Expertise: defined, described, explained

DEFINITION Definitions are given in an attempt to identify phenomena and to delineate examples from non-examples. Expertise is consensually defined as elite, peak, or exceptionally high levels of performance on a particular task or within a given domain. One who achieves this status is called an expert or some related term, such as virtuoso, master, maven, prodigy, or genius. These terms are meant to label someone whose performance is at the top of the game. An expert’s field of expertise can be almost anything from craftsmanship, through sports and music, to science or mathematics. People usually agree on examples of expertise, like Yo-Yo Ma (musical performance), Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (ballroom dancing), Antiques Roadshow Appraisers, Albert Einstein (physics), Tiger Woods (golf), Bette Davis (acting), Nelson Mandela (politics), or Hillary Rodham Clinton (international relations). Why different terms? Each term carries with it a slightly nuanced meaning. Shaded meanings vary in their emphasis on experience or constitutional factors as the source of high levels of performance. The term chosen to characterize superior performance carries with it an implied cause. Like expert, virtuoso or master is the result of hard work and long training. If talent is involved, it is a talent for hard labor. In contrast, prodigy, like genius, results from an endowment, which shows up early in life without the benefit of training. It might be appealing to the layperson to believe that a genius is just born that way. Elite performance just comes natural to a genius; you don’t have to invest all that time and effort on training, because if you don’t have what it takes you’ll never get there. Moreover, you don’t have to explain why you never had a significant insight, because you just didn’t inherit the right abilities or genes. But the facts seem to be that, although people do differ in something called ability or talent, in sports or medicine or any area of human endeavor, talent is a necessary starting point, a platform from which to begin. To become an elite performer one has to capitalize on his or her abilities. Training is the sine qua non. Consider a specific case. Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter and sculptor, was one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century. Born into a family that cultivated the arts, he demonstrated extraordinary artistic ability at an early age, encouraged by his parents. All the elements were in place for Picasso—paints, brushes, canvases, and parents who could recognize good artistic work. Painting in the beginning in a naturalistic manner, his style changed later in life as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas, for example, creating (with Braque) a unique style that has come to be known as cubism. There is no doubt that Picasso was a child prodigy. He had an ability to create significant objects that the art world and collectors recognized early on for their value. He seems to have been endowed with pure genius for painting and sculpting. But it is less often recognized that he was trained classically in the arts and that he worked incessantly at his craft, devoting long hours day and night. And, over time, the quality of his work improved, as judged by his peers, and expanded into previously unexplored areas and techniques. He could produce new paintings later in life quickly, some consisting of little more than three or four strokes of his pen, and more or less at will, each of them a virtuoso performance. But that performance was based on a level of expertise achieved, by dint of hard work, by few other mortals. Picasso is but one case of expertise and, as such, cannot validate a general rule. Nonetheless, his accomplishments are clearly based on a combination of ability and effort, a characteristic that other experts share.