Many of us would consider ourselves to be experts in something: maybe in our previous field of work, or with a tool that we’ve mastered, or a system that we’ve developed. Yet, when starting our encore career, we need to understand how to make that expertise work best for us. We may need to transfer knowledge to employees that work for us in our new careers, or we may need to market our expertise to our clients to show them they are in good hands.

In considering this subject, I was reminded of a book I read back in 2005: Deep Smarts: How to Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Business Wisdom by Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap. I was intrigued by this book when it came out, as it was centered around the organizations within the corporate world that I was still then a part of. But, I think that its teachings have great relevance to those of us starting our encore careers as well. In fact, Chip Conley of the Modern Elder Association recently held a book talk with author Dorothy Leonard to discuss how this information could be applied to this next stage of our professional lives. 

In today’s episode, I will walk you through some of the highlights of that book talk as well as some takeaways that I discovered from reading the book myself. I will also share a complimentary book that deals with the opposite skill sets that novices bring to the table to explore how a blended approach of expert and rookie mindsets can be most beneficial. 

Learning to embrace being both the expert and the apprentice will allow you to utilize your deep knowledge while developing a learning mindset that can help you tackle the swift changes that starting a new encore career will bring.

We'll dive deeper into these concepts:

• What are the skills of those with deep smarts

• Some of the best ways to pass down or transfer expert knowledge 

• The characteristics and limitations of experts vs. novices

• How expert skills may differ from rookie skills

• Why rookie smarts can be just as important as expertise

Now, for some action steps:

• Check out the book Deep Smarts: How to Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Business Wisdom by Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap

• Read up on the Harvard Business Review article on Deep Smarts

• Explore these ideas further with the complimentary book Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work, by Liz Wiseman

• Download the free worksheet: Three Steps You Need for a More Productive Workday

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I thank you so much for being here and I’ll see ya next time on Creating Your Encore Career.

— Lynn