Some time ago at a previous job, my manager performed a 360 review of my performance. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, a 360 review is one where your manager, peers, direct reports, and sometimes even customers are given an opportunity to discuss how well you perform your job. After the interviews had concluded, I was told that someone had commented: "Larry is incredibly technical, but you'd never know it from talking to him."
Initially, I wasn’t sure how to interpret that comment. After all, I spent the first half of my career in highly technical roles and prided myself on my technical acumen. Was this a criticism or a compliment? And what was that person actually saying about my expertise and how I communicated it?
After sitting with it for a while, I came to an unexpected conclusion: mastery, in its highest form, is invisible. Put another way, true expertise simplifies experience without sacrificing substance. It’s like a perfectly baked apple pie fresh out of the oven - comforting and familiar, even though it represents knowledge earned through many prior failures.
Guaraldi vs. Brubeck - Diametrically Opposed Geniuses
In the world of jazz piano, both Vince Guaraldi and Dave Brubeck were geniuses. If you listen closely, you may hear surface-level similarities: both favored syncopated rhythms, odd time signatures, and dense left-hand chord voicings. But that’s where the similarities end.
Brubeck often highlighted the complexity of a song’s structure, while Guaraldi put the listener at ease, so much so that you might not notice anything unusual at all. This difference matters because everything depends on how the listener perceives the experience.
We often say “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” A slight modification may be more appropriate here: complexity is in the ear (or brain) of the listener. And that brings us back to the 360 review comment.
Why Invisible Mastery Works Better
Earlier, I suggested that mastery doesn’t need to be obvious to exist. In fact, the less obvious it is, the more impactful it can be.
When complexity is overt, attention shifts. Using uncommon or industry-specific terminology carries risk, especially when the subject itself is already complex. Once analysis is required, focus moves away from meaning and toward deconstruction, i.e. breaking statements into smaller parts just to keep up.
When complexity fades into the background, confidence increases. The listener can focus on the larger implications rather than getting lost in minutiae. This matters because key stakeholders - especially business leaders - want clarity, not proof of intelligence or subject matter expertise.
In practice, this means prioritizing outcomes over mechanisms, implications over implementation details, and decisions over diagrams.
That clarity enables sound decision-making. A swamp of details, on the other hand, often leads to the familiar condition we call “analysis paralysis.”
That 360 Feedback, Revisited
Viewed through this lens, the original comment from my 360 review reads very differently. It wasn’t describing a lack of depth; it was describing mastery. It reflected communication optimized for impact, not a peacock-like display of irrelevant detail.
In other words, I was more like Guaraldi and less like Brubeck. Either approach might demonstrate expertise, but Guaraldi’s disarming style allowed listeners to derive the greatest value from the music and from the conversation.
Conclusion
Mastery is a design choice. It is intentional, not accidental. Simplifying complex topics requires more expertise, not less, because it demands that someone absorb the complexity so others don’t have to. When done well, it creates momentum that allows progress to happen without friction.
The goal isn’t to sound impressive.
It’s to make understanding feel inevitable.