An easy way to sound expert

Psst. Secretly, most people quite like being told what to do.

Not in a weird cult-leader way. Calm down.

But when people are busy, overloaded and dead behind the eyes from staring at screens all day, they don’t want to have to make even more decisions.

They want someone to say: here’s what I think we should do, and here’s why.

It’s one of the simplest ways to sound more expert in fact:

Recommendation + reason.

For example:

I recommend we choose Supplier X. That’s because they’ve been reliable in the past and are only 2% more expensive than Supplier Y, who haven’t been so responsive.

Lovely.

Clear. Useful. Decisive.

And yet loads of people avoid writing like this because they worry it sounds pushy.

Or they doubt themselves.

Or they think: “What if I don’t have all the answers?”

But listen up dear reader: sounding credible does not mean knowing everything.

It does mean being willing to use your judgement.

Most of us are not paid to be perfect. We’re paid to think. To weigh things up. To make sense of messy information. To help other people move.

A recommendation shows you’ve done that.

As AI use increases, knowledge is becoming less valuable. So judgement is going to become more and more of a differentiator.

Of course, this doesn’t mean stomping around making grand declarations on topics you barely understand.

But it does mean being clear when you do have a view, so you can help to reduce uncertainty (something we as humans are all hardwired to hate.)

Expert-sounding people are very often just the ones who are brave enough to take a view. Is that you?