Great article by Erik Dietrich on the expert beginner:
Expert beginner
"An expert beginner is a small king in a small kingdom [...] Management gives him the run of the place in spite of the fact that, as it turns out, he’s not really very good at what he does." - Erik Dietrich
Ring a bell?
If it did, let's try tease this out a little more since it touches on some of wider themes.
"In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein people of low ability suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority derives from the metacognitive inability of low-ability persons to recognize their own ineptitude; without the self-awareness of metacognition, low-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their actual competence or incompetence." - Wikipedia
10 Years Experience VS 10 x 1 Year Experience
"Ask yourself: Have you got 10 years of experience or do you have 10 x 1 year's experience?" - Don't know who
Impostor syndrome
"Those suffering from impostor syndrome believe their achievements the result of luck or favor rather than merit." - Erik Dietrich
As Erik delineates in his piece, the expert beginner and the impostor-syndrome-afflicted are two sides of the same coin. Each side reflecting the positive aspect and negative aspect of the issue. Essentially, we dislike expert beginners and we like the impostors. As Erik points out, the difference stems from feedback blindness and the inability to internalize feedback. I would add to this that, the difference also stems from the mixture of the following factors:
You will tend to find that the expert beginner is motivated by an alignment on the negative side of the items above. They are looking for external praise to validate their internal insecurities. They have a fixed mindset because they have found their comfort zone in an area in which they know enough to be dangerous and they do not want to venture beyond that border for fear of being found out. In that sense, you can see they are cut from the impostor cloth, but they do not want to admit it and actively argue against it. Lastly, because the expert beginner knows enough to be dangerous, they can produce something that looks like it works. Yet when you scratch beneath the surface you start to realise that the room is only clean because all the junk has been hidden under the bed (Unfortunately, the dirty socks are sticking out from under it). The irony is that, as illustrated by the Dunning-Kruger effect, the expert beginner does not have the ability to recognise their incompetence. (If they do, they will not admit it)
The expert beginner shies away from the positive side of the 3 items because the external validation is a replacement for the lack of the internal. The fixed mindset is more concerned with consolidating power and influence as opposed to improving upon (or even realising their own shortcomings). When you have a hammer, everything is a nail. Since they fear being caught out of their comfort zone for all to see, they essentially relive the same year of experience many times over. Lastly, the expert beginner is primarily concerned with the outward appearance because in fact they know the internal mechanisms are just cobbled together.
The reason, I think, that people dislike the expert beginner is that we can see past the facade. We know the plaster is cracking and that the bricks are not aligned as they should be, yet the expert beginner illustriously keeps painting over the cracks hoping that enough layers of plaster and paint will keep the house from falling. This gets to why I think we like the impostors. Impostors tend to be somewhat realistic (more or less) about their limitations and tend to be actively looking to improve on their shortcomings. Any time an impostor speaks about feeling like an impostor, people relate because it speaks to that impostor in all of us.
Lastly, I think the difference between the two is that the impostor is willing to venture out into their discomfort. They are willing to make mistakes and own them. To lay the bricks again. Not just continue painting over the cracks everyone can see.
PS. I use the word impostor in the sense that if you are in some way honest about your abilities, you will realise there are factors beyond your pure skill that lead you to where you are. It takes a village and all that. I do not mean impostor in the myopic I'm not good enough sense.
Remember, as Seth Godin says, we are all impostors, so get out and dance with your fear!