In today’s increasingly complex workplaces, leaders need to be experts who can make the best decisions for their team. But how do you succeed at leadership over areas where your expertise is limited? That’s what I’ll be asking my guest, Wanda Wallace, in this episode of Leadership Biz Cafe.
Wanda is the managing partner of Leadership Forum, where she coaches leaders and works with teams to improve leadership capability. Prior to founding Leadership Forum she was the executive Vice President at Duke Corporate Education, Associate Dean of Executive Education at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, as well as assistant professor in marketing.
Wanda has worked with American Express, Deutsche Bank, Ford Motor Company, GlaxoSmithKline, Morgan Stanley, and JP Morgan Chase, and has also written several academic publications.
Wanda is also the author of several books, including her latest “You Can’t Know It All – Leading In the Age of Deep Expertise”, which serves as the focus of this episode’s conversation.
Over the course of this episode, some of the things you’ll learn include:
- What signs to look for to help you know when to rely on your own expertise and when you need to reach out and tap into the expertise of your employees.
- How leaders can redefine the value they create through their leadership when you need to lead a team of experts who know more than you.
- How to shift from doing things right to doing the right things (and knowing what those are).
- Why the idea of climbing the career ladder into leadership roles is actually misleading and can lead you to fail at leadership.
- Why it’s critical for leaders to broaden their network beyond the people who rely on them for insights or answers.
If you enjoy my conversation with Wanda, please do me a favour and share this episode with your colleagues and employees. You can also share with them our podcast page, where you can not only listen to every episode of my leadership podcast using the built-in player, but you will find links to subscribe to my show on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and more.
Noteworthy Links:
- Buy Wanda’s book “You Can’t Know It All” on Amazon (or Amazon.ca for Canadian readers).
- Read my article mentioned in the episode – Are You Supporting Your Organization’s New Leaders To Succeed?
- Learn more about Wanda’s work – www.leadership-forum.com
Wonderful interview and very good advice from Wanda. May I also add that we as leaders spend a lot of time and effort to find good, intelligent, capable people to work for us. The fact that they may know more than us should be celebrated and not micromanaged to limit their effectiveness, like Wanda alluded to.
Thanks Denny, I’m glad you enjoyed our conversation. And I wholeheartedly agree with you that leaders should celebrate and elevate their employees for being the expert in the room, instead of diminishing their voices out of a misplaced and misguided notion of what it really means to lead. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on what we discussed in this episode, Denny.