By Leslie Rohonczy, IMC™, PCC
Executive Coach | Leadership Development Expert | Author | Speaker | ©2026 | www.leslierohonczy.com
Congratulations on the promotion. You’re now leading a group of people who know considerably more about their work than you do. You have solid leadership experience and a record of getting results, but somewhere between accepting the role and attending your first team meeting, a nagging question surfaces: “What happens when they realize how much I don’t know?”
Perhaps you’ve inherited an established team of specialists, or maybe you’re hiring people for expertise you don’t have. Either way, you’re now responsible for work you couldn’t personally step in and do.
Your team members may have questions, too. Will you understand what they need? Will they spend the next six months explaining their work to someone who then overrules them?
Those are reasonable concerns on both sides. How you respond will depend partly on what you believe you must know and prove, in order to earn their trust.
YOUR LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE DOESN’T EXEMPT YOU FROM LEARNING
You may have been on the receiving end of well-meaning reassurance offered to leaders in your position: “You don’t need to understand the work. You just need to lead the people.”
Sorry, but it’s more complicated than that. You need enough understanding to grasp the decisions you’re making and the consequences you’re accepting. You don’t need to become an engineer to lead the engineering function. You do, however, need to understand what it means when engineers warn that a deadline creates unacceptable risk. You also need the curiosity and humility to explore their concerns before committing them to work whose consequences you don’t fully understand.
The learning task is substantial, even for an experienced leader. You’re developing the knowledge your new responsibilities require, while relying on people whose judgment you’re still getting to know. People who will notice whether you build on what they’ve explained and apply it to later decisions, or not.
NOTICE WHAT YOU EXPECT YOURSELF TO PROVE
You can believe wholeheartedly in hiring people who know more than you do, and still feel uncomfortable when their expertise exposes a gap in your own understanding. Intellectually, you welcome their knowledge. Personally, you’d prefer that they didn’t see how much explaining you need.
That discomfort deserves your attention because it can shape your behavior before you even recognize what’s happening. You might offer an opinion before you’ve understood the problem, avoid a basic question, or insist on approving decisions your specialists are qualified and authorized to make.
Underneath those behaviors may be an expectation you haven’t examined: If I’m the leader, I should have the answer. I should be able to judge every recommendation. Important decisions should come through me.
Those expectations can follow an experienced leader into a new role, even when they’d never impose them on anyone else. You can understand the value of shared expertise and still measure your own worth by how often you’re needed.
Ego can enter through that gap. Wanting to contribute and earn respect is understandable. But when you feel compelled to prove your value in every discussion, your team may end up managing your need to feel knowledgeable, not just the work itself.
Imagine a specialist answering a question directly and thoroughly. You have nothing useful to add, but feel an urge to put your stamp on the answer anyway. Before speaking, consider: What would my contribution improve? What am I afraid my silence would suggest?
The same reflection applies to decisions. Are you retaining a decision because it requires your authority, or because letting someone else make it leaves you wondering what your role is?
You don’t need to criticize yourself for having these reactions. You do need to notice them early enough to choose how you respond. Sometimes that means asking the question you’re embarrassed to ask. Sometimes it means saying, “You have the expertise and authority to make this decision. What support do you need from me to make it?”
Your own development includes becoming comfortable with work progressing well without requiring your answer or approval. That creates more space for the responsibilities that do need your leadership.
FIND OUT WHAT THIS TEAM NEEDS FROM YOU
Imagine an experienced leader taking responsibility for a specialized Centre of Expertise team. At an early meeting, the team presents a difficult problem. The new leader listens, draws on a similar situation from a previous role, and suggests an approach that worked there. The team explains why it won’t work here. The leader offers a variation, and the discussion becomes increasingly strained.
Later, the leader wonders why the team seems resistant. The team wonders why someone with so little knowledge of their work is already prescribing solutions.
Perhaps two departments have given the team competing priorities, and neither will budge. Perhaps the specialists have repeatedly flagged a risk that hasn’t reached the person who can act on it. They may know how to do the work but lack the authority to move the boulder in the road that’s preventing it.
Before offering an answer, the leader could ask: “Where are you stuck, and what would be useful from me?”
Then comes the work of interpreting what you hear. If the team asks for more resources, what is driving the shortfall? If they need a decision, who has the authority to make it, and why hasn’t it happened? Your leadership experience helps you examine the conditions surrounding the work, even while you’re learning about the work itself.
You can also ask what they need you to preserve. An incoming leader who focuses exclusively on fixing things may disrupt relationships or practices that already serve the team well. “What’s working here that you’d be concerned about losing?” can reveal something a list of problems won’t.
These conversations help you develop a shared understanding of your role. You might say: “You’ll lead the technical recommendation. I’ll work with you to resolve the competing priorities and secure the decision with the Executive team. Let’s identify where you need my involvement and where it would slow you down.”
Your team can then assess your leadership through what you do with their expertise. Do you represent their concerns accurately? Do you resolve the competing priorities? When you make a commitment, do you follow through?
LEARN HOW TO ASSESS JUDGMENT
One of the harder questions in this transition is how to evaluate advice you can’t fully verify yourself. “Trust the experts” sounds straightforward until two experts disagree.
