People Don’t Need Another Expert. They Need Someone to Think Out Loud With.

I’ve spent years helping people communicate their expertise. Teaching leaders to structure their ideas and helping speakers craft talks that move people. Showing business owners how to create content that demonstrates what they know.

So what I’m about to say might sound a little strange.

I think we’re entering a place in time where expertise alone is no longer enough.

Open any social media platform and you’ll find thousands of people teaching you how to do almost anything. Open AI, and within seconds you can generate another article, another framework, another list of tips, another perfectly structured LinkedIn post.

Over the past week I’ve been running a small experiment called Thinking Out Loud.

Forty days of showing up on camera with very little planning and no scripts. Just sharing stories, observations and things I’ve been noticing.

What I’ve learned so far:

1. The videos that begin with a story create more conversation than the ones that begin with a lesson.
2. The videos where I share more of myself resonate more than the ones where I simply demonstrate my expertise.
3. The moments where I laugh, leave in an “um” or admit I haven’t fully figured something out don’t seem to reduce credibility. If anything, they seem to increase connection.

I’ll report back with more data as I go, but so far this is telling me that maybe people aren’t looking for another expert to tell them what to think. Perhaps they’re looking for someone who will help them think.

There’s a subtle but important difference. Teachers often arrive with answers, whilst thinking partners arrive with observations.

They notice something curious, tell a story and  ask a question. They offer a perspective that makes you stop scrolling for a moment and think, I’d never looked at it like that before.

Ironically, I think this is taking us back to where communication started. We simply shared things we’d noticed, told stories over coffee, laughed about something that happened that morning, wondered about the world together.

Somewhere along the way, many of us (including me!) started believing that every time we showed up online, we had to teach.

We put on our professional armour, polished away the rough edges and became the expert. And in doing so, many of us accidentally hid the very thing people connect with most.

Ourselves.

I’m not suggesting we stop sharing what we know. Quite the opposite, expertise still matters.

But perhaps the role of expertise is changing, to sit beside people as we make sense of the world together.

To think out loud.

To share observations before they’ve become polished frameworks, admit we’re still learning, trust that a story can sometimes teach more than a slide deck ever could.

After just a few videos, that’s the biggest lesson this experiment has given me.

Follow along on Instagram @helenpackham 

Want to chat? Shoot me a DM or email hello@helenpackham.com