Is Teaching The Best Way To Learn In An Organization?
Do We Teach Them A Lesson, Or Gain A Lesson From Them?
Teaching in an organization is neither transmitting knowledge from a teacher to a student, nor a leader to a subordinate. However, it shall be done vice versa. If teaching in an organization is to make the jump from indoctrination to education then the workplace needs to be a place of conversation and dialogue.
In any conversation, we listen to or learn from one another. We discover what makes each other ‘click’, and if we listen closely, we contribute to the development of the community, organization, and skillsets essential for sustainability. In the midst of that, we tend to discover hidden values about ourselves, which could never be done if we only teach and expect others to learn from us.
Every conversation we have,
or every moment we think something anew,
or every time we ask a question,
we are forcing ourselves to consider and reconsider what we already know.
We add pieces that weren’t there before, thus reshape and reorder things that were already part of what we understand.
The best way to learn is by teaching others.
A teacher learns best. The same approach applies to leaders. All teachers learn something from their students, whether it’s positive or negative. The great ones use what they learn to become better teachers and to help their students. It’s how they use what they learn that makes the difference. This may sound idealistic and unrealistic, but the need for effective and open communication in the teaching process of an organization is absolutely needed.
Your people may tell you what they wanted and
often give unintended hints on how to reach them.
When you have engaged in one’s learning, when you are continually, persistently, consciously, and unconsciously wrestling with what you are trying to get across, you are engaging and affecting them at the same time. If you are not part of the struggle, you are blandly delivering knowledge and skill. There is no adaptation to suit what the people need and you are modeling a lack of interest in learning which always, rubs off on the people.
When the students make a point, ask a question, you cannot help but learn from your students and recursively take that learning and put it back into how you help your students know better and become more skillful. Learning and teaching may occur from questions and answers especially in the classrooms or training programs.
Socrates, Plato, & Aristotle were great teachers and philosophers who learned from their students. They interacted with their students through conversations and as they were discussing, these teachers clarified, altered, reviewed, coached, shared, and facilitated knowledge to their students. Guided discussion or any other kind of discussion remains an active method of teaching at all levels of education.
Even though a teacher is required to be well-informed and well-equipped, a teacher with a great passion for education and knowledge sharing will always acquire new insights from students. Lastly, for a teacher to be inquisitive from their students, they should bear in mind that learning is two-way traffic and students are not tabula rasa. A fertile-minded teacher will always take the win.
Can you share knowledge if you’re not an expert?
Become a better teacher by taking advantage
of your lack of expertise.
This is a fairly common aphorism and one that I tend to agree with in a superficial kind of way.
Every now and then, you may hear people around you saying, “I’m not an expert; I can’t teach anything.”
You don’t have to appear to be an expert if you’re not one. Instead, you can pass on the knowledge that you currently possess to others by sharing and gaining at the same time. It could be a blend of information or personal experience based on your perspective. The essential element of teaching is that you’re thinking deeply and profoundly about a specific subject.
A study revealed that the learning-by-teaching strategy is most successful when students recalled the information without notes or a script. Retrieving the taught material from your memory serves more purpose than simply reading the words aloud [1].
Rather than just demonstrating a task you are perfectly comfortable with, you can perform a task you are inexperienced with. In addition, you showcase your solution-finding approach, including how you diagnose the issue, how and where you seek solutions and documentation. Throughout the process of sharing knowledge in fields, you are unfamiliar with, you will be able to gain more than you give.
Likewise, you are given the opportunity to make and address mistakes hence figure out how to avoid them. An expert may never see or make these mistakes, but you might make them occasionally and unintentionally. You’re doing something an expert may not be able to do!
Teaching does not have to be terrifying. It may just be you sitting at your desk in the office and saying, “This is tough, but I believe we will be able to work it out. Let’s solve it together!.” This also relates to teaching in every different aspect. Moreover, it helps to deepen your understanding and draw connections that you might have previously missed.
Furthermore, being a teacher is also about simplifying complex ideas. These raw and wild ideas rest in our minds fully-formed and self-evident. They are hard to be transferred directly to the minds of others without breaking them down into smaller and simpler chunks. This is an incredibly valuable journey of teaching and learning in an organization.
Ultimately, have you ever felt discontentment in your life or an organization? If the answer is yes, you may attempt to view your life or work from a different perspective. If only we could realize how lucky we are to be able to learn and teach at the same time, we would be able to see the purest joy in work and life.
Start being grateful for what you have, instead of
what you do not.
Start teaching about what you want to learn, sit back
and see the growth in yourself.
References:
- Biswas, G., Leelawong, K., Schwartz, D., Vye, N., & The Teachable Agents Group at Vanderbilt. (2005). Learning by teaching: A new agent paradigm for educational software. Applied Artificial Intelligence, 19(3–4), 363–392.
