You Don’t Need to Teach the Most Experienced Person in the Room

Somebody in your profession knows more than you do. Maybe they have more experience, more advanced training, or a reputation you admire. If you’re thinking about creating an online course, it’s easy to imagine that person going through your material and finding it too basic.

But that person may have no reason to take your course. A new graduate might need exactly what you can teach.

When you compare yourself to the most experienced professionals in your field, you can overlook the people who are still trying to learn something you already do comfortably.

Can you help them solve a problem they’re having in their professional life? Can you explain how to do something they’re struggling with? That gives you a much more useful starting point for a course than trying to impress everybody in your profession.

What Feels Basic to You May Be New to Them

New graduates have an education, but they’re still gaining experience. There are situations they haven’t encountered and skills they haven’t had much opportunity to use. They may understand a subject in school and still need help applying it at work.

If you’ve been practicing for years, some of those things may feel elementary to you. You’ve dealt with them repeatedly. You know where to start, what makes the situation difficult, and how you approach it. The information still has value to somebody who hasn’t had that experience.

Take difficult patient conversations, for example. If you’ve learned how to handle those conversations well, a newer clinician may want help with that. Telling them to communicate clearly isn’t enough. They need you to explain how you approach the conversation, why you handle it that way, and what you do when it becomes difficult.

You may already explain things like this to colleagues. When someone asks for help, you walk them through what you would do and why. A course gives you a way to organize that teaching so other professionals can learn from it too.

Teach From Something You’ve Actually Done

When I started teaching nurse practitioners how to open their own practices, I was teaching from experience. I had started multiple clinics myself. I had gained knowledge by going through that process, and I wanted to share it with other nurse practitioners who wanted to do the same thing.

That was the foundation of the business. I identified a problem within my profession and taught a solution based on what I had learned.

Think about your own experience in that same way. What have you done that other people in your profession are trying to figure out? What do colleagues ask you to explain? Where can you walk someone through the details because you understand the work yourself?

You could teach a clinical subject or share something you learned while starting your own practice. The important part is that you know the subject and can help someone make progress with it.

You don’t need to claim expertise across your entire profession. Be clear about what you’re teaching and who it will help. A course for a new graduate can have a different purpose from a course for an experienced professional learning an advanced skill. Both can be valuable when they deliver what that student needs.

Explain the Parts You’ve Stopped Thinking About

Knowing a subject well doesn’t automatically mean you’ve explained it well. You still have to organize the information so someone else can follow it.

When I talk about course development, I tell people to hold the student’s hand. Don’t assume they already understand the thing they’re taking your course to learn. Cover the foundations, explain the details, and walk them through how to use the information.

This is where experience can make teaching difficult. You may move through part of a process without thinking much about it anymore. Your student may need you to slow down and explain that part before the rest makes sense.

If you’re teaching a newer professional, give them the background they need before moving into more advanced material. Explain why you take a particular approach. Use examples that make the teaching clear. Make sure they can follow how you got from the problem to the solution.

Don’t skip an explanation because you’re worried it would be obvious to somebody more experienced. The person taking your course needs enough detail to understand and apply what you’re teaching.

You will always be able to find somebody who knows more than you about a subject. Keep learning from those people. But also recognize the experience you already have and the professionals who could benefit from it.

The new graduate trying to become more capable at work may not need the most advanced course in the field. They may need a clear explanation from somebody who understands what they’re struggling with and can show them how to handle it.

If you can provide that, you have something worth teaching.