In my early 30s, I was leading a department of a Wall Street firm when we acquired a boutique investment practice. I suddenly found myself leading a team of very successful portfolio managers – all men 20 to 30 years older than me who had decades of industry experience. I panicked. How could I provide any value or even remotely supervise people who knew so much more than I did? 

My boss advised me to take a deep breath. He said I’d actually been given a gift – a team of experts. He pointed out that these men didn’t need any help with investing. What they needed from me was help with strategy, planning and operations, and for me to remove obstacles so they could get on with their jobs. “You don’t need to know what they know,” my boss said, “Your job is to help them shine.”

Since that time, I’ve repeatedly led people who know more than I do or who have very different types of skills – including physicians, lawyers, accountants, facilities managers, analysts and journalists, to name a few. I’ve been grateful to work with such talented people. So if you are leading teams or individuals who know more than you and you’re nervous about it, relax. There is plenty of research that suggests your team members do not need you to be able to do their job; rather, they need you to lead and they need you to care.

“Employees want leaders who are more empathetic, compassionate, self-aware, excellent communicators, and can coach them to success instead of micromanaging or distrusting their work,” says a recent Forbes article on leadership trends for 2024. A survey on leadership challenges in 2024 conducted by Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning revealed that humanizing leadership in the digital age will be increasingly important, saying: “While the focus on technology skills grows, leaders still lead people, so there will be a continued emphasis on inspiring, motivating and enabling a greater sense of belonging in the next year.”

But business and leadership can be emotional. So it is natural that you might feel you should be the expert and have all the answers. Because that is impossible, especially in an age of technology and specialization, the priority on human-centered leadership can be a relief – you don’t have to be the subject matter or functional area expert. You can focus on honing your leadership skills and supporting your team.

Here are 10 best practices for leading team members who know more than you do:

• Put your ego aside. As a leader, you will never know everything, nor should you. You have teams of talented people for a reason – because your business needs specialization in various areas. Rather than feel you need to be the ultimate authority, embrace a “servant leader” mentality and ask how you can help.
• Be grateful. If you inherit or hire talented people with significant skills, consider how valuable deep expertise aor experience can be in your organization. You do not have to train this person from the ground up and can leverage their experience and perspective, benefitting culture and operations. As my boss said when I inherited the team of portfolio managers – that’s a gift.
• Acknowledge their experience and expertise. Let your team members know right off the bat that you understand and respect what they bring to the table – and that you will depend on them for that deep expertise. Be open in front of your entire team that you recognize and admire each individual’s skills and value their experience. That builds trust and sets the expectation that you need each person to take responsibility for their work; you cannot and should not be doing it.
• Provide opportunities to grow. Just because an individual is an expert does not mean he or she does not need training and development. Make sure you ask your team members what continuing education or growth opportunities will help to hone or advance their skills. This shows you care about their continued advancement and value their expertise.
• Don’t micromanage. While it is always important to provide goals and direction and to supervise progress, micromanaging someone who knows more than you about their job can be demoralizing and erode trust. However, it can be difficult to manage progress when you don’t understand every element of the job, so create reports and check-ins that help measure milestones or flag risks. 
• Seek outside assistance in evaluation. If you are not an expert in a certain area or have little experience in a field or role, it can be difficult to help set goals, determine benchmarks or even know how to measure success. In addition to asking the person for help, approach external consultants, industry leaders or human resources experts for their opinion or input.
• Ask for input. When creating strategy, goals, project plans or workflows in your expert or experienced team member’s area, include them in the process. You do not need to put them in charge of everything or take all their suggestions, but checking with them and tapping into their expertise will add value and let the person know you care about them and that you respect their opinion and experience. 
• Ask for feedback. As the work progresses, check in with your team members to assess whether goals, assumptions, or processes are going as planned. Do you need to course-correct? Are you understanding their work and needs adequately? Solicit that team member’s thoughts on how you can learn and grow in their area of expertise. 
• Remove roadblocks. Whether an employee is facing financial or human capital resources, training, emotional support, process improvement or any other type of obstacle, your job is to help address problems that are getting in their way of succeeding. If you do not possess deep expertise in their area, you may need to probe to understand the seriousness of the issue. While you can’t necessarily solve all problems, letting your team member know you hear them and will work on what they’ve shared is validating and a good first step.  
• Help them shine. Your company’s success and your success are the result of your entire team meeting or exceeding expectations for performance. Embrace each person’s progress and achievements and highlight them in ways that are comfortable to them. Determining what each team member needs, removing roadblocks and helping them perform and succeed is ultimately your job, and perhaps the most rewarding thing you can do. And you just may learn something along the way.