While working as a data scientist in a large organisation, I was once called on to attend a meeting with representatives of a big tech company and multiple senior leaders from my business area. The tech reps were there to sell us a new product. The data scientists had been invited because we were the intended users.

Although there were a dozen or more people in the room, I was the only person who came prepared with any questions - 2 1/2 pages of them, to be precise.

I let everyone else have their turn, then systematically worked through the questions I'd previously prepared. By the end of the meeting, the tech reps' attention was fully focused on me.

I wasn't doing this to show off. I saw it as a part of my job - and I was genuinely interested in the product. But what happened next has stayed with me ever since.

I had no financial delegation at that time. But after that meeting, the tech reps treated me as though I did. The executives started asking for my thoughts on whether they should buy the product. In the space of less than an hour, I had gone from being just another back room nerd to one of the key decision-makers for a major purchase.

That meeting had minimal impact on my actual level of expertise. But it had a massive impact on how my expertise was perceived by those around me. For the first time, my stakeholders had a public demonstration of my expertise in action. And because they lacked the technical knowledge to evaluate the product themselves, they deferred to the person in the room who clearly did.

This is what expert power looks like in practice.

Friend-of-the-list Dr Russell Walker recently posted on LinkedIn about the six sources of power within organisations. Expert power, he argues, comes not just from having knowledge and skill, but from "showing your expertise matters for what your stakeholders care about."

That's the part that most data scientists miss. The expertise is there, but the demonstration isn't.

Preparation and genuine curiosity did more for my organisational influence that day than months of technical work had done before. Not because I suddenly knew more, but because, for the first time, my stakeholders could see exactly how my expertise connected to a decision they needed to make.

Expert power isn't about what you know. It's about making sure the right people can see your knowledge at work.

Talk again soon,

Dr Genevieve Hayes