Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Key Takeaways
- The curse of the generalist creates challenges for people with broad interests, such as difficulty in defining their professional identity.
- Specialists often receive recognition for their expertise, while generalists face pressure to fit into specific roles, which can lead to feelings of imposter syndrome.
- Despite challenges, generalists bring adaptability and a unique value proposition to the table, which can be advantageous in today’s interconnected job market.
- To embrace being a generalist, it’s important to accept your multifaceted identity and articulate the value you provide clearly.
- Finding a common thread across diverse experiences helps generalists present a coherent narrative to employers or clients.
The Curse of the Generalist
When I was younger, I was interested in everything and did well in all my subjects. School favours those who can perform well across both humanities and sciences – and I was that person. I was also musical, sporty, curious about almost everything. What you might call a well-rounded individual.
But as I left the comfort of the education system, I discovered the curse of the generalist.
As someone with many interests and no clear area of focus, I struggled to know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was okay at lots of different sports and musical instruments but not especially good at any of them. I experienced what the Germans call Torschlusspanik – the fear of closing doors – and chose a broad degree (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) for my studies. I did a masters to postpone the decision further. I tried to keep my options open for as long as possible.
I’m not alone. People with broad interests and talents are labelled generalists – a jack of all trades, and therefore a master of none. There is an assumption that those who don’t stick to one single career track lack focus or are scatterbrained. But is it really better to be a specialist than a generalist?
Specialists versus generalists
From a career perspective, the advantages of being a specialist are clear. Investing 10,000 hours to achieve mastery and develop advanced domain expertise allows you to become, as Cal Newport puts it, “so good they can’t ignore you.”
And yet today’s interconnected world and rapidly evolving job market make a generalist profile – with more transferable skills and greater adaptability – much more likely to be future-proof. Forward-thinking organisations actively encourage employees to move between teams and roles, favouring what Google has called a “smart creative” profile that combines technical knowledge, business expertise, and creativity.
In business, we’re constantly told to choose our niche and become the go-to expert in one thing. On the other hand, running your own business requires you to wear many different hats, understand a bit of everything, and above all be adaptable.
Maybe generalist isn’t even the right term. Barbara Sher calls us scanners, Marci Alboher slashies, Emilie Wapnick multipotentialites. My personal favourite is the Renaissance man or woman – embodied by Leonardo da Vinci, who was painter, sculptor, inventor, botanist, mathematician, and much else besides.
The curse of the generalist
So what’s the problem? What’s so bad about being good at lots of things?
The first difficulty arises when someone asks the dreaded question: “And what do you do?” We live in a world where we’re defined by our career choices and society wants to put us in a neat box based on a job title. Not having a clearly defined scope makes that question very hard to answer.
There is a lot of pressure to conform. A lot of social recognition that comes with being seen as The Expert. Not fitting that mould creates friction in almost every professional context.
More tangibly, there are implications for your job search or business development. Recruiters and hiring managers are looking for the right person for a specific job. As one generalist put it to me, job descriptions are crafted to fill a functional gap in a team. The frustration for the generalist is being met with “you’re overqualified” and “we don’t know what to do with you.”
If you do land in a specific role, the challenges don’t end there. As a generalist with a broad set of skills and experiences, you’re never going to be the single best at any one thing. As a result, you may always feel like a bit of an imposter. And over time, you’re likely to feel frustrated as your talents and interests are not being fully used.
What can you do about it?
Accept and celebrate what you are
Stop fighting it and see it as the gift it is. In her popular TEDx talk, Emilie Wapnick outlines three superpowers of the multipotentialite: idea synthesis – your multidimensional experience lets you find new insights at the intersection of different fields; rapid learning – you’re used to being a beginner, and you pick things up fast; and adaptability – you can wear many hats, pivot where needed, and respond effectively to change. These are genuinely valuable. The problem isn’t what you are – it’s how you’re presenting it.
Get clear on your value proposition
If you aren’t clear and confident about the value you bring, how can you expect to present yourself compellingly to a prospective employer or client? Spend time mapping your hard and soft skills, your personality strengths, and the particular perspective you bring. As a generalist, you’re not offering a specific skill set – you’re offering yourself as a whole package, with all the experience and insight that comes with your unique background. That needs to be articulated clearly, not apologised for.
Find the common thread
You may feel like you have a disparate set of experiences that you can’t possibly unite into a coherent proposition. The task is to elevate above specific roles and job descriptions to find an umbrella theme. What drives you? What’s your bigger purpose? What value and perspective have you brought into each of your roles, however different they appeared on the surface? There is a red thread – or a golden thread – running through your experiences. Finding it is the work.
Never stop learning
One of your unique strengths as a generalist is an insatiable curiosity and love of learning. This is why you’ve sought different challenges throughout your career – and why it’s important to continue. To give yourself even more of an edge, consider going deeper into one or two areas so that you become what’s sometimes called a T-shaped professional – broad across many areas, with genuine depth in a couple. Versatility plus depth is a powerful combination.
Nurture your network
Securing a role or client through the conventional process – uploading a CV where hundreds of applications are filtered automatically – is tricky at the best of times. When your profile doesn’t fit a neat functional box, it’s even harder. This is why building your personal brand and network is so important when you have an atypical profile. Have conversations. Add value where you can. Be open to unexpected and serendipitous opportunities – because that’s often how the best ones arrive for people like us.
Have you experienced the curse of the generalist? Are you clear on how to present yourself in a compelling way? What golden thread runs through your experiences?
If you’re a founder or leader with a broad background who’s struggling to articulate what makes you distinctive, this is exactly the kind of work I do. Get in touch to explore working together.
The curse of the generalist is the difficulty that people with broad interests and skills face in a world that rewards clear specialisation. It shows up as struggling to answer “what do you do?”, being told you’re overqualified or don’t fit a specific role, and feeling like an imposter because you’re never the best at any one thing – even when your breadth is actually your greatest asset.
It depends on the context – but the binary is increasingly false. Specialists have depth and domain expertise; generalists have adaptability, transferable skills, and the ability to connect ideas across fields. Today’s most valuable professionals tend to be T-shaped: deep in one or two areas while broadly capable across many. The question isn’t which you are, but how you communicate your particular combination of strengths.
A multipotentialite – a term coined by Emilie Wapnick – is someone with many interests and creative pursuits who doesn’t fit the conventional model of having one true calling. Rather than a weakness, multipotentialites have three distinct superpowers: idea synthesis across fields, rapid learning, and adaptability. Other terms for the same profile include scanner (Barbara Sher), slashie (Marci Alboher), and Renaissance person.
Rather than forcing yourself into a narrow specialism, look for the common thread that runs through your varied experiences. What drives you across all of them? What perspective do you consistently bring? What problems do you find yourself drawn to? The answer is usually your umbrella theme – broader than a job title, but specific enough to be compelling to the right clients or employers.
Lead with your value proposition rather than your job title. Map your hard and soft skills, your personality strengths, and the particular perspective your background gives you. Present yourself as a whole package rather than a list of qualifications. Build your network and personal brand rather than relying on conventional job applications – your profile is most compelling in conversation, not on a filtered CV screening system.
