Why the best practitioner teaches badly
Step 1 / 2·The curse of knowledge
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Learning objectives — after this module you will:
- Explain the curse of knowledge
- Unpack the hidden steps inside a mastered process
- Select the right people for an internal trainer bench
The curse of knowledge
Understand why experts are often the hardest to learn from.
When someone does a task long enough, most of the steps move from conscious to automatic. They still perform them correctly, but they no longer see themselves performing them. That is why a strong engineer describes their process in three sentences while a newcomer needs seventeen steps to do it.
This is the curse of knowledge: once you know something, it becomes very hard to imagine not knowing it. The teacher overestimates what the learner already has, skips the intermediate steps, and leaves feeling they covered everything — while the learner caught only fragments.
This is not an attitude problem or a speaking problem. Someone enthusiastic and articulate will still teach badly if they have not unpacked what they automated years ago.
The fastest way to unpack hidden steps
Have the expert do the task while a newcomer sits beside them and asks 'why did you choose that' at every decision point. Each answer is a hidden step that belongs in the material.