Are You an Expert?
I just saw a training video and in it, I learned that I don’t need to be an expert to create a business, I just need to know a little more than the person I’m helping.
I believe this. I love how we can all extend a hand to the person behind us while grabbing the hand of the person in front. It is through the helpful hands around us that we grow.
I love shedding light on someone’s problem.
I love being the one who comes up with the solution.
But does being one step in front of someone make me an expert?
I picked up a very controversial book from the library, “The Cult of the Amateur: How Blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today’s user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values” by Andrew Keen. The title made me gulp.
The book is written by a self-proclaimed elitist. He feels there is a very different, very tangible difference between the advice you find in an article on Wikipedia, written by an amateur, and an article by a professeur who has studied a topic for decades.
When everyone becomes an expert and hosts their own private YouTube channel, quality suffers, he claims.
At first blush, I am appalled. Haven’t we all had experiences where the kid next door fixes the computer problem that your “expert” missed? Your Aunt Joan paints pictures that rivel anything you’ve seen in a museum.
Proclaimed “experts” have let us down countless times.
Yet–perhaps he has a point.
When I take a yoga class, I can feel a tangible difference in the teaching from the teacher who has lived, breathed and eaten yoga for years, with the one who thinks yoga is cool.
When I listen to talk radio, I may be intrigued with the caller’s questions, but it’s the expert who has been in the trenches for years who gives me the insights I value the most.
I can get help from anyone who knows more than I, but there is “solidness”, a depth, an authority to the person who has mastery.
And a master is rare.
I think we can all be helpful to each other. I think we all pocess expertise. But to be a master, to contribute to the world in a unique way, you must have more. You must have a devotion to your topic which makes you stand out among the crowd.
We can all become an expert at something. But will we all become a master?