Your Employee Knows More Than You. Here's How To Lead Them.

You just got put in charge of somebody who has been doing this job longer than you have. Maybe a lot longer. So you rehearse answers in the car, you jump in first in meetings, and you try to sound like you know more than they do. They can tell. Everybody can tell.

When you manage someone who knows more than you, it is easy to think your job is to catch up. It is not. There are two jobs in that relationship. Their job is to know the work. Your job is to lead the team. Most new managers mix those up and either compete with the expert or cave to them every single time.

Researchers Bradley Owens and David Hekman studied leaders at every level, from CEOs to frontline supervisors, to see what humble leadership looks like when it actually works. It came down to three behaviors: admitting what you do not know, pointing out the strengths of the people around you, and being teachable where people can see it. They also found humility cannot be faked, and that leaders who were still proving themselves got less credit for it. Humble is not enough. Humble plus doing your job is what earns it.

In this episode John Espinosa walks through The Two Jobs, three moves for leading someone who knows more than you do.

ONE. SPLIT THE JOB. Sit down one on one this week and say it out loud. You know this work better than I do. My job is not to know more than you. My job is to make sure this team wins, and to make the call when a call has to be made. Then ask what you should know that nobody is going to tell you.

TWO. LEARN OUT LOUD. Stop asking quietly behind a closed door. Ask in the open: you have seen this before, what am I missing? Then give credit in the open, by name, when their idea works.

THREE. KEEP THE CALL. Their experience is your best input, but it is still input. When you go a different direction, go back to them first: here is what you told me, here is what I decided, here is why. And if you were wrong, say so.

This is new manager leadership at the point where it shapes the whole team: not whether you know the most, but whether everybody knows whose job is whose.

WHO THIS IS FOR New managers leading people with more experience, first time managers inheriting a seasoned team, and experienced managers who still lead people who know parts of the work better than they do. -------------------------------- Get my coaching frameworks behind the scenes. One idea and one small shift to your inbox every week. Start here: https://www.thejohnespinosa.com/start-here

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