Alistair Gordon

Do you have a complex technical job, like a software developer, scientist, lawyer, engineer, policy writer, economist or medical researcher? Master Expert is your guide to every business skill you need to succeed. 740 pages and 50 chapters of toolkits, ideas, checklists, and new processes to help you surmount every one of the challenges faced by senior technical specialists: How do I pitch my ideas to make sense commercially and strategically? How do I understand my organisation's commercial context? How do I prioritise and engage stakeholders? How do I recalibrate failing relationships? How do I coach and delegate, and make my expertise understood by non-technical colleagues? How do I manage upward, talk to boards, and convince doubters? How do I manage my energy, workload and priorities day to day? How do I get better at presenting, intelligence gathering and networking? How do I understand where my skills are weak, and how to plan to improve them? Why Master Expert? It's time technical specialists like yourself got the same deal as managers. From the very first day a new manager starts work, they're given a LOT of help. A career ladder. Appraisals, Mentoring. Networking. Capability frameworks. Support, connections - they're trained to deal with whatever business problems come along. Technical people don't get that kind of support. It's time they did. Master Expert details how to evaluate the performance of technical specialists, and includes a capability framework to understand your own, or your team's, progress toward Master Expert status. The authors, Alistair Gordon and Dominic Johnson, have been coaching developers, scientists, lawyers, engineers, policy writers, economists, medical researchers and other technical specialists for close to ten years now, and this book distils everything they've learned. Learn more at expertship.com

We believe this is the first guide of its kind ever published. It is designed by experts for experts, to help them actively build their capability. It assists experts in becoming the very best experts they can by helping them craft meaningful and actionable Personal Growth Plans. It contains 102 growth opportunities - initiatives which, when put into action, position experts, no matter what their expert domain, to have greater impact and influence, and add more value. GROWTH FOR EXPERTSMany of those using this book will have participated in one of Expertunity's growth programs for experts around the world. So, you'll understand about the concept of the Expertship Model, and the process by which you should develop your Personal Growth Plan using our template. It is however designed to be a standalone tool, so we have included chapters at the beginning of this Guide explaining these concepts. If you know about them already you can jump straight over them. If you're new to the concept you can read about how Expertship is for experts what leadership is to leaders. THE EXPERTSHIP MODELThe Expertship Model is a result of years of research and testing and is acknowledged as one of the leading capability frameworks for experts. Experts from places as far afield as Las Vegas, New York, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Sydney and Auckland use the model. These experts operatein a wide variety of expert domains -IT, law, HR, Engineering, Sales, Finance, Risk and Science. THE EXPERTSHIP360This Guide is best used in conjunction with a feedback tool, such as the Expertship360. Recipients of a 360 report get valuable feedback from a range of their stakeholders, and thus can determine which capabilities are their strengths to be built upon, and which capabilities present opportunities for significantly more value to be added. The growth initiatives listed in this Guide are organised by capability area. A GUIDE FOR MANAGERS OF EXPERTS, TOOSome readers may lead a team or division of experts. You might be responsible for helping them identify and satisfy their development needs. This Guide represents the latest thinking on how to motivate and get the best value from your experts. You may be receiving it as an accompaniment to Expertunity's Leader of Experts program. TOP EXPERTS COMBINE TECHNICAL AND ENTERPRISE SKILLSExperts face many challenges that are unique to them. Many challenges are resolved by deploying technical skills - skills which experts have typically been trained in many times over the years. In fact, usually nearly all of an experts' capability development has been in these technical areas. However, the very best experts combine these technical skills with what we refer to as enterprise skills. These are the additional skills - such as business acumen, change agility, stakeholder management, and personal impact - which enable experts to deploy their technical skills best. Many experts have missed out on training in these skills, and the arrival of Expertship programs seeks to restore this imbalance. You can find out about all of our Expertship services at http: //www.expertunity.global/ Of course, we would love to hear your feedback on how we can continue to improve this Guide. Please let us know how you found it helpful, and how you think we could make it easier to use. We would also love to hear your success stories putting these growth initiatives to work. Our website provides you with a direct line of contact with the authors. Good luck with your personal growth plan