You’ll need to learn how your specialists arrive at their recommendations. Confidence and fluency can make advice sound persuasive, but they don’t establish its quality. A specialist who speaks cautiously may be recognizing complexities that someone else has overlooked.
Useful questions include:
What options did you consider, and why are you recommending this one?
Which assumptions matter most to your recommendation?
Where would another qualified expert disagree with you and why?
What evidence would cause you to reconsider?
What independent review would be appropriate before we commit?
When experts disagree, ask them to identify precisely where their reasoning diverges. Are they relying on different evidence? Making different assumptions? Giving different weight to the same risks?
For example, one specialist may favor an approach because it offers greater reliability, while another favors an alternative because it can be implemented sooner. Understanding that difference helps you measure it against strategic direction, and to identify what needs further technical assessment before a leadership decision can be made.
Resist the temptation to side with whoever sounds most certain or confirms your initial preference or solution. Ask each person to explain in their own words what would have to be true for the other recommendation to make sense. Their answers can expose assumptions that would otherwise remain hidden.
For decisions with significant consequences, you may need another qualified person to assess the technical recommendation. Recognizing that need is part of exercising judgment. You remain responsible for ensuring the decision receives appropriate scrutiny, even when you can’t provide all of it yourself.
MAKE YOUR QUESTIONS EASIER TO ANSWER HONESTLY
Speaking of scrutiny, a new leader’s questions carry weight. Genuinely curious, powerful questions are one of the biggest contributions you can make as a newcomer to this team. But without the right framing, they could have the opposite effect. What feels like curiosity to you may sound like criticism to someone who doesn’t yet know or trust your intentions.
“Why do you do it that way?” can be a useful question. It can also sound like, “Please defend this ridiculous practice.” It helps if you explain what you’re trying to understand: “I’m learning how the work fits together. What led to this approach, and what constraints does it address?” That leaves space to discover that an apparently cumbersome process serves a legitimate purpose. It also makes it easier to ask the basic questions you might otherwise avoid for fear of looking uninformed.
Your fresh perspective may reveal outdated practices and assumptions others no longer question. But before proposing change, learn enough about the context to be able to distinguish needless complexity from the essential safeguards.
As I explored in Has Your Experience Become a Liability?, previous success can influence what we’re willing to consider. In a new field, or with a new team of experts, familiar solutions deserve examination before they become decisions or instructions.
BE CLEAR ABOUT WHERE YOUR AUTHORITY APPLIES
Respecting expertise doesn’t mean you have to agree with every recommendation. Your specialists may offer excellent advice within their discipline, but lack visibility into other considerations that you’re responsible for.
A technically strong proposal may need more resources than are available. A preferred solution may create unintended consequences elsewhere in the organization. An innovative project may be exciting but misaligned with the organization’s strategic direction. You may need to choose a workable option that leaves some people disappointed.
If you accept the technical advice but decide that another consideration takes precedence, say so. Avoid implying that the specialists’ analysis was wrong just because you chose a different course. You might offer: “I accept your assessment of the risk. Given our current constraints, I’m choosing this option, and I’ll take responsibility for that trade-off. Let’s agree on what we need to monitor and when we would revisit it.”
There will also be boundaries you can’t responsibly cross. A budget or deadline doesn’t erase professional standards or legal obligations. Part of your learning is understanding which constraints allow for discretion and which require qualified guidance.
This is another moment to pause and examine what you expect of yourself as a leader. Feeling responsible for the outcome can tempt you to take over decisions that belong elsewhere. Being clear about authority includes recognizing when your involvement is necessary (which is about the work) and when your discomfort (which is about you) is asking for more control.
As explored in Leadership Altitude, your attention needs to match the responsibilities of your role. Here, that means developing enough understanding to lead responsibly while allowing your specialists to exercise their full expertise.
YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE
If you’ve recently taken responsibility for an expert team, choose one important decision you’ll face in the next few weeks. Write down what you understand well enough to judge, and where you’re relying on someone else’s expertise.
Before the conversation, ask yourself: What am I expecting myself to know or decide here, and is it realistic? Does that expectation actually belong to my role? Notice whether you’re preparing to learn or preparing to demonstrate how much you already know.
Arrange a conversation with the appropriate specialist and explain what you need to understand. Ask them to walk you through their reasoning, including uncertainties and alternatives. Then confirm your understanding: explain it back in your own words and invite them to correct you.
During the discussion, notice any urge to prove your value. What prompted it, and what did you do next? Consider whether your response helped you understand the issue or moved the conversation toward territory where you felt more comfortable.
Before deciding, ask: Have I understood enough to exercise my responsibility, and have we involved the expertise this decision requires? Afterwards, ask the team what was useful about your involvement and what would help next time.
You may never be able to do your specialists’ jobs, and that can take some getting used to. Your leadership contribution becomes clearer as you learn to work with their expertise without needing every answer or decision to establish your worth.
If you’re navigating this challenging transition, reach out for a free exploratory executive coaching conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com. We can explore what your new role requires and where you can make the greatest leadership contribution.
For more leadership articles, connect with Leslie Rohonczy on LinkedIn, or visit www.leslierohonczy.com