There is no Magic Formula. There are no Shortcuts to Expertise?
I’m not sure what you do to earn your living or get by in the world; but I am sure you are good at it.
In fact, I believe you are likely to be an expert in your field. I believe you have likely spent hundreds of hours mastering your craft, studying the ins and outs of your work. I would bet you are familiar with the subtleties and intricacies of your work and the workplace where it is conducted.
I come at writing this blog post knowing you have worked hard to be in the position you now in. I also know that most of the most successful people I know – fail to stop and really think about what led to their success. When asked, they stumble for an answer. I think intuitively they know they worked hard, they read the right books, they studied the right materials, they benefited from the right experiences and they met the right people. Some experts will even acknowledge they cultivated the right relationships with smart people, but they still struggle to articulate a coherent pattern one can take to expertise.
Let me ask you a question. What if you had to begin again in another field? Do you know how you would become expert again?
How does one become an expert? Like you I have read studies that say you can become an expert in anything by reading some number of minutes over time. I think that might make you knowledgeable, I am not sure it makes you expert. I believe expertise is more than simply knowing a lot – it’s being able to do something with what you know, it’s knowing when your knowledge has application in new and novel situations.
People from coast-to-coast have written on expertise and I have read enough now that I should be an expert on expertise – but truthfully the only thing I can offer with certainty is that to truly become an expert in a new field, you must begin at the beginning. You must check your bias and you must check your privilege.
If you are anything like me, when the urge to change direction hits, try as I might, my every thought is driven by what’s next. Once I make the decision to move in the new direction, the desire to be good at it, to be expert in it consumes me. Not only do I want to be expert in it, but I also want to look like I belong along the way to expertise. When I was younger – I bought the new shoes, the best racquet, or whatever else signaled that I belonged even before I stepped on the court. I bought the best motocross bike before my first race. I bought the regalia and tam before I entered my doctoral program.
All too often I have gotten my priorities mixed up and bought the gear before I had done anything to prepare for the new direction. In some academic and career tasks. I tried something different but equally out-of-whack. I traded getting the gear for a mindset that assumed expertise in one thing because I had it in another thing.
And each time my previous expertise led, I floundered about, as I tried to take what I knew about something else and apply it to something truly new. I arrogantly tried to force fit what I knew into what I wanted or needed to do next without truly examining the fit of what I knew to the task at hand.
If I only knew then what I know now.
Today, I know for a fact that most of what I knew and tried to force fit into the new task inhibited me from learning in an efficient and effective manner. It robbed me of experience and made me an inefficient learner. Just like buying the gear didn’t make me quicker or more athletic, forcing what I “knew” to be true didn’t make it so.
I understand prior learning theory. I appreciate the value of experience. But I’m trying to get you to join me in thinking differently about expertise, I want you to think like a beginner.
As I think back over my career, it was in the moments I thought like a beginner that I was truly open to something new. When I honestly felt myself grow as a leader and as a person. It was in those early moments when learning became personal and lasting. Those moments when I saw myself as a true novice, a real beginner that I fully developed new skills and hard-earned expertise.
I have come to believe, that to become expert in anything new, you do not have to give up your expertise, rather you must abandon the certainty you have in the general application of your expertise to all things new.
So, in some ways becoming expert begins by getting over yourself. Getting over your prior learning, your application of general expertise, putting it behind you so you are “free” to learn without the prejudice of your experience.
When you acknowledge that you don’t own applicable expertise and you may not be intellectually equipped in the moment to do what you are about to begin. It allows you to set aside the embarrassment coming from stumbling and making mistake-after-mistake. It allows you to be a learner. When you genuinely learn from your missteps and when you put yourself in a child-like place where failing is discovery. You will begin to develop new expertise and broaden your knowledge horizons.
For most of us it takes real courage to be seen in this space of child-like experiential learning of developing expertise. It takes persistence to fall repeatedly and get back up.
To stumble wildly and enjoy the journey, to even laugh at yourself as you stumble forward is a gift that only those learning something new can give to themselves.
In short, there is no magic formula, there are no shortcuts to expertise. It takes courage. It takes letting go and the willingness to be vulnerable. It takes honest effort and humility, and it takes time and an open mind.
