The myth of ex­pe­ri­ence be­ing equal to ex­per­tise has been around for a long time. Mer­ci­ful­ly, good sense is be­gin­ning to pre­vail and there’s a grow­ing re­al­i­sa­tion that one does not fol­low the oth­er au­to­mat­i­cal­ly. As a mat­ter of fact, some in­di­vid­u­als who boast of hav­ing 20 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in a po­si­tion re­al­ly may have had one year’s ex­pe­ri­ence, mul­ti­plied 20 times. In oth­er words, they have not grown or evolved. They have not led.

Build­ing lead­er­ship ex­cel­lence is about con­vert­ing raw ex­pe­ri­ence in­to ex­per­tise. Ex­pe­ri­ence de­liv­ers da­ta, while ex­per­tise is cu­rat­ed through con­sis­tent, de­lib­er­ate prac­tice that de­liv­ers (some­what) pre­dictable out­comes. Es­sen­tial­ly, ex­per­tise is wis­dom in mo­tion. Lead­ers who cul­ti­vate ex­per­tise have ac­cess to a sto­ry­telling nar­ra­tive that is found­ed on his­tor­i­cal, lived out­comes that were suc­cess­ful. Ex­pe­ri­ence with­out the gift of cu­rat­ed ex­per­tise de­volves sim­ply in­to a da­ta-gath­er­ing ex­er­cise.

Lead­ers who con­vert ex­pe­ri­ence in­to ex­per­tise ex­tract mean­ing from out­comes. They pol­ish these lessons and build replic­a­ble frame­works that serve as pat­terns for suc­cess. These lead­ers can point to sit­u­a­tions and cir­cum­stances where their frame­works were test­ed, proven and held firm. The de­lib­er­ate pat­terns that evolved would have giv­en the lead­er­ship sto­ries weight and in­flu­ence. Peo­ple buy in­to res­o­nant sto­ries that de­liv­er pow­er­ful mes­sages. This is the trail that makes lead­er­ship au­then­tic.

Lead­ers who as­pire to be pos­i­tive in­flu­encers need to con­front one truth. That lead­er­ship prac­tices emerge from the alche­my of the sum to­tal of life ex­pe­ri­ences. The in­struc­tion to these lead­ers is to place their lives un­der the mi­cro­scope and con­duct a self-ex­am­i­na­tion of habits, prac­tices and life learn­ings. The self-ex­am­i­na­tion ques­tion be­comes, “How have I emerged from my life’s jour­ney, so far?”

Those lead­ers who have learned well are a gift to their friend­ship and pro­fes­sion­al cir­cles. Those who have missed the learn­ings em­bed­ded in the lessons of life sow up­heaval in the work­place and in their per­son­al cir­cles.

As­pir­ing lead­ers who are se­ri­ous about their growth fol­low a cur­ricu­lum. They go be­yond be­ing sub­ject mat­ter ex­perts and cod­i­fy pat­terns of be­hav­iour that de­liv­er suc­cess, con­sis­tent­ly. Have you ever en­coun­tered a leader who al­ways seems to just “know” what to do in every sit­u­a­tion? This “know­ing” is not mag­ic, nor is it mys­ti­cal prac­tice. It’s sim­ply that this leader has been able to ac­cel­er­ate ex­per­tise across mul­ti­ple con­texts and cir­cum­stances, through adap­tive ap­pli­ca­tion of prin­ci­ples.

Lead­er­ship ex­per­tise is not an en­try-lev­el do­main. It’s one that sits atop the pro­fes­sion­al food chain. Get­ting to this pin­na­cle can be a gru­elling en­deav­our, sim­ply be­cause one of the ear­li­est steps re­quires the pil­grim to pur­sue an in­ner jour­ney that is typ­i­cal­ly per­ilous. Af­ter all, this means con­fronting one’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, emo­tion­al fis­sures, sup­pressed feel­ings and un­re­solved is­sues, as a rite of pas­sage to claim­ing lead­er­ship ex­cel­lence. It is a jour­ney not for the faint of heart.

The lead­ers who are bold enough to un­der­take this jour­ney to ex­per­tise and ex­cel­lence will need to pack a few items for the trip.

Self-re­flec­tion tools are jour­ney es­sen­tials. They en­sure that a lived ex­pe­ri­ence does not re­main raw, but ex­pands in­to a con­ver­sion path­way for learn­ing. An­oth­er es­sen­tial is hav­ing an adap­tive lens, so that learn­ing can be re­framed and ap­plied to di­verse con­texts. Co­her­ent think­ing can­not be for­got­ten. It helps the leader to not fall prey to scat­tered pro­cess­ing of in­for­ma­tion. De­vel­op­ing a tal­ent for sto­ry­telling, so that lessons come alive for au­di­ences, is one of the most im­por­tant non-ne­go­tiable es­sen­tials for the jour­ney.

Af­ter pack­ing all of the known es­sen­tials for the lead­er­ship ex­per­tise jour­ney, one fi­nal in­struc­tion re­mains. It is for lead­ers to go be­yond ac­cu­mu­lat­ing ex­per­tise to solve prob­lems and to chal­lenge them­selves to be­come ar­chi­tects who shape the fu­ture.