🎙️ Podcast Link 🎙️

🎥 New #HackingAcademia episode just dropped – and it’s a sensitive but hopefully somewhat cathartic one, perfect for a Friday afternoon:

𝐅𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬, 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐅𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐬

🤯 “That guy sounds like a total fraud.”
😠 “I have no idea how they got that role – they’re a disaster.”
🤔 “If they’re taking advice from her, they’re in real trouble.”

We’ve probably all heard variations of these. Maybe even said them on occasion.

My intent in today’s video is to unpack the key issues and concepts that arise in these situations, and some suggestions on how to approach them.

In trying to ⚽ play the ball, not the person, I’d emphasize almost everyone has lots to offer: this is about their portrayal, and other’s portrayal of them, and the perceptions of others that sometimes arise that the portrayal is wildly inappropriate or fraudulent.

Key points covered in the video:

🎭 Most accused of fakery are actually good at something – but sometimes they just haven’t found the right niche yet. It’s also not easy: there’s a lot of work to keep up the charade!

🪞 Bias about what an expert shoud “look like” and “sound like” are widespread and not helpful here

A two for one:

1) 🔍 Experts often overestimate how much expertise a role really needs.

AND

2) 🧪 Decision-makers often underestimate the depth required – this can be CATASTROPHIC.

💼 People need to earn a living, and those hustling outside the safety net of secure jobs often face somewhat unfair criticism from those in secure positions.

😶 A BIG one: ELOQUENCE IS NOT EXPERTISE. OMG 🤯

📉 But conversely, expertise without some semblance of communication ability limits its utility.

👋 When complaining about someone in a role, remember sometimes they’re the only person who put their hand up!!!

🧠 It takes an expert to validate another expert.

🌐 Professional careers run on relationships – trust is often extended more easily to people we know.

🤝 many roles require expertise paired with networks, influence, to be effective

👥 For every person you think is a fraud, there’s others who think they’re brilliant.

🔁 Your opinions – and others of you – will likely will change over time, based on new experiences or context.

⏳ “Truth will (mostly) out (eventually”. Promises fail, tech doesn’t work, good or bad reputations are established. That doesn’t mean some genuinely fraudulent individuals can’t do a lot of damage in the meantime.

🌱 A little 🧂 patience in judging can go a long way. Calling everything out, often wrongly, will burn you out, won’t actually help, and you’ll be miserable in the process.

#AcademicLife #ResearchCulture #Careers #Fraud #Fake #Misrepresentation #Trust #Expertise #communication #reputation #biases #ProfessionalDevelopment #Leadership #CareerAdvice

Full Video Notes

This guy sounds like a complete fraud. I really have no idea how that person got into that position. They sound like a complete idiot. If they listen to that person, they are going to 100% make some horrifically bad decisions.

In any professional career, you will from time to time hear opinions like these expressed about other individuals, and it really points to a fundamental aspect of a career which is that your ability to be successful, network, and collaborate will depend in part on you being able to form informed opinions of those around you.

Now there are two extremes here. One is you can be that sort of person who is inherently extremely positive all of the time, very trusting, very respectful of everyone around you, and has complete faith in the ability of everyone to do a fantastic job. At the other end, the other extreme is someone who is just inherently always cynical, always skeptical, always pessimistic about the ability of someone else to do something.

But of course, the reality is that most people will and should be somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.

In this video, I want to cover some key concepts and insights relating to the scenario portrayed in the opening of this video where a peer or a colleague expresses extreme skepticism or doubt or basically accuses someone around them of being an outright fraud.

In terms of context for this video, I will not be covering outright blatant psychos, and luckily there are not too many of those. Obviously I will not be covering individuals who are perhaps going through some sort of mental health crisis as well, which can sometimes result in these sorts of behaviors and perspectives from other people around them. So they are off limits for today’s video.

Before someone accuses me of projecting, of course I have had my fair share of experiences and frustrations with some individuals, but mostly this is sharing insights and perspectives on the thousands of colleagues I have worked with and interacted with when these perceptions have come up periodically.

So the first thing is the whole play the ball not the person concept. In the vast vast majority of cases, the individual that is being questioned or accused of being a fake or a fraud has plenty of useful things to offer.

The real question is whether that individual, and the way they are portraying themselves or the way that others are portraying them, is even remotely representative of the actual things they bring to the table and what they can offer. When those things are perceived to be radically mismatched, that is when some of these issues arise.

One of the on-flow implications of this concept is simply that a lot of these situations are resolved over time by the person finding their suitable niche to really prosper and flourish in.

Another key concept is that many of the people that individuals accuse of being fakes or frauds are not hopeless at everything. In fact, if they are indeed misrepresenting themselves, it is really an exhausting process because they are constantly trying to not be caught out, to not show their hand, so to speak.

So they are good at a lot of things, perhaps not at the specific thing that you are accusing them of not being good at, but many other things in order to maintain that charade.

Another issue here is biases. People and disciplines and sectors have implicit biases and expectations about what an expert looks like and what they sound like. These biases are most definitely not helpful. Some of the time these accusations of someone being a fake or a fraud are completely misplaced. They are basically just perpetuating incorrect and out-of-date expectations around what that expert should look like and sound like.

The next two concepts come as a pair. The first concept is that a lot of experts, often the ones who are frustrated by someone they perceive as not being an expert getting an opportunity or talking on a topic they feel that person is not qualified to speak about, overestimate the amount of expertise that is actually needed to perform the particular role or activity.

