Speaking & Keynotes
Beyond Expertise
Navigating the Human Complexity Expertise Doesn't Prepare You For
We spend years preparing highly capable people to deal with technical complexity.
We teach them to analyse, challenge, question, solve difficult problems and develop deep expertise.
Then we put them into organisations and expect them to navigate something considerably less predictable:
Other people.
The Part You Learn 'The Hard Way'
Try as you might, avoiding other people is almost impossible if you actually want to get anything done.
And the further we progress in our careers, the more dependent we become on them.
People with competing priorities. People who don't respond to perfectly good evidence in the perfectly rational way we'd like them to. People who disagree, resist, have different agendas or simply don't see what seems blindingly obvious to us.
Add politics, egos, ambiguity, difficult relationships and the occasional meeting that could have been an email, and technical complexity can start to look like the easy bit.
Very little of our education prepares us for any of it.
In this provocative, practical and frequently humorous keynote, Tina explores what happens when expertise meets organisational reality — and why being knowledgeable, capable and even demonstrably right doesn't necessarily mean anyone will listen to you.
Through sharp observation, relatable stories and practical insight, Beyond Expertise holds up a mirror to some of the absurdities of organisational life while exploring the very real skills required to navigate them.
Audiences will explore:
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Why expertise and influence are not the same thing
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Why evidence rarely speaks entirely for itself
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How expertise can unintentionally create certainty, resistance and blind spots
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Why understanding other people's priorities matters as much as explaining your own
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How to navigate disagreement, competing interests and organisational politics without compromising integrity
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How to get good thinking heard, understood and acted upon
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Why the shift from individual expertise to collective impact becomes increasingly important as careers progress
Beyond Expertise is designed for scientists, clinicians, technical professionals and specialist leaders — intelligent, highly capable people who know their stuff, but still have to navigate the unavoidable complexity of being human.
