Developing the Expert Leader

Leadership can be viewed through the lens of expertise, and the findings of a wide range of research on experts, expertise, and expert performance can change how we think about leaders and leadership development. This perspective supports some of current development practices, suggests modifications to others, and identifies some neglected areas. It also provides a potentially unifying framework for understanding how leadership expertise develops and why some practices are more effective than others.

When I went into that job, everything was new and didn't have any meaning. I didn't know what was important or what wasn't. I knew I couldn't make any technical contribution, so my contribution would have to be at a broader level. So, I listened, watched things happen, and learned what the pieces were and how they were connected. I thought about it continuously for months.

After a while things began to make sense, I could see the patterns, how the processes worked, what mattered and what didn't, and what I could do to guide the entire area. Once the pieces made sense and I could put them together, I could run things by the numbers. But then, after a while I could go on "automatic pilot." And I wasn't learning anything new-there was no longer anything to spur me to figure things out.

The two of us, researchers conducting interviews into how executives go into new leadership situations, listened intently to this Silicon Valley executive. From this and similar stories from other executives, we concluded that some executives are expert leaders in the same sense that there are expert chess players, climatologists, and surgeons. Although we do not ordinarily think of leaders as experts, talented leaders fit the profile nicely.

Research on experts and the acquisition of expertise is extensive, including studies in the domains of surgery, software design, music, ballet, chess, mathematics, and sports, to mention only a few (see Ericsson, et al., 2006, for a comprehensive survey of the field). In most of these studies an expert is defined as a person who generates "superior reproducible performances of representative tasks" relevant to the domain of activity, and "expertise" refers to "the characteristics, skills, and knowledge that distinguish experts from novices and less experienced people" acting in that domain (Ericsson,...