Subject Matter Expert

The term is often bandied around workplaces but what makes a subject matter expert a subject matter expert anyhow?

Recently I saw on LinkedIn someone crowing that they had finally reached the 10,000 hours of experience in a role and so therefore technically they were considered an expert in their field. This piqued my curiosity to search if this was an accepted definition of the term expert, and if that made you if you stayed within a field of work, a subject matter expert.

Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 book Outliers - The Story of Success wrote that 10,000 hours is the magic number of greatness, which has the meaning to be considered elite and highly experienced in a field or craft, you must practice it for at least 10, 000 hours.

This made me think some more. I have never considered myself an expert on anything other than making mistakes or self sabotage but it opened a line of thought, perhaps I am an expert in other things after all. Well perhaps others may consider me an expert in a field simply because of time spent doing something.

So I did some calculations. Added in some variables that seemingly made sense and then added a 20% discount to the result just to be conservative in my results. Quite amazingly I came up with that I have spent over 21, 000 hours working in VET industry in Australia. Now that is the paid working hours, not the unpaid hours travelling, assessing in your own time, learning and relearning standards, procedures, watching others in the industry to learn, or reading scholarly and non scholarly articles about best practice. It doen't include the higher learning at university level about adult learning or constant upgrading of qualifications in order to teach or countless hours doing professional develeopment in order to maintain currency. So I guess according to Malcolm Gladwell, I must be an expert.

But wait. The Cambridge Dictionary states that an expert is a person with a high level of knowledge or skill relating to a particular subject or activity. Note that it doesn't have a time requirement in order to be called an expert just a level of skill or knowledge. This also made me think. An author that is terrible, and spends 10,000 hours writing their first book, which may still be terrible, are they an expert in writing books? An expert in everything in written literature? What if for 10,000 hours you work unsafely doing a particular task? Are you now a subject matter expert?

Perhaps there is more to being an expert after all measuring hours in activity. Not so far in the distant past I asked for some measurements of student feedback for myself over a six month period. The positive feedback from those I teach means a lot to me (but it has to be honest). 97.5 % positive was the result. This to me is more indicative of a level of expertise than simply an hourly measurement. This week I got what I considered to be one best endorsements possible when a lecturer from what I consider one of the better universities was in my class and at the end he approached my and after saying how much he enjoyed my presentation told me he would be introducing to his classes a couple of practices I use in my class.

My overall take of the subject matter expert tag or label is simply this. In my opinion, to call yourself an expert you must first be acceptedby peers and those you serve as one. Anything else looks pretentious. By the way, I still don't think I am expert. I am still learning my craft from everyone I encounter, and I don't think I would ever think I have earned the right to be considered an expert.