The Blind Spot of Expertise

Coaching a bunch of kids to play football is a fascinating experience.

When they first started playing together as five-year olds, those initial games looked more like medieval scrambles than football. Everyone chasing after the ball, each player belting it towards the goal – it was very much a single-player game.

Fast forward three years, and it’s a different story.

Most players now has a sense of their position, they understand the value of running into space, and they know that passing backwards can sometimes be as sensible as passing towards the goal.

It’s starting to resemble something close to ‘football’.

For anyone who’s watched a football match or two, these fundamentals might seem obvious. But to a kid just starting out, they’re anything but.

The same goes for your audience. As an experienced expert in your field, it’s easy to forget what it felt like to be a beginner.

Subject expertise builds competence, but it can also create blind spots. This leads to assumptions about what learners know and how they best absorb new information.

It’s worth remembering that your development hasn’t been a straight path. It’s a jumble of experiences, education, conversations, and discoveries that’s brought you to where you are today.

So, how can you tap back into that beginner’s mindset and use it to shape better learning experiences?

Here are four questions to consider:

• What three things would you tell a younger version of yourself (5–10 years ago) to help you progress faster?
• What words or jargon do you sometimes use that puts a confused look on people’s faces?
• When was the last time you had a one-on-one conversation with someone just starting out? What questions could you ask them to test your assumptions and uncover any blind spots?
• When teaching, do you explain the ‘how’ and ‘why’, not just the ‘what’?

Mastering your field is a significant achievement.

But true expertise lies in guiding others from their starting point to the end of their own journey.

I’m off to figure out how to teach the offside rule…

Andy Jack

Andy loves helping subject experts, authors, speakers, coaches and key persons of influence to monetise their expertise with online learning. When not on his laptop, he'll usually be found up a mountain!