Monday Mentor-Week 32-Overuse of Expert Power

The overuse of expert power is one of the most common challenges among new and emerging leaders and can lead to some serious disconnects with a work team.



Expert power is the technical skills, knowledge and expertise that you have amassed during your career. It is your experience and understanding of how things get done and how they should be done. It is you being an expert in your field. It is also the organizational savvy you have grown to understand during your tenure with your company. It is the who does what to whom and what can and cannot be done within the organizational culture.

As indicated previously, some expertise is needed to preserve credibility with your team and within the organization. You must know the basic functions of what goes on and how it is done but you do not have to know everything. That is why you have team members.

The challenge with new and emerging leaders comes from the fact that most of them are promoted from the ranks in which they will now supervise and manage. They were expert doers so now they will become the leader of doers. It is the promotion of people for technical abilities and success and not based on leadership skills and competencies that cause problems here.

It also is a challenge in smaller environments when the owner, founder or original entrepreneur begins to hire team members.


New and emerging leaders often struggle with the awkwardness of leadership. The communication, tone setting, coaching and decision making needed to be effective is difficult for them so they retreat back to where they were previously successful. Doing things. Things that should be done by team members. After all, they were promoted because they were the best doer. What occurs in this environment is a complete drain of leadership and results will suffer shortly.

The other phenomenon attached to the overuse of expert power is that team members have room to participate or contribute. This will lead directly and quickly to sheep breeding. Why should they make suggestions or innovate, when you have all the answers and expertise? The effective leader must be more concerned with sharing expertise and growing the knowledge base of team members rather than protecting and reinforcing their own expert power.