Who are the experts & what do they do?
There are people who are, rightly, referred to as experts. I’m sure you can reel off any number of names in your field who are regarded as the gurus.
However, I also believe there are too many people who are not regarded as experts, and it’s the very people who should be seeing these people as experts, who don’t.
Too many bosses fail to recognise the expertise on their staff, and the ramifications of this are far-reaching, eg. lack of employee engagement, loss of productivity or budget blow-outs (due to team building days or an inspirational keynote from a well-regarded expert in the field).
How often have you sat listening to an expert who’s been parachuted in to deliver the same Powerpoint presentation that fifty other schools or organisations have seen?
How often has the meaningful engagement and follow-up from such a presentation been exactly zero? Even despite the good intentions of the bosses and guru-for-hire?
I believe this comes from people misunderstanding their roles in the expert/audience/consumer interaction.
To those of you who read my blog, or listen to me speak – I’m not the expert. You are.
It is not my role to provide solutions – as every school, family or organisation has its own individual issues that need to be factored in. And those of you who have worked with me will know that a One Size Fits All approach is the antithesis of what I’m about.
My role is to ask questions, challenge what you take for granted, provide links to academic research in order to recognise and enhance the capacity of the audience. To build bridges between academia and practice.
The power isn’t in the words I say or write.
The power comes from your challenging, discussing, maybe ignoring, playing with or acting on these ideas with your colleagues – Your fellow experts.
So, use your expertise to work with this idea…
In the next six months, why not have an entire staff development day run entirely by your own staff –
By staff I mean not those in executive or leadership positions. If you like you could base it on the TeachMeet model that I’m sure you’ve heard of by now!
I’d place money on their being more meaningful engagement and follow-up after such a day.
I beleive if we listened to the experts i refer to as family and consumers we can tackle all things including Mental Health of students. They arent listened to, we are clinician heavy and are not progressing. Our kids should come first, so lets listen to them first !!!