Recently, @moonball tweeted a quote from Scott Stratten’s book “UNMarketing: Stop Marketing, Stop Engaging” that read:

“You may not be the expert in the field, but you can certainly be an expert.”

“I like that, as I struggle with this, too,” @moonball added in context.

Reading this and agreeing, I found myself responding:

“I try to think of expertise as a team sport. We all have a role, something to contribute and room to grow/learn.”

Upon reflection, I think this is mostly accurate. In any given field or specialty, whether it’s social media or interior design or gardening, the body of expertise is not the product of one mind alone. The point I think I was really reaching for, however, was that in this day and age, expertise has become democratized — we all have the capacity to become experts, and that’s a wonderful thing.

Expertise is a commodity. At some point in my journalism education, I learned that the key to being a good journalist was having the capacity to become an expert on anything. If you work a beat, you should have a solid base of knowledge to allow you to master whatever story lands on your desk . And if you work on assignment, you better have sharp research skills and a sense of the right questions to ask, so you can become an expert on the fly.

But real expertise requires a certain skill set. For me, expertise is about knowledge first and foremost, but it’s also about 1) the ability to communicate that knowledge and (most importantly) 2) earning the confidence of your audience.  Knowledge without trust is not expertise; it’s like data out of context. Similarly, knowledge that is poorly conveyed is like a letter lodged in the mail chute — never received and thus never read.

Like Stratten said, we all have the ability to be experts in our respective fields. But the depth of what we call expertise is directly proportional to our volume of knowledge, our ability to communicate it and the trust our audience has in what we say. In short, experts should add value to the ongoing discourse about any given subject.

But even if we master that formula, we don’t always feel comfortable asserting that expertise, because in some cases, “expert” has become a bad word. Most often, this comes when knowledge is thrown around outside the proper contexts of effective communication and trust.

Should You Consider Yourself an Expert?

In his book, Stratten goes on, talking about how he often sees business owners making the mistake of not having enough experience to consider themselves experts. But in order to run your business, he says, you have to be an expert. Your customers/audience/constituents are counting on it.

What is stopping you from calling yourself one of the experts in your field? … You are an expert when you say you are one… This doesn’t mean you can become an expert in something you know nothing about… Once you have that base set, if you don’t have the confidence to call yourself an expert then you really need to look at yourself. You have to ask, “Why would my customer try to hire me  if I don’t think I’m great at what I do?”

Stanford Smith echoed this in a recent blog post, in which he passionately advocated for people to embrace their expertise and not be afraid to shout it out. Why? Experts, says Smith, are also defined by the fact that they “build a brand and business around their ability” by continually learning, doing and sharing.  ”People need experts,” says Smith.

They have value because they have done the research, legwork, and training that we can’t do on our own.  Not only that, we rely on experts to see further down the road than we can.  We cherish their insight and lean on their wisdom.  Having an expert means that you can shortcut the process and achieve your goals quicker.

Don’t Be a SMDB

But, Stratten explains, there is an importance difference between claiming your own expertise and disclaiming the expertise of others.

People who claim to be the top expert in a certain field often do it in a way that excludes everyone else… Really, nobody can claim that… A self-proclaimed expert in social media, the one who says that he or she is the expert in social media, in a field that didn’t exist a year or two ago, should best be avoided.

Stratten is right. I feel like the word “expert” implies some sort of a hierarchy, as if somewhere there is a Billboard chart that ranks the top minds in any given field. I think this is part of what makes it a loaded word. “Expert” has come to imply exclusivity, even arrogance. This sullies the trust that is a critical component of real expertise.

It often seems like there are two camps — the self-professed web/social media gurus, and the people who hate them. I feel like the people who believe that Billboard chart really exists is the group that gives experts a bad rap.  Especially in the emerging communications fields I traffic in, there are a lot of pretenders to the throne. (Of course, the truth is that there is no throne — or if there is, content or context or something like that is occupying it.)

Smith speculates that some are reluctant to embrace the label of expert because they are afraid of being targeted by detractors or perceived as arrogant — the SMDBs out there have made them gun-shy.

The War Against Expertise

A quick Google search of expertise-related quotes turns up a lot of naysayers from throughout history — indications that our trust in experts is fragile at best:

“An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.” – educator Nicholas Murray Butler.

“Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done and why. Then do it.” – author Robert Heinlein

“We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.” – British politician Harold Macmillan

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few.” – Zen master Shunryu Suzuki

In the social media field, as well, there are those who disavow or play down the value of claiming to be an expert. Last month, L.A. Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey tweeted, ”There are no social media experts… only practitioners and evangelists.” My friend Mason Dyer quoted Jason Falls speaking at CASE Kentucky on Dec. 9 as saying, ”Even social media ‘experts’ aren’t experts. We’re all just practicing.”

And that is completely true, in a sense. We’re all figuring this out. We’re all students — and we should never stop being students. But are students and experts mutually exclusive identities? I don’t think so.

I think the word “expert” has also come to imply a totality of knowledge, as if expertise is defined by having learned all there is to learn about a given topic and no longer being able to take in new knowledge or have old knowledge refuted. If anything, an expert should be someone who is committed to the lifelong learning and sharing of knowledge, including occasionally being proven wrong or enlightened by someone else’s great idea.

I believe that the communication skills and trust required to shape knowledge into expertise (by my definition, anyway) help reinforce this idea of what an expert is by making expertise by its very nature a conversation, not a declaration.

Expertise is never complete. It isn’t a race with a finish line. It is a team sport, as I posited above, in the sense that it is through the collective learning and sharing of knowledge that progress is made. But it is as individuals that we develop the connections that build and share our expertise. Like Stanford Smith said, “People need experts.” They need someone to cheer, someone to hold accountable and someone to help lead the way. So, let’s step up.  I’m all for reclaiming the word “expert.” Who’s with me?

Photo by maile/Flickr Creative Commons