Experience vs Expertise at Work: Are You Actually Learning?

The Problem With Time Served

0:21 SPEAKER_00: This great story teaches us something about being human. I'm Cheryl Paris and this is Work Stress Anxiety. Together, let's borrow a little wisdom from a story to help us navigate a very modern world.

0:43 SPEAKER_01: Have you ever heard someone say quite proudly I've been doing this for twenty years and somewhere inside your head a slightly less polite voice says Yes, but have you actually learnt anything new in any of that? Because twenty years of experience sounds impressive. Twenty years sounds solid, dependable senior. It looks so good on your CV. It certainly looks good when somebody wants you to stop questioning what they're doing. I've been doing this for twenty years. End of discussion, idiot. Except it shouldn't necessarily be the end of the discussion because there is definitely a difference between having 20 years of experience and having one year of experience repeated 20 times.

1:43 SPEAKER_01: And that distinction matters far more than we sometimes want to admit.

A Quick Listener Thank You

1:50 SPEAKER_01: Before we get into that, I want to say a little thank you to someone listening in New York who recently listened to my episode when AI Makes You Look More Capable Than You Feel. Thanks for spending some of your time with me. I never take these things lightly because wherever you happen to be listening, you could be doing a hundred other things. And there is something rather lovely about knowing that this episode recorded here can find its way across the Atlantic and become part of someone else's day.

2:27 SPEAKER_01: So thank you very much.

Experience Needs Reflection To Matter

2:29 SPEAKER_01: Now, experience on its own has never, dare I say, impressed me that much. Ooh, I can hear you thinking. I don't mean that disrespectfully. Experience matters, of course it does. Experience gives us material, it gives us situations, problems, mistakes, successes, awkward conversations, things we wish we had handled differently, occasionally things we handled beautifully and would quite happily like to have engraved on some plaque somewhere. But experience is only, I think, the raw material. It's what we do with the experience afterwards that begins to turn it into, I think, something useful.

3:20 SPEAKER_01: Reflection, feedback, adjustment, being willing to say, well, okay, that didn't work, or perhaps that's slightly more uncomfortable. I didn't handle that particularly well. Because imagine walking the same path every morning for 20 years. You know every corner, you know every tree, you know every weed, every awkward bit of pavement. You probably walk while thinking about what you're gonna have for dinner. You certainly know the path, you know exactly a path really well, doesn't automatically mean it's still the best route.

4:05 SPEAKER_01: Perhaps somebody built a bridge five years ago. Perhaps there's a short now a shorter route. Perhaps half the path is collapsing into a ditch, and you're still there marching down it thinking, I know what I know. I walked this way for the past 20 years. Familiarity can look remarkably like expertise from the outside, but sometimes from the inside to.

The Questions That Reveal Growth

4:39 SPEAKER_01: This is where this is getting interesting, I think, in the workplace, because we are very good at counting things that are easy to count. Years of experience, uh, years of service, job titles, qualifications, the number of people I manage, how long somebody has been in the organization. Wisdom, I think, is much more inconvenient. You can't put that wisdom neatly in a spreadsheet because genuine learning I think asks a rather different question. Not how long have you been doing this, but what changed because you did it?

5:32 SPEAKER_01: What changed because you did it? What did you notice? What did you learn? What do you do differently now? What assumption did you have that you've let go of? What feedback did you initially dislike, possibly quite intensely, before realizing that might have been something useful? Because that is where experience starts, I think, to become expertise, when something changes because you've learnt from what has happened, and this can be particularly difficult when people, I think, or when the person with the experience, right, is your manager.

When Seniority Overrides Reality

6:24 SPEAKER_01: Oh dear, because hierarchy adds another little kind of ingredient to the soup. You may notice something isn't working, you may see the same situation happen repeatedly, the same communication problem, the same reaction when someone raises a concern, the same decision producing the same difficulty. And yet, there may be this unspoken expectation that seniority means you should automatically trust the judgment behind it. Sometimes that leaves you questioning yourself. You think, well, they've been doing it this long.

7:09 SPEAKER_01: They've been doing it much longer than I have been doing it. Perhaps I missed something. And sometimes you probably, you know, you probably are. That is worth saying. Someone with more experience may have context that you just don't yet have. They may understand pressures and consequences that you can't see. And you know, this isn't an invitation to decide that everybody above you is incompetent because you disagree with them. That would be one, just convenient, but not terribly useful. This is a simple invitation to separate two things that often get glued together with super glue.

