According to the HBR article, How Consultants Project Expertise and Learn at the Same Time, Consultants and Managers face the prospect of taking on new roles, projects or tasks while needing to portray competence and confidence to their clients or teams. This creates the feeling of being an imposter.

To successfully manage this situation the article suggests you need to embrace the learning-credibility tension and reframe it from a liability to a valuable skill. This skill keeps you sharp and on your toes as you work hard to create relevance (maximum impact in minimum time), resonance (using knowledge to gain acceptance and acquire new information) and substance (information and ideas) in your work and in your relationships.

As a Project Manager, I am continually in the position of leading projects and teams in functional areas or businesses that I have little or no technical knowledge of. I have always had success in honouring and respecting the technical expertise of those in the area I am working in and I utilize my “layperson” status to ask strategically dumb questions to surface issues and propose radical ideas. The learning-credibility tension is one of the things I love the most about being a Consultant and a Project Manager.