So while that person may not be a deep expert, a lot of the time it does not really matter.

On the flip side, a lot of decision makers who go to experts for critical decision-making advice often underestimate how important deep deep expertise is. Deep expertise is genuinely quite rare, and just because someone gave a snazzy talk at a conference for 30 minutes does not mean they have deep expertise on the topic they are talking about whatsoever.

So do your homework.

The context in which a criticism is made, and the context of the person who is being criticized, is also an important factor. I have seen a lot of very secure tenured professors and senior academics really going to town criticizing either a startup or someone who has gone out on their own independently.

There is no excusing blatant misrepresentation, but you have to understand that the context for someone whose day-to-day livelihood depends on continually convincing people of the value of what they have to say or the advice they are going to give is a little bit different to that of a tenured academic whose day-to-day livelihood does not depend on this.

This also applies to startups. Startups are naturally going to somewhat oversell and aggressively over-pitch what their product can do. This is an understandable byproduct of the entire entrepreneurial system. It does not excuse blatantly bad behavior, but it is an important point of difference compared to a secure professor at a university.

This is a really important one: eloquence does not equal expertise. Eloquence, meaning can someone get up on stage and speak fluently and compellingly about a topic, says very little about whether that person is indeed a deep technical expert on the topic at hand.

I would actually challenge that anyone who is reasonably fast as a learner, reasonably bright, and is a very eloquent communicator could be put up as a keynote or plenary speaker at any commercial conference. If people were none the wiser, they could probably pull off a pretty good keynote on just about any topic if they had some preparation time, especially nowadays with the assistance of AI tools.

So just because you have seen someone give a wonderfully eloquent, compelling, and appealing talk does not necessarily indicate that they really know their stuff at a deeper level.

The converse is true as well. If someone is a really deep expert but has horrendously bad communication skills, a lot of the effectiveness of that expertise will be nullified by the fact that they cannot communicate it.

A lot of the time, the person complaining about how someone they do not regard as an expert got a senior board role or advisory role does not take into account the full context. Deep expertise is often important and sometimes underestimated, but there are other things that unlock the value of that expertise.

In many roles, having a wide network and lots of connections is critical for effectiveness, even if someone has deep technical expertise. They need networks and connections to introduce people and start initiatives, and deep expertise by itself is not always enough.

That is why sometimes people who are not the deepest technical experts get those roles, because they have other capabilities that some deep experts do not have.

It takes an expert to validate an expert. This has happened to me many times, and it has happened to many other people. You can listen to someone and they sound incredibly insightful on a topic you know very little about, but then they start talking about a topic you do know a lot about and suddenly they are saying things that are egregiously wrong.

It is only then that you realize that perhaps some of the other things you had no way of validating might not have been correct either.

So if you are doing due diligence and vetting experts, bring in another expert to help you do your due diligence, because people can sound very convincing and know very little.

One of the phenomena that comes up quite often is that you will see someone you think is perhaps an outright fraud or fake who seems to have a very good collaborative relationship with people you deeply respect and admire.

This happens all of the time. One phenomenon at play is that people inherently have a higher level of trust and tolerance for people they have met personally and gotten to know than they do for absolute strangers. Sometimes those inexplicable relationships are simply the result of social dynamics.

There is a related concept here. When you meet someone or find out about someone and you cannot believe they have the role they have, or you think they are a fake or a fraud, I can guarantee there are a very large number of people who also think that person is really really awesome.

Whether or not they are actually awesome is a matter of perspective, but that fact is almost always present: many people will have the opposite impression to you.

Initial impressions can be very deceptive. I always urge people to give such impressions some time and to be patient in seeing whether your impression changes, because it often will as you get to know them or as further information comes to light.

Your initial feelings, your gut feel, are often very strong but are not always correct.

One of the reassurances I tell people when they come to me really frustrated about situations like this is that truth generally does eventually out. People who are fundamentally a drain on the system and are really not offering value, and I am not talking about the gray fuzzy cases, but people who are unambiguously not good, the system will generally eventually catch up with them.

Their reputation will be established in that way and eventually everything will even out. Sometimes those people do an incredible amount of damage in the short term. Maybe they get opportunities. Maybe there is backlash when they do not deliver. But in the medium and long run, a lot of so-called karma really does even out, at least from what I have seen.

Not always. Do not come at me with all your exceptions, but it does even out in the medium and long term a surprising percentage of the time.

In terms of what you can do when you are incredibly frustrated, or perhaps even jealous or envious of someone who you feel has gotten an amazing position or award and is not remotely qualified, first I would urge patience and a little bit of disengagement.

In the heat of the moment, you may do really silly things that are irreversible from a career perspective. Remember this is going to happen continually throughout your career. If you react strongly and immediately every time it does, you are not going to be happy, and you will probably do a lot of damage.

A lot of these perceptions will change over time, both as you get to know the person more and as you mature and your perspective changes. So patience and taking things slowly over time is almost always a good idea here.

If someone is fundamentally abusive or there is some very clear, blatant issue going on, definitely call it out or get someone more senior than you to call it out.

But a lot of the time it is fuzzier and more gray. A lot of the time your impressions and perspectives will naturally change over time in both directions.

Sometimes you will get a more negative impression over time, but a lot of the time you will end up with a more positive or at least more neutral perception as time goes on.