7:54 SPEAKER_01: Time served and learning gained. They're not the same thing. And perhaps once you begin separating them out, you may also stop automatically silencing your own observations. You can respect someone's experience without treating it as infallible. You can think, yeah, they've got 20 years of experience. At the same time, ask what evidence is there that their approach has developed during those 20 years? Both thoughts can actually exist at the same time. I don't see that as being disrespectful, I see that as discernment.

AI Polish Versus Real Judgment

8:35 SPEAKER_01: And I think AI is making this distinction even more important now. Because AI can make competency look incredibly polished, it can produce that beautiful report, a really convincing email, a presentation that looks as though someone spent three days on it when actually they spent 11 minutes and had a cup of tea halfway through. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I use AI myself, right? It can be extraordinarily useful. But one of the things I've noticed is that a polished outcome and developed judgment are still different things.

9:25 SPEAKER_01: AI can help somebody sound as though they understand something.

9:44 SPEAKER_01: So perhaps the question becomes less about who sounds more impressive and more about what happens when reality pushes back. Can this person reconsider? Can this person repair? Can they receive feedback? Can they change course? Can they say, you know, I thought this was the right approach. Looking at what's happened, I think we need to do something differently. Now, to me, that sentence tells me far more about someone's expertise than simply telling me how many years they've been doing the job.

Stop Silencing Your Own Insight

10:24 SPEAKER_01: And if these conversations around work stress, leadership, and reality behind apparent conversity are useful to you, you can follow work stressanxiety at follow thepodcast.com forward slash work stressanxiety. That way the next episode can find you rather than relying on you remembering to come looking for it.

10:54 SPEAKER_01: So bear with me because I think it's incredibly easy to listen to an episode like this and immediately think of someone else. You know the person, their face appears approximately seven minutes ago. But this question is far more useful when we apply it to ourselves. Where have you become very experienced at doing something the same way? Perhaps you have managed people for years, perhaps you've dealt with conflict for years, perhaps you've coped with pressure for years, perhaps you spent years being the reliable person, the one who sorts everything out, and perhaps you've become incredibly experienced at coping in a way that no longer particularly is good for you.

11:51 SPEAKER_01: That's still experience, isn't it? It may, it just may not be learning. You know, sometimes we repeat a pattern for so long that familiarity becomes masquerading as proof. That's just how it works. This is how it's always been done. This is how I've always managed stress. This is how leadership works. This is how I am. And one of the most useful things you may begin to notice is that familiarity does not mean inevitability. A well-worn path is simply a path that you've walked many times. You still are allowed to look up.

One Small Experiment For Change

12:41 SPEAKER_01: So I want to give you a small experiment, just a small one, nothing dramatic, okay? No colour-coded worksheets to do here. Just what just I want you to just take one recurring situation, just one, and ask yourself this. What do I do differently now because of what's happened last time? That's it. Perhaps think about a difficult conversation or a boundary you've been, you know, maybe struggling with, a meeting that repeatedly frustrates you, a way you respond when someone challenges you, a mistake you you made more than once, and ask, what do I do differently now because of what happened last time?

13:36 SPEAKER_01: If you have a clear answer, absolutely wonderful. That is evidence of learning. If the answer is actually not much, that isn't a reason to criticize yourself either. That's information, and information gives us somewhere to begin because the value of reflection is not sitting around endlessly examining yourself until you become your own extremely tedious documentary. The value of noticing what might be worth changing next time, and perhaps then if something quietly reassures you in that, great, because you don't have to wait another 10 years to become wiser.

14:25 SPEAKER_01: You don't need another job title, you don't need another collection of years simply so that someone takes you more seriously. Guess what? You can learn from what has already happened, you can notice, adjust, try again, and sometimes that means recognizing that someone with fewer years may have learnt something you haven't. Sometimes it means recognizing that you don't know more than your job title suggests, and sometimes it means realizing realizing that that the person confidently announcing their 20 years of experience may simply have become extremely efficient at walking the same path.

The Takeaway To Carry Forward

15:19 SPEAKER_01: So today, rather than asking how long you have been doing something, ask what has actually changed because you have been doing it. Because time gives us experience, but time alone does not guarantee growth. Your tiny challenge today is to choose one situation that tends to repeat itself and ask, what do I do differently now because of what happened last time? Then listen to the answer without trying to make it impressive. And if there is one sentence I would like you to carry away from this episode, it is this experience becomes expertise when something changes because you learnt from it.

16:13 SPEAKER_01: Remember, every step you take, no matter how small, is a step towards a brighter, more balanced future. Trust your journey and remember progress is progress no matter the pace. Bye for now.

16:31 SPEAKER_01: I hope today's episode gave you something useful to carry into your week. Now, finish your coffee, take a breath, and remember progress is progress no matter the pace. Until next time, bye for now.