Guide to expertise will help you learn what other people know that you don’t.

On this site, we use a travel metaphor to make learning feel more familiar and easier to follow. Think of gaining expertise like going on a trip. Each destination is not a straight path — more like a winding journey with a few different phases along the way. Whether you're growing in your career or your personal life, the journey to each goal will include five key phases.

Goals for Using this Guide to Expertise

  • Observe: Assess one’s own expertise

  • Think: Acquire more expertise

  • Interact: Collaborate more effectively

  • Serve: Plan an educational program

  • Comply: Assess an educational program

  • Assess another person’s development

  • Help another person

  • Find a mentor

  • Satisfy curiosity

Five Phases of Expertise

Learn the Rewards of Expertise

The Joy of Collaboration in life and work

  • Connect with people

  • Grow in your trade or profession

  • Enrich your relationships

  • Learn to make a difference

The Meaning of Learning

  • Improve your mind

  • Have more fun every day

  • Keep work and life in balance

  • Become more secure

This guide identifies the goals for each phase for many domains of expertise. Journeys for work are different from journeys for life. Others set the goals and have more control of our work domains while we create our own goals and have more control of our life domains.

Like the possible itineraries, there are numerous goals for each domain. This guide distinguishes the phases in nine goals for many domains of work and life.