Leading others when they know more than you

Leadership

Jun 9

5 minute read

We work with a number of really smart senior leaders in life sciences who are required to lead teams full of smart people. To be honest, it’s a joy. There’s nothing more satisfying for us at FiveAndCo than helping people bring their best and be their best in the pursuit of better lives for patients.

Increasingly we are working with leaders who are leading teams where they are not the expert in the room, often with expertise in a completely unrelated field. For example, lawyers who are leading scientists, HR specialists leading government affairs, and commercial experts that are leading clinical trials site management teams.

It is also common for our clients to be asked to run enterprise level projects with a whole host of different experts and being asked not only to deliver, but to build a sense of collaboration and team.

What challenges do we hear about most?

The constant feeling of having to work very hard to understand fundamentals tenets of different disciplines in order to feel like you’re respected.
Increasing irritation with impenetrable language or communications that leave you behind.
Embarrassment at having to ask so many questions during team discussions.

What many leaders are really saying is this:

“If everyone is smarter than me in this team, why do they need me?”

We like to keep things simple at FiveAndCo. so here are four simple steps to take if you are in this situation.

Firstly, stop trying to develop additional expertise overnight. Some of the people in your team have likely spent decades immersed in their field. You are not going to ‘catch up’ by working evenings, cramming video lectures, and reading books.
Instead, enjoy the fact that you are not the smartest person in the room. Ask questions because you are interested in their world, not because you need to feel equal or better than them. Be honest when you don’t know and ask for recommendations rather than simple answers.
Secondly, do more of what you need to do for your team, and do it better. In other words, we think team leaders have many functions, but in essence your role is to create an environment where everyone can do well for the business and feel well doing it. You don’t always need to know exactly how the work is done, but do you need to know what your team needs to get the right things done (like time, resources, relationships, information).
How? Make sure you fully understand the issues; what helps and what hinders. Spend time with them on tasks (shadowing, listening), talking with them about how the tasks went (what did they learn?), and getting feedback from significant partners in the business so you can understand where your team adds value to the business.
Thirdly, focus on relationships with your experts, not the facts about their expertise. In other words, schedule meaningful time with each individual and the whole team off task – who they are, what they aspire to, where they get their energy or motivation, and why they come to work in the first place (purpose, belonging and so on).
Finally, you can bring real value to your team by fully understanding and communicating the bigger picture – the context – for your team’s work. This is critical so you can play a positive role in aligning all that valuable expertise and energy.
To help with this, spend time with peers. Get to know your leaders one level up, and your leaders one level down from your team. Bring those elements together in a compelling narrative that helps your team understand how their pixels interact to make up a great picture for the business. It’s genuinely helpful for the quality and focus of the work, but it will also help individuals in your team connect with the business and feel a part of something.

At the end of the day, it’s about being comfortable and confident in your role as a leader. That’s your job and why you were appointed. You are a professional leader for the team and that’s the contribution you make. Enjoy it!