The wisdom in the room
I think, in a lot of ways, we're all susceptible to the idea that deferring to the "expert" is the best course of action. Of course, there are times when relying on expertise makes a ton of sense to identify right action in a given moment. From listening to the scientists who have poured themselves into understanding COVID-19 and how we can mitigate its impact to hiring someone who can fix your carborator—and beyond—the wisdom of expertise can help make life easier, more fruitful, and, let's face it, more effective.
Sometimes.
If there's anything that my work has shown me over the last five or six years, it's that what's needed to address what's in front of us is probably already in the room. If we can access the conversation at the most appropriate level, and (most importantly) if we can hear one another (not to mention ourselves), odds are, the very thing that we are looking for will emerge. What that looks like, of course, may be surprising. But that's the beauty of listening for what wants to emerge.
It's not uncommon for the folks I'm working with to ask me, directly or indirectly, "what should we do?" It's a valuable question, and sometimes I have a perspective on it. However, the truth is that when I'm working with a group—be it a team or a working group or some other configuration of people—I'm only one of the humans in the room. I carry with me everything that the others have with them: experience, education, skills, blind spots, strengths, weaknesses, etc. *And* odds are that my background doesn't quite line up with theirs in a way that fully understands what is really necessary.
Beware the Dunning-Kruger effect, fellow coaches, consultants, facilitators, and humans!
What I can offer is support to finding their way to the wisdom in the room. Sometimes this means slowing down enough to make space for those who aren't often heard to express themselves. Sometimes it means helping them move toward a more collaborative conversation. Sometimes it means helping them move past a conflict that's keeping people from hearing each other. Sometimes it's something completely different. It all varies.
Expertise has a massive value in the world. To use a personal example, when my father needed open-heart surgery in 1998, I was so glad to know that he was in the hands of one of the top heart surgeons in the San Francisco Bay Area. This person spent most of their professional life perfecting this one thing. I don't know that I'd ask them to come to help me plan my garden.
At the same time, years later, as my father battled Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, he developed the symptoms of pneumonia. So, he went to a pulmonologist, who diagnosed him as such. Problem was, the pulmonologist never talked to his cardiologist down the hall, who would have wanted to look into congestive heart failure. The symptoms can be similar. The treatments are the opposite. Treating for pneumonia can exacerbate congestive heart failure.
It wasn't until those dots were connected that my father saw a swing towards feeling better. Expertise doesn't always get us there. Sometimes we need more than that.
This is an extreme example, and I'd never pretend that we shouldn't have people studying medicine to become experts (though I do believe we need to break down the silos in our healthcare system...but that's for another day). My point here is that the over-emphasis on expertise—from the way we hire in jobs (5 years experience required for this entry-level role!) to how we think about our day-to-day work—can limit our capacities to get new information, innovate, and build something utterly new.
Those who know me know that it's that utterly new thing that fires me up. It's what I look for in the clients I'm working with: do they want to maintain some kind of status quo or, worse, make anything "great again"? Or do they want to find their way into a new future, one that works better for all of us (and by "us" I mean everything, planet included)?
I see no other way to do that than tap into the wisdom in the room. Every room, with every group of humans, has wisdom in it. That wisdom is needed in different ways at different times, but it's there. Let's find the way to tap into it.
This little ditty was inspired by a conversation I got to have with some colleagues that I meet with on a fairly regular basis. Each of them has taught me something about the work we do and about myself. I'm deeply grateful for them and so appreciate the wisdom they bring forward whenever we gather.
