONE was an expert at something the moment they’d spent 2 hours more on that thing than anyone else.
Not only was everyone an expert at something, but it was part of our job to teach that something to the people who were interested, or who could see an application of that something in their job.
They took training so seriously that being a trainer brought in a special mention in…
