How to Coach Yourself and Others Essential Knowledge For Coaching | Page 229

The problematic expert
The fourth possibility is touched on in the discussion of
expertise.This the person who (wait for it!) knows that she knows
but does not know how she knows—or cannot express it. Ask
about a particularly brilliant bit of practice and you will get a
banal answer which might have come out of the textbook, but
which totally fails to do justice to the complexity of what she has
done. Sometimes that answer will be given because she does not
want to appear a "smart-arse" ("Ass" if you are American, but I
wouldn't wish to confuse you with references to donkeys.)
Sometimes, though, she might claim that it is a matter of "not
being able to put it into words" or even, disconcertingly, of a
"hunch".
She may even be afraid of trying to express her expertise, for fear
that an inadequate exposition will somehow jeopardise fragile
knowledge. Once she has said it, it might become ossified. She
might feel obliged to live u