Some say the chance to teach is rare, like albino baby seal rare…you will find that Some are wrong! What if almost every moment could be a teachable moment? What if you are already teaching but not aware of it? Ever showed someone a better way of handling a situation? Ever had a conversation about a challenge someone is facing? Ever been asked for an opinion or help on solving a problem? All of those are potential teachable moments, and you, you are deep in it!
Awareness of teachable moment changes the way the world looks, it takes on a slightly different shape. The shape of opportunity! Can you smell it? The chance to shape a mind, to be the hero someone needs today, but without the spandex. However, being aware is rather useless without some skills to actually do something in these moments, and right about now you might be asking: “If I have been in teachable moments all this time and didn’t know it, what do I do to be more aware and develop the skills to make them awesome?”
You practice! Teachable Awareness is but the first step in your personal development. You are going to need skills to start out with, and here are 5 skills you can start practising today, and they are pretty easy to learn too!
Skill 1: Know the difference between one-on-one and group action, like that film from Mexico you can’t watch with your parents.
Let’s start with the basics. Everyone is different don’t forget that! As expected you are going to tailor your approach to the individual. In a group setting however tailoring to each individual is impossible and that’s actually OK. The important thing to remember is that REACH is the goal not transfer! Your focus needs to be on reaching people, and as such the way you communicate needs to adapt from a one-on-one focus to a group focus and vice versa. Achieving “reach” means building an adaptable framework to transfer knowledge as deeply as possible into the minds of the people you are connecting with. Lets call this your Reach Strategy.
The ability to identify and switch between one-on-one and group-focus interactions is key. The reason for high adaptability in a Reach Strategy is simple, you can drop into a one-on-one situation within a group quite easily. Switching between these two thought pasterns can be difficult but not impossible. The real trick is to keep everyone engaged while the one-on-one is taking place, in these cases I have always found the magical world of imagery to be highly effective. Imagery allows you to create a focus point, something that everyone can identify and attach to.
Skill 2: Using imagery to make content, accessible, engaging and communal.
Using imagery in language is a power accessible to everyone! Firstly imagery allows you to communicate almost as effectively with an individual as you would with a group because the content and context is generalised to the point of communal understanding. This means that while you might be engaged in a one-on-one conversation inside of a group, the group can follow along because they have a communal focus point. Secondly the use of imagery in language allows the human brain to be engaged on more than just the auditory and processing levels. Imagery engages the creative and imaginative aspects of the brain, getting both left and right side to light up like a “Christmas tree”!
Imagine having two brains, one with a piece of double sided sticky tape strapped across it and another drenched in Superglue and Honey. Now throw a bunch of “stuff” at both brains. Which one do you think more stuff will stick to? Yep you guessed it, the superglue-honey-brain! And this is what you get when you use imagery.
Activating more parts of the brain during learning allows more information to pass between you and the subject(s). It takes practice to use imagery effectively and you wont always hit a 100% transfer rate with everyone, but then again that isn’t the goal either! The goal is REACH! If you can reach enough minds you are in a golden space. You will either generate new questions that allow for more conversation to take place, or the subjects will discuss among themselves from a common understanding, and hopefully not get to the wrong conclusions.
Skill 3: Adding Glitter to the Superglue-Honey-Brain makes it an absolutely fabulous sponge yearning to soak up more!
What is glitter you ask? Well its the “story” you tell and your voice. Story telling with a voice that changes in range, pitch and tonation is the glitter that makes the stuff stuck on the Honey Brain sparkle, and sparkles make everything more memorable! Your voice and the story you are telling is a fundamental piece of the puzzle further stimulating the auditory and processing parts of the brain to avoid drudgery.
“Story telling” in a teaching environment is about progression and continuity. The story needs to be straight have a start, a middle and an end, and the end is usually a summary. But its pretty damn straight forward, if you are the one teaching your responsibility is to make sure that everything stays on track, and this is the actual hard part of teaching, allowing minds to wander far enough to gain new insight without loosing sight of the original objective.
Use the range and tonation in your voice, try it in everyday conversations, its good practice. There is nothing worse than listening to someone who drones on like a washing machine stuck on the rinse cycle, the same sound endlessly fluttering through your mind. Regardless of how goods the story line is, if its told in a boring way its boring and it’s got no reach, nada, nothing, zilch, zippo you get the point. You can pitch your voice differently when touching on important context. Speed up speech to build anticipation, slow down and speak softly to draw attention, SPEAK LOUDLY TO DRIVE A POINT HOME! Don’t shout, just dial the volume up by two, unless you are already at 8 in which case practice operating at 6 for a while.
The “play” in your voice adds sparkle to the information and it makes for better recall later. The combination of voice tonation and imagery coupled with a well though out story produces a Reach Strategy with progression and continuity. With enough practice and experience you can build up a story in a flash and speak like a professional at a moments notice with effective reach!
The human mind, on average, can only process about 7 new pieces of information. Introducing an image for everything you want to say in your story is going to fill that short term memory up real quick. Adding “play” in your voice to a solid story creates memorable events without the need to process new information. A well prepared teaching approach, a Reach Strategy with a good story line, is far easier to work through. You are more focused and this cuts down on the introduction of new ideas in short succession to explain yourself. You control the pace of the story and can guide everyone through successfully.
Allow me an example. Back in the late 1930’s, early 1940’s there was this guy from Germany, bad artist but a phenomenal orator. This guy had a spectacular gift for vocalising issues, and he built that skill by literally going for vocal training with an opera coach to maximise the effect of his voice. This training in combination with his ability to use imagery and story telling to speak to large volumes of individuals gave rise to one of the most powerful political movements in history. It also lead to some of the worst atrocities imaginable, but it does go a long way in proving how powerful the combination of imagery, storey telling and vocal tonation can be.
Skill 4: A Glittery, Superglue-Honey-Drenched mind is not the mind of a fool! You have their attention ,now watch your step!
Ever tried to explain something complicated to a child? Good luck using big words and complex concepts. Keep it simple but effective! Remember that the use of imagery in combination with your voice and story is in an effort to generalise your content to a common understanding, making it easily digestible and acceptable. The audience will determine, to a large extent, what the imagery and story-line needs to look like and what is and is not acceptable.
Simplification is not the same as “Dumbing down”, let’s not step in that one shall we?! Most people pick up on “dumbing down” very quickly, and react very poorly to being patronised. If you were wondering “Dumbing down” manages to do with grand success. Once the teachable moment is tainted by a “dumbing down” experience it is really hard to recover if at all, so let’s just not do that shall we?!
The Key to ensuring that everyone gets the core of the story relatively safely is to make sure the images make sense in their eco-system. The imagery you choose has to be contextually accurate to the audience your are trying to reach. I have used cooking and kitchen examples to explain project plