At some point in your leadership career, you may find yourself leading someone who has significantly more experience than you. They may be older than you, have spent decades in your industry or possess technical knowledge that you don’t have.
This can feel intimidating, especially when you believe that being the leader means you should have all the answers. However, leadership isn’t necessarily about being the most experienced person in the room.
In this episode, I share practical ideas for leading experienced people, benefiting from their expertise and maintaining your own leadership authority.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why leading more experienced people is becoming increasingly common.
- How asking for people’s opinions can build trust and motivation.
- Why experienced people may react badly when their expertise is ignored.
- How experienced team members can help develop others.
- Why you shouldn’t defer to experienced employees on every decision.
- How to clarify your decision-making process.
- Why leadership skills can be valuable even when you have less technical experience.
- How your access to senior leaders gives you organisational context that your team may not have.
Resources
What do you think?
Have you led someone who had significantly more experience than you? What helped you build trust and lead them effectively?
Leave a comment on the show notes page or join the discussion on Spotify.
I enjoy your blogs and podcasts. I work for a company doing leadership training. I’ve been with the company for 17 years. Everything was running smoothly with a team that worked well together, liked each other, and collaborated well and often. About a year ago, the company shuffled our leadership chain around. One by one my teammates left the team and we hired new individuals. Both the new leader and the new coworkers came in with a lot of ideas for improvement. Our frustration was that they did not even attempt to understand what we did currently. We were not opposed to change, but we wanted the change to make sense. Any questions asked did not seem to be asked to gain clarity. Instead, they were asked as a way to challenge. Many questions ended with the “don’t you think?” tagged at the end. Almost a year later, I am the last of the original team and I have a transfer pending. Prior to “giving up,” I had many open and honest conversations where I specifically said that I wished I had been asked about changes that I would like to learn more about the challenge we were trying to solve so we could be part of the solution. I was met with nods, but nothing ever changed. As an individual contributor on a team that’s purpose is to train company leaders, how would you recommend us handling this situation?
Hi Vern,
First of all, thanks for your comment – sounds like a tricky situation.
From what you’ve written, it does sound like the leadership shuffle has resulted in a situation where the new leader feels compelled (forced?) to need to change things, or put their own stamp on the team. I find this happens a lot because the new leader feels pressure to make a difference and prove themselves, even though things might be going OK as they are.
Obviously the way they’ve gone about it isn’t great – not really asking to understand, just asking to show that they have “collaborated”. As part of the existing team, it sounds like you might have been tarred with the “old guard” brush and it may be assumed that you are part of the problem (whatever that was perceived to be). As a result, you’re not really getting traction trying to get involved as they seem to be dismissing your opinions.
It seems to me that the leadership shuffle was due to the perception of there being some sort of issue, and so there is a need for change, and staying the same isn’t an option, even if staying the same would be better. Sounds crazy, but as one of my old managers used to say “When it doesn’t make sense, that’s politics”.
I know this response isn’t really helping you, but based on what you’ve written I think your pending transfer is the best option. Sticking around is most likely going to be a long, frustrating exercise and you’d need the existing “things must change” wave to die down before you can get some traction again I’d say.
Cheers,
Ben