Breaking the Expert Pattern

Employing an outside expert for the purposes of community engagement can certainly have its advantages, but there’s also a strong possibility that they’ll merely propagate an already existing and flawed mentality.

We all like to listen to experts and believe in what they say. After all, they’re experts, right? However, this can entail quite a risk. When specialists like us get invited into a situation, there’s often a strong tendency to just provide the solution. It might sound desirable, but there’s a good chance this will merely reproduce what's already occurring inside an organisation. In essence, this routinely takes the form of, ‘we know the answer, and if you listen to us, everything will be OK’. What follows in these cases is really more of the same rather than authentic stakeholder engagement.

The challenge for practitioners, I think, is to recognise that it’s how we do what we do, not what we do, that’s important. With this in mind, a different methodology may involve actually giving the people inside an organisation the experience of engagement, letting them explore a particular situation and then seek the solution with your help rather than simply just giving them the answer. It’s essentially about being a facilitator for an entire new paradigm.

While not always an easy thing to do, this approach is much more likely to bring about the type of change that organisations and groups are seeking. True, the traditional expert model may indeed provide a quick, ready-made course of action, but it will not modify the all-important pattern of behaviour. This is something we definitely need a shift away from. Even seasoned experts don’t know all the answers, but the diligent ones should be willing to listen and work with clients to arrive at a solution together.

Author: John Dengate