It’s official. I’m now an expert! How do I know? I’ve just been appointed to an “expert panel” so it must be true. Over the next six months or so I will be working with some eminent scientists on some challenging water quality issues in coastal lakes.

It’s great to be an expert, or at least I feel it should be, but I’m learning that it comes with its own challenges. What I have quickly recognised is that while part of me is pleased with the label, another part of me is going “oh no, what if I’m not expert enough? What if I get it wrong? What if I make a mistake?” In other words, now I’m an expert, the fear of failure is all the greater.

I’ve been pondering over the weekend and have decided on three little strategies to help me confront failure and cope with the inner doubter. Of course, they may not be very helpful, I wonder if they’re wrong….? Oh no what if they don’t work!!

…Ahem. Anyway, here is my plan:

  1. I’m going to keep in mind that on the complex issues we’ll be dealing with as an expert panel, there is never a single right answer. Yet I know that stakeholders, and perhaps my fellow panellists, will at times be looking to me for ‘the answer’, and the urge to meet their expectations will be incredibly strong. But I will try to resist and instead invite them into our shared uncertainty, rather than fall into the expert trap.
  2. I’m going to listen to my own language. Specifically I want to hear myself say “I don’t know” as often as I provide an ‘expert’ answer. This can be hard to do, but I take comfort in my belief that expertise surely resides in knowing the limits to our knowledge?
  3. I will seek to acknowledge the expertise of my fellow panellists, while avoiding putting them in the same expert trap. After all, I’m as comforted as the next person by the ‘right’ answers of specialists, so when I’m feeling uncertain I’ll be just as prone to seek refuge in their expertise, and they will be just as likely to feel pressure to be seen to have an answer for me.

So these three strategies are my way of managing my own fear of failure. If you have experienced something similar, perhaps you could share the ways in which you have been expert in a complex world in which ‘failure’ is unavoidable.