By Catherine Sandland
When I’m working with experts, I notice something interesting. There are always those who put their hand up confidently, smile, and say, ‘Yes, I know my stuff.’ But there are quite a lot more who are, shall we say, more modest. Maybe shy. But I suspect in many cases, they’re just uncertain. They don’t particularly enjoy the label ‘expert.’
When I ask them if they know something, they’ll say, ‘Well, I know a bit more than others.’ They downplay it. They qualify it. They talk themselves out of it.
And here’s what I want to say to those people: what you know is more valuable than you think. Your perspective matters. Your insights are valid. And even though you might take them for granted, it’s highly likely that your audience doesn’t have that same view, that same perspective, that same collective knowledge.
The Curse of Knowledge
There’s a concept from Chip and Dan Heath’s book ‘Made to Stick’ called the curse of knowledge. Once you know something, it becomes almost impossible to imagine not knowing it. What’s obvious to you feels like it must be obvious to everyone. What you’ve learned through years of experience feels so basic that surely everyone else has figured it out too.
But they haven’t. That’s the curse. You can’t see how valuable your knowledge is because you’re living inside it. You’ve forgotten what it’s like not to know what you know.
So you stand up to speak, and you think, ‘This is so obvious. Everyone knows this.’ And you water it down. You preface everything with ‘as you probably know’ or ‘I know you already know this.’ You dampen down the very insights that could transform how people think.
That makes for a very boring approach, literally and metaphorically. Monotone. Safe. Uninspiring.
You Don’t Have to Know Everything
When we stand up to speak, we don’t have to know everything. But what we do know needs to be of value to that audience.
And here’s the beautiful thing about speaking in public: it’s not just the information people are coming for. It’s the insights. It’s what you’ve excavated from that knowledge. It’s the patterns and themes you’ve noticed. It’s the experience you bring to interpret things and the skill you have in sharing that in a way that connects with people, resonates with them, and influences them.
It’s about offering a different perspective they haven’t previously considered. A new way of seeing the world, even if it’s just a small corner of it.
The Feedback That Matters
At the end of a talk, if someone says to you, ‘I never thought of it like that,’ that’s brilliant feedback. If they say, ‘You provided the missing piece of the jigsaw,’ or ‘It feels like you’re inside my head, you really get me,’ those are valuable responses.
Much more valuable than ‘I enjoyed your talk’ or ‘Nice presentation.’
Because what those responses tell you is that you’ve added insight. You’ve inspired, not just informed. You’ve got the potential to transform, not just to educate.
That’s powerful. It requires responsibility. But it also requires courage.
The Courage to Own Your Perspective
It’s very easy to talk yourself out of owning your perspective. Very easy to say, ‘This is so obvious, everybody knows it.’
But that really, really isn’t right.
Even if your audience knows some of what you know, what they don’t have is your angle on it. Your perspective. Your insight into it. The way you’ve connected the dots. The patterns you’ve seen. The implications you’ve understood.
There’s a moment of courage required here, isn’t there? You might be speaking to your peer group. To people who’ve worked in your industry longer than you have. To people who are talking about the same sort of things. And it’s tempting to think, ‘I couldn’t possibly offer them anything they don’t already know.’
But you can. Because you’ve got your take on it. Your interpretation. Your insights drawn from your particular experiences, your conversations, the things you’ve noticed that others have missed.
Excavating Your Insights
Preparation, then, is about excavating and identifying your interpretation and your insight. It’s about working out what your take is and then having the courage to go for it. To deliver it with as much conviction as you can muster.
Here are some questions that can help:
What Do I Hang My Flag On?
What do you believe that others might not? What position do you take that’s worth defending?
Which Side of the Fence Do I Sit On?
Where there’s debate or different approaches, where do you land? And why?
What Contrarian Approach Can I Offer?
What does everyone believe that you think is wrong? What’s the conventional wisdom you’d challenge?
What Myths Can I Scotch?
What do people think is true in your field that actually isn’t? What misconceptions need correcting?
What Have Been My Personal Insights?
Think about the conversations you’ve had. Something a client said that surprised you. Something you overheard by the water cooler. These are everyday things, but they often challenge big beliefs, expose policy failures, or reveal gaps between what people say and what they do.
You can offer that. You can say, ‘Look, I’ve heard this. I’ve seen this. And here’s my take on it.’
Standing Out From the Crowd
There’s an element of courage in standing out from the crowd. If you want to shift your presentation from information-giving to inspiration, from informing to transforming, then you really have to work out what your take is and then go for it.
Deliver it with conviction. Craft it with curiosity and connection in mind. Think of ways to shape your content so that even if people have heard some of it before, they’ve not heard it in this way. They’ve not had it packaged quite like this.
That’s what makes you memorable. Not the facts you share, but the way you help people see those facts differently.
What If They Do Already Know It?
Even if some of your audience already knows some of what you’re saying, they don’t know it the way you know it. They haven’t connected it to the same patterns. They haven’t drawn the same conclusions. They haven’t applied it in the same contexts.
Now, sometimes your value absolutely is in telling them something completely new. Something they haven’t heard about, research they’re not aware of, a development in your field that changes everything. That’s valid and important too.
But it’s not always about that. Often, your value is in helping them understand something familiar in a new way. In giving them the missing piece. In validating something they suspected but couldn’t quite articulate. In challenging something they assumed was settled.
That’s what insight does. It illuminates. It reframes. It connects.
Trust Your Perspective
So be brave enough to understand that what you know and your perspective is valid. Even though you might take it for granted, your audience likely doesn’t have that same view, that same lens, that same understanding.
You don’t have to know everything. You just have to know something worth sharing and have the courage to share it in a way that adds value. That offers insight. That transforms, not just informs.
Work out your take. Then go for it. Deliver it with everything you’ve got.
Because what you know is more valuable than you think. And your perspective matters more than you realise.
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Want help excavating your insights and owning your perspective?
Visit www.catherinesandland.com to learn more.