Excellence Profiling: Understanding what Makes an Expert

Experts are unconsciously competent because they do the competency neurologically at such high speed they cannot put into words what they do. Experts are experts by design. Because experts don’t really “know” how they are being an expert, if you want to know what makes an expert, i.e. what they are doing, you can’t just ask them, you have to watch them and do a profile on them, which can be replicated in other people with potential.

1. Experts do things very, very rapidly and at an unconscious level.

At an expert level one is referring to examples of people functioning at the unconscious competence level of the learning curve. It is interesting that conscious processes in the mind requires a much slower tempo of neurological functioning. For one to become aware of what and how you think, it seems it is a prerequisite that you slow down the mental speed to correspond with the tempo of verbalisation/language and/or a tempo at which you can recognise pictures. When you speak with an expert about their competence, the answer you more frequently get is that they don’t know, or that it just happens, etc. This is the experiential indication that whatever it is that they do at the unconscious competence level, is outside of their awareness because of the speed at which they run the neurological software. Beginners, on the other hand, do things only as fast as they can say it on the inside or as fast as they can recall their internal pictorial representation of the steps of the competence. Repetition, or experience, of the internal sequence of events is what allows for the person to “speed up” until they equal the expert and they become unconsciously competent.

2. “Experience” allows the expert to think in non-linear formats.

Experts do not necessarily think sequentially, but rather think in more like a “jumping steps” manner. They can take calculated short cuts, or think in unusual/innovative/creative ways about the problem, which is very different from the linear thinking of the novice. They can do this because of the different forms of thinking that they can utilise, for example like changing conceptual levels in their thinking from abstract to concrete (or vice versa), and/or changing conceptual positions (e.g. dreamer to self-critic; problem analysis to problem solving while considering the restrictions to potential solutions).

3. Expert flexibility is a demonstration of how the expert considers the outcome and the context of the event in their decision of what is the “correct way” of applying the competence.

This consideration of the outcome and context is what gives the same competence it’s “variability” or difference: the same competence will have a different form or even sequence under different circumstances, because the requirements are different. Test this in your own experience by comparing different examples of using the same competence in different contexts, and notice how the form/process would change to accommodate the circumstances/context and the identified outcome. A good general example would be teaching people decision-making strategies. The contexts which apply will determine the kind or form of the decision-making which will be appropriate. Think about how you might go about a decision in a situation which is not dependent on how much time a person has for making the best decision, or how much information is explicitly available. Compare this with a time when you are pressured for time, and a working decision is required immediately, even though not all the information is available. “A particular skill or capability (such as the ability to “think creatively”) may serve as a support for many kinds of tasks, situations and contexts”, says Robert Dilts^[1].

4. Experts recognise the internal and external cues when to start and stop the process. This is easily underestimated as can be seen with the concern about training transfer and the predictive validity of measurements.

A person might have the neurological software in place (as was seen during an assessment centre or from psychometric testing) but that still does not mean the person will recognise the cues when to use the strategy. Frequently people, when they have been unsuccessful, will in retrospect identify, and even demonstrate, what they should have done. At the time, they will tell you, they do not think of it “in that way”. Therefore, the appropriate identification of the cues when to use what version of the strategy, is what correlates with success.

5. As experts run the “expert neurological software” they do so at more than one level.

As they run the strategy there is at the same time an ongoing evaluation about whether they will be achieving their outcome if they continue to think along the current lines, i.e. run the current software.

            ^[1] Robert Dilts: Modeling with NLP. (1998) Meta Publications, PO BOX 1910, Capitola, California 95010;p38.