When the Employee You Are Managing Knows More About the Work Than You

It’s not at all uncommon for managers finding themselves managing people whose work they are not sufficiently expert in to manage substantively.

The question for managers in this situation is: “How can you set expectations for, much less coach and evaluate the performance of an employee who knows more about the job than you do”?

Of course, the employee you are supposed to be managing may find the situation a bit frustrating: “How can you be in charge of me when you don’t have the knowledge, experience, understanding, or skill necessary to do my job?” That doesn’t make your job any easier.

The challenge is to establish yourself as a credible performance coach to a technical expert when you are not an expert yourself. How do you develop the meaningful performance metrics and put yourself in a position to provide regular coaching and feedback?

Step One: start learning. You don’t have to become an expert on the work the person is doing. But you do have to learn enough to manage that person. How do you learn? First and foremost, you will learn by being a hands-on manager with that person over time. Sometimes you have to shadow the expert for a while. Watch her work. See what she actually does and how. Get curious. Read. Watch a video. Ask a lot of questions. 

You don’t have to become a doctor to learn a whole lot about a particular medical condition, what to expect, what are the best treatments, what is the best self-care protocol, and how and when will we know if the treatment is working as expected. When it comes to managing your expert employees, learn like you care.
 
Step Two: every step of the way, think of yourself as a shrewd client and your direct report as a professional you’ve hired. If you are managing a “professional” then you need to know what the professional and industry standards are for performance: What are the professional standards and established best practices? 

What data is available on the individual’s performance? Are there self-monitoring tools that the expert uses to track her own performance? Is there a peer review process to which your expert is subject? If not, how can you begin to monitor, measure and document the expert’s actual performance against those professional standards and best practices?

Step Three: if you are going to have experts working for you, then you need to make sure they are high performers, or at least aspiring to be so. You can’t have low performers on your team whose work you don’t really understand. You want them working systemically and consistently on trying to get better. The challenge is to be their coach when you’re not an expert in their field.

In your regular ongoing one-on-one dialogue with your expert employees:

• It’s OK that you don’t know or understand everything the person is doing. But it’s not OK to remain in the dark and trust. Keep doing your research and self-education. And make it clear to your expert that you are on a learning path.

• Focus on desired outcomes. Be a smart, assertive, careful patient or client. Ask good probing questions every step of the way. If you don’ understand the answers, say so. Ask more questions. Don’t allow yourself to be brushed off. Get a second opinion—and a third.

• Engage the expert and make him complicit in spelling out expectations. Ask for details: “Exactly what are you going to do? Why? How are you going to do that? Why? What the steps? What is involved in each step? How long will each step take? Why? What are the guidelines and specifications?” If the answers are vague, press for details. If the answers are complex, ask for explanations a lay person can understand.

• Every step of the way, make reference to professional standards and established best practices and ask how the expectations being spelled out and the actual performance being measured align.

• As you monitor and measure performance, stay focused on the desired outcomes, the expectations the expert has helped spell out, and the standards and best practices. Use any and all data that is automatically captured about the expert’s performance, and ask the expert to help you understand the data. Engage the expert in using self-monitoring tools. Look at the work product and keep asking questions: “Did you do what you said you were going to do? Why or why not? How did you do it? How long did each step take?

• Every step of the way, document the fundamentals of your conversations. What expectations were established? As you documenting performance, ask the expert employee to tell you what she thinks you should document and why.

Over time, you may never become an expert, but you will know more. You will get to know the person’s work better, as well as his work habits and track record. You will be able to tell whether the person is on or off track. Certainly, you will learn enough to hold the person accountable to clear metrics and provide regular ongoing course-correcting feedback, keeping that person on track of continuous improvement toward elite performance.

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.