How Do You Lead People Who Know More Than You?

Leadership Isn't About Being the Smartest Person in the Room

At some point almost every leader hires someone who's better at the actual craft than they'll ever be. The accountant who understands the numbers on a level you don't, the tradesperson who can diagnose a problem you can't even see. And you're still supposed to lead them.

Coaching is easy when you're the smartest person in the room. Everything you say lands as new information, because it usually is. It gets uncomfortable fast when the person across the table knows more than you do about the thing they're actually doing. My first instinct, more than once, was to either fake knowledge I didn't have or quietly step back and stop leading at all.

Neither one was right. What I had to learn was that leadership was never really about being the most knowledgeable person in the room. It's about the direction, the standard, and the questions — not necessarily the answers.

So instead of pretending, I started asking better questions. I held the standard and the outcome even when I didn't fully understand the mechanics behind it. And I got comfortable saying, "I don't know — walk me through it," out loud, in front of people, without it costing me any authority.

The best thing I ever did in this situation was to level with a person across the table from me. "You've been doing this a lot longer than I have. My job is not to be better at the position than you are, but to make sure that you're set up to do your job really well. I will lean into your expertise a ton."

Re-framing leadership from this perspective: not being the smartest person in the room, but having smart people around you that you can champion toward the cause. It's what leadership really is. It builds trust with your team. It gives you credibility in what your job actually is.

Who on your team already knows more than you about their piece of the business — and what would change if you led them by asking instead of telling?