As a member of a team of school improvement consultants, I often participated in the hiring process when we had openings for additional consultants. The process began with reading résumés and deciding which applicants to interview. There were times when I was so impressed with someone’s experience or credentials that I almost forgot that content expertise plays an important role in a consultant’s success.
One applicant stands out for me. When I read this applicant’s résumé, my first thought was that she was a good candidate for the position. Her expertise ranged across executive coaching, strategic planning, organization design and transformation, and leadership development. Her industry experience encompassed media and marketing, professional services, engineering, healthcare, financial services, and nonprofit. She received an MBA from Harvard Business School and her BA from Harvard College with highest honors in history. She had an advanced diploma in organizational leadership and change from MIT’s Sloan School and had completed multiple certifications through the National Training Laboratory.
After reading this applicant’s résumé, I had no doubt that she was a skilled consultant, but would she be a good school improvement consultant? As I thought more about her knowledge and skills, I realized that the answer was no because she lacked the knowledge that grounds improvement efforts—knowledge of teaching and learning and the conditions that support both.
This knowledge is included in our school improvement framework as content expertise and includes knowledge about teaching and learning specific subject areas, such as reading and mathematics. Consultants don’t need to be experts in academic subject areas, but they do need knowledge of the research and best practices related to them.
Content expertise also includes deep knowledge of the system conditions (e.g., professional development, parent engagement, leadership, allocation of resources) that affect student learning and experience in maximizing those conditions.
Content expertise is important because it allows consultants to:
- Ask the right questions to focus clients on how their policies or practices might be affecting teaching and learning
- View problems from multiple perspectives and envision an array of solutions
- Be flexible in the approach to improvement
Having content expertise lends credibility to consultants’ work with clients, but that doesn’t mean that consultants should rely solely on their expertise. Recognizing and leveraging clients’ expertise helps them “own” the work, makes best use of the resources in the system, builds trust between the consultant and client, and contributes to the likelihood and sustainability of improvement.
Using content expertise doesn’t always mean acting as an expert who tells clients what they need to do. In some cases, a consultant might make best use of content expertise by providing training, engaging in joint problem-solving, recommending resources, or facilitating improvement processes.
To use content expertise appropriately, consultants need an honest assessment of how well their expertise meets the client’s needs. Consultants can decide how to use content expertise by first acknowledging what they know and don’t know that is applicable to the situation.
For example, a consultant who lacks specific knowledge about teaching mathematics could address that limitation by working with a colleague with expertise in that area. This also presents an opportunity to leverage the client’s expertise in mathematics teaching and learning, which has the added benefit of helping the client take ownership of the improvement effort.
What content expertise are you bringing to the table, and what expertise might you need to leverage from someone else? Our “Assessing Content Expertise” tool can help consultants reflect on their expertise, consider client expertise, identify any knowledge or skill limitations, and determine appropriate actions to ensure that content expertise contributes to the success of change initiatives.
Download our new resource, Assessing Content Expertise: Making the Most of What You Know.
