“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful after all.” -Michelangelo

When highly-valued experts are about to retire, change jobs or their company wants to expand the number of people with their expertise, experts often give seminars to share what they know. Our research suggests that while useful, these seminars do little to develop the real expertise of participants.

Technical Master Classes are based in research in cognitive science on how experts solve problems, how people develop expertise, and how to teach expertise.

Objectives
This customized workshop helps highly-valued experts teach subtleties of their expertise. It has 3 outcomes:

• Learners see how experts think as they solve technical problems.
• Experts learn how to mentor by coaching rather than telling learners what they know.
• Learners improve their skill in thinking like the expert through practice and expert feedback.

Both experts and learners learn throughout the Technical Master Class.

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Audience
Technical Master Classes include one or more highly-valued experts (in the same subject matter), one or more learners (in the expert’s subject matter). The primary target of the Technical Master Class is:

• Experts who need to teach their expertise to others
• Learners with a good basic working knowledge of the field.

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Immersive Learning
Technical Master Classes are not typical sit, listen and leave seminars. We know from research in cognitive science and adult learning that people learn better if they are actively engaged, in fact, immersed fully in learning. Full immersion is how we originally learn language, culture, and values. It is much more than asking, “Does anyone have questions?” Technical Master Classes use a set of case examples that experts and learners collaboratively think through and in the process learners see how the expert size up the situation and identify a course of action. This immersion in active problem solving increases the richness and effectiveness of learning.

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Practice
“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” - Niels Bohr

Because Technical Master Classes are in a classroom setting, they give learners an opportunity to practice where their mistakes will not have real-world repercussions. The opportunity to practice is rare for most professionals once they have passed through the novice phase of their career. But research in expertise development demonstrates that mid-career practice is critical to long term successes. Technical Master Classes give learners the chance to practice on real situations, specifically engineered to give them insights into how experts think.

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Technical Master Classes: 3 Engineered Steps
Technical Master Classes are engineered to help learners use the thinking of experts to build their own skills in diagnosing and solving technical problems.
1. Expert Orientation Session. Experts participate in a ½ day orientation workshop which clarifies the nature of their expertise, teaches them how to think aloud while solving problems, how to coach learners to think along with them, and how to prepare case examples. Experts from different disciplines can attend the same orientation workshop.

2. Prepare Case Examples: Case examples are technical situations that we use during the workshop to engage the experts and learners in thinking aloud together. There is a bit of an art to preparing a good case. We provide templates that can make the case preparation simpler, review cases ideas with the experts, and help them develop them to reduce their preparation time.

3. Technical Master Class. Experts and learners in the same discipline participate in a ½ day facilitated workshop in which they think aloud together about the cases prepared by the experts. In some sessions learners also bring cases they and the experts use to think aloud together.

Subsequent TIP Sessions: Subsequent sessions cover other aspects of the expert’s expertise. Experts often conduct a series of Master Classes covering different topics or for different learners.
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Value
Retain the expertise that can’t be captured. When we ask experts what their real expertise is, they don’t typically say their technical field. Instead, they identify a meta-cognitive skill. A lawyer, known in his firm as a great negotiator said his real expertise is “cutting to the chase.” A project manager described his real expertise as getting things done. Technical Master Classes focus on these undocumentable, but extremely valuable dimensions of expertise.

Experts learn how to coach. Through the Technical Master Classes many experts discover a completely new way to communicate their insights. This is an ability they can carry into mentoring relationships beyond the workshop.

Learners develop immediately applicable skill. Because Technical Master Classes get learners to practice, with corrective feedback from experts, they “learn from doing.” Research shows that this is the most effective to make learning stick.
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Participant Comments
“This workshop is a great complement to the fundamentals. It challenges you to come up with the answer instead of just giving you the answer.”

“This approach helps you learn how to learn. It helped me come up with questions on my own and get feedback.”

“I learned to find things other’s don’t and make a deliberate choice to not look for the obvious things”

“This approach helped me see things in multiple dimensions.”

“It helps you become mentally prepared, not just data prepared.”
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Customization
Each workshop is customized to the needs of the particular experts involved. The information needed for customization can be gathered from the experts in the orientation meeting. The customization charge is built into the overall cost of the program.

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Facilitator
Richard McDermott is a leading author and consultant on designing knowledge organizations and author of over 3 dozen articles on communities of practice, expertise development, and sharing good practice. His articles have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, the California Management Review, the Journal of Knowledge Management, the Cutter IT Journal, The Knowledge Management Review and others. He served as subject matter expert for six international studies on expertise development, communities of practice, and creating a culture that supports knowledge sharing. Dr. McDermott is a Visiting Academic Fellow at Henley Business School and an Associate of the Knowledge and Innovation Network sponsored by Warwick University.