Valerie Young on the Expert Trap
In her article How Much Do You Need to Know Before You’re an Expert?, career counselor Valerie Young of Changing Course describes a number of self-limiting beliefs about qualification and competence. Here are some quotes:
You’re especially prone to the Expert Trap if you mistakenly believe that competence and expertise are one and the same. The belief that, “If I were really competent, intelligent, qualified . . . I would know more” keeps far too many people from striking out on their own.
A lot of men fall victim to this same self-limiting thinking.
Yet my early research, coupled with twenty-plus years of anecdotal evidence, suggests women are more prone to equate competence with knowing it all.
[Image from Rethinking Expertise, by Harry Collins and Robert Evans.
