--- title: "How to Tell Real Experts From Fake Ones | Your Craft Your Climb" description: "AEC leaders depend on people who know more than they do. The signals that separate genuine expertise from confident noise — and why titles and years of experience aren't among them." lang: en json-ld: | { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Article", "headline": "Experts vs. \"Experts\" — Evaluating Each", "description": "How AEC leaders can tell genuine expertise from confident noise when they depend on people who know more than they do.", "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Zack Tomlin", "url": "https://yourcraftyourclimb.com" }, "datePublished": "2026-08-06", "mainEntityOfPage": { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://yourcraftyourclimb.com/articles/how-to-evaluate-experts" }, "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Your Craft Your Climb", "url": "https://yourcraftyourclimb.com" } } --- [![Your Craft Your Climb - Business and Leadership Growth](/__l5e/assets-v1/25aac360-096f-4a69-bf6f-fb90cf595961/logo-horizontal.png)](/) [All Articles](/articles) High-Agency Leadership # Experts vs. “Experts” — Evaluating Each How to know whose input you can actually depend on Zack Tomlin, PE · August 6, 2026 High-agency leadership is about leading people who you need to operate with a high degree of autonomy and individual thought — the conditions of expertise. And high-agency leadership involves depending on experts, not subordinates. Many areas of leadership are about guiding people through terrain the leader is thoroughly familiar with: the NBA coach who’s a former pro player, the general who was a colonel, a major before that, and a captain before that. But in the AEC industry, leaders more often than not are responsible for team members whose expertise in certain areas exceeds that of the leader. That, of course, extends to individuals leaders rely on for the operation of their business: insurance, benefits, real estate, equipment, vendors, etc. But more so, it’s about the people we bring on to be part of our teams. It’s the correct use of the old adage to “hire people smarter than you” — what it really means: hire people a different kind of smart than you. Architects find themselves working with interior designers, building envelope consultants, green energy gurus, and a menagerie of engineers to bring a project to completion. Engineers have people on their teams that are experts in niche topics (fire protection, electrical, mechanical, structural, civil, geotechnical, etc.) and must rely on product reps and manufacturer support departments for critical information. General contractors’ entire business model is based around hiring specialized subcontractors while navigating the often conflicting opinions of the design team, building inspectors, and physical realities of installation space and material availability. It’s one of the challenges that makes AEC leadership unique. And nothing may be as challenging as deciding whose information you can rely on, who you should listen to, and whose input you should “take with a grain of salt.” So, when opinions conflict, when you’re not quite buying what someone is selling, how to know who to listen to? In an age where everyone (at least on LinkedIn) is an expert, how to separate those who actually know from those whose confidence and insistence is really masking insecurity or a product of their own misplaced self-assurance. Over time I’ve come to trust a handful of signals. ## I Get Wary When Someone… **Offers nothing more than their own personal experience as an anecdote.** Describing “here’s what worked for me” with no articulation of how or why is too often the blind hog finding an acorn every now and again. **Uses words that normal people don’t use to describe a concept.** As a general rule, when someone spouts off terms that you aren’t familiar with — they probably don’t know what they mean either. If they did they’d foresee your confusion. **Doesn’t ask questions.** Anyone with a sophisticated mental model of the question at hand probably needs more inputs than you originally provided. If someone’s not digging for more details, it’s likely because they’re operating from a shallower plane than you need from an expert. **Gets defensive.** Perhaps the ultimate red flag — if an “expert” takes offense to a non-expert questioning their opinion it’s likely their house of judgement is built upon the sand. I spent 20 years designing building systems grounded in first-principle physics. I may be befuddled by pushback, frustrated by someone wasting my time, or curious what (wrong) assumptions they’re making — but defensiveness has a funny way of disappearing with insight and experience. ## I Lean In When Someone… **Admits they could be wrong.** As F. Scott Fitzgerald said: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” But just as often it comes back to someone having an understanding of natural variance in outcomes and factors that can’t be known. **Uses simple language and effective analogies.** Ask one structural engineer how much a cantilever beam might sag and you might hear of “flexural rigidity” and “fourth-power span relationships.” Ask another and you might hear it’s like a diving board — the more you weigh, the further you walk out, the more it droops. **Can explain when their advice applies — and when it wouldn’t.** Real expertise knows its own edges. The generalist gives you one answer for every situation; the expert tells you “it depends,” and then tells you what it depends on. As the saying goes: “All models are wrong, but some are useful” — and when someone can articulate the scenario their model is meant for (and the ones it’s not) you’re likely getting higher quality information. **Acknowledges when they’re generalizing or oversimplifying.** Those who you probably should dismiss collapse complexity for the sake of convenience; those worth giving more weight to deal with the complexity as to not sacrifice important details. Those who know when they’re doing either are worth listening to. For these are some of the earmarks of someone who knows their stuff — and is worth listening to. There are certainly more (in both directions), and maybe what’s more important is what’s not on the list: title, degrees, status, years of experience, etc. Those are the things we’re trained to screen for, and while checking the right boxes here may make one “smarter than the average bear” — they’re by no means a guarantee. When effective leadership requires knowing whose input you can depend on always remember, there’s plenty who peddle in bullsh\*t — so bring a shovel. * * * _I’m Zack Tomlin, founder of [Your Craft Your Climb](https://yourcraftyourclimb.com). I help firms develop the senior and emerging leaders they depend on, through peer groups, workshops, and direct advisory support built specifically for the AEC industry._ _For more on how good thinking works, see [Mental Models and First Principles Thinking](/articles/mental-models-and-first-principles-thinking), and on seeing situations from more than one angle, see [Why People Misunderstand Each Other at Work](/articles/why-people-misunderstand-each-other-at-work). Ready to put these ideas to work? [Work with Zack](/)._ Further Reading [ More Articles Browse all writings. ](/articles)[ Home Work with Zack. ](/) Get In Touch ## Contact Us Have a question, want to know more, or just want to say hello? 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