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I need to be an expert

 

Storytelling isn’t worth a penny if the people you’re speaking to don’t believe you. You may be the most eloquent speaker of all-time and a master at pontificating your position, but if someone thinks you’re full of it, you’re going nowhere. For me, it isn’t about credibility or trustworthiness, because I have those attributes with my coworkers. Instead, it’s really about knowing what I’m talking about and having the expertise to do my job well.

Currently, as Director of Business Development & Real Estate, I have the expertise to command the business development side of the house, but I lack the knowledge in real estate. Expertise takes time to build (Whalen, 2007, p. 124). Although I don’t intend to get my real estate license or become a broker, I know I need to step up my game and take a deeper dive into the subject. Here is how I intend to do that and improve my expertise.

I need to take the time to focus and study the subject of real estate a lot more closely than I have. Being a subject matter expert in other subjects has helped me with other tasks in my career and I know it would help here. I will start by taking an hour a day to set aside for review of real estate contracts, processes and procedures so that I don’t need to constantly reference those anymore. I will lean on my resident real estate experts more and setup time once a week to cover real estate specific tasks. I won’t go so far as to say I will take a real estate class, but I will investigate real estate webinars or online training sessions that can give me short bursts of information I can use as knowledge moving forward. I will be more confident in my knowledge so that I have the appearance to my coworkers that I know what I’m doing. Of course, having the knowledge will breed more confidence, but I need to focus on what people see of me and thus, I need to appear like I’m an expert, even if I’m still learning. Finally, I need to ask for support from my family. They’re already very supportive of my position at my real job, but they also support me with my time as City Commissioner for our town, vice-president for our neighborhood association and as I work hard every morning and night for my master’s degree. I need to ask them yet again to help support me as I learn more about my role so that I can excel at it.

To increase my expertise in my workplace, I need to continue to be authentic and show people who I am. An effective leader’s life story is authentic, something that comes from inner conviction (Denning, 2011, p. 97). Having the ability to learn more about my craft is a fun and exciting thing to do. I feel like I’m doing well, but I must do more. Through this action plan, I can be more credible with my teams and we in turn can become more effective in our jobs.

References

Denning, S. (2011). The leader's guide to storytelling: Mastering the art and discipline of business narrative (2nd ed.). San Francisco, Calif: Jossey-Bass.

Whalen, D.J. (2007). The Professional Communications Toolkit. SAGE Publications.

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