I got lucky early in my career. I just didn’t know how lucky at the time.
My first role after McKinsey was an EVP position at a regional nonprofit. I was responsible for everything from programming and patient advocacy to IT and marketing.
I had no deep expertise in any of those functions.
That may sound like a strange setup.
If you’re not the technical expert, what exactly is your job?
That was the gift.
I knew early that my job was not to become the expert. It was to lead. To set direction. To decide what mattered most. To hire people with real depth, trust their expertise, and make sure the work was strong enough to back.
What That Looked Like
That distinction became very real when we needed board approval for a significant investment in our digital strategy.
This was years ago, before a strong digital presence was standard practice for nonprofits. But I could see where things were headed, and I believed we needed to make a real investment. Not a cosmetic update. A meaningful one that would change how we reached the people we served.
That part was mine.
I set the direction.
My VP of IT and VP of Marketing were responsible for figuring out the best way to get us there. They built the strategy. That was their job.
Mine was to decide whether it was the right strategy. Whether the assumptions held up. Whether the investment made sense relative to everything else competing for attention and budget. Whether it would stand up to the scrutiny of the Board.
So I kept pressing until I could answer yes.
Why this approach and not another?
What problem are we actually solving?
What are we assuming?
What would have to be true for this to pay off?
What have we ruled out too quickly?
What support do you need to make this work?
We got the investment. It worked. It even became a model for the broader organization.
Not because I had become fluent in the technical work.
Because I did my job and trusted my team to do theirs.
Why This Gets Hard for Senior Leaders
I’ve spent years since then watching senior leaders discover that distinction the hard way.
A Chief Scientific Officer with deep expertise in one part of R&D, now leading a much broader set of scientific and operational decisions. A Chief People Officer with deep strength in one area of HR, now accountable for the whole function.
They know enough to respect the work.
They just don’t know it the way they know their own domain.
And that gap, completely normal and completely expected, creates a discomfort they weren’t prepared for.
These are not leaders who are used to not knowing.
They built their careers on knowing. On being the person who could see what others missed, answer what others couldn’t, walk into any conversation and hold their own. That expertise got them trusted, promoted, listened to.
It also became, without anyone naming it, the way they knew they belonged.
So when the role expands beyond that depth, the discomfort isn’t just practical.
It’s personal.
The fear underneath is rarely, I don’t know enough.
It’s quieter than that.
What does it say about me that I don’t know?
So they reach for the strategy that built their career: know more. They study up. Immerse themselves in the details. Stay close to the work until they feel steadier.
The problem is, at this level, that instinct can pull them away from the very job they are now supposed to do.
That’s the old job bleeding into the new one.
I understand why it happens. If your whole career has taught you that expertise is how you earn authority, it is hard to trust that judgment is enough. It doesn’t feel like enough because it doesn’t feel like expertise.
But it is.
It’s the job.
What It Actually Costs
If I had spent my time trying to get proficient at website architecture or digital marketing strategy, the investment we needed never would have happened.
Nobody else was going to set the direction, make the case, align the right people, and decide that this was the bet worth backing.
That was my job.
And it would have gone undone.
That’s the cost here.
Not the work your team owns. They already own that.
The work only you can do.
The cross-functional thinking. The strategic prioritization. The calls that require altitude, not depth.
That work does not happen by default.
It happens because a leader is doing it.
And when that leader is buried in the weeds trying to feel ready, it often doesn’t happen at all.
There’s also the sheer exhaustion of it.
These leaders aren’t tired from leading.
They’re tired from trying to feel legitimate enough to lead.
That is a very different kind of tired. And it compounds fast.
The Science Behind It
When people feel uncertain about their mastery, they often reach for control: more detail, more involvement, more chances to show they still know what they’re doing. Behavioral scientists call this competence threat.
The hard part is that it can look like diligence.
It can even feel like diligence.
But it pulls leaders away from the work that actually requires them. And it can land as a lack of trust, even when that is not the intention.
The job at this level isn’t to have every answer.
It’s to know how to evaluate the quality of the thinking without needing the expertise to be yours.
This Month’s Experiment
Before your next meeting or conversation involving work outside your deepest expertise, prepare in a different way.
Don’t study the details first.
Instead, write down three things:
- What matters most here?
- What would make this the wrong path?
- What would I need to believe in order to back it?
Then go into the room and listen for those.
That’s the experiment.
Not trying to feel more ready by mastering the details.
Getting better at knowing what you need in order to make a sound call.
The Bottom Line
I was lucky to know early that leading a function and doing a function are not the same job.
Most leaders don’t get that lesson until much later, after years of being rewarded for depth.
So when the role starts asking something different, they keep reaching for the old proof.
That’s where they get stuck.
The leaders who handle this well are not the ones who become experts in everything they oversee.
They are the ones who stop equating functional expertise with value.
They trust their own judgment — judgment that has been earned, tested, and sharpened over time.
Not as a consolation prize.
As the job.
Angela
👉 Know a leader navigating this right now? Forward this to them. It’s one of the hardest transitions in a senior career, and almost nobody names it directly.
P.S. If this is a transition you’re in right now, I’d be curious what feels hardest about it: trusting your judgment, staying out of the weeds, or figuring out what the job actually is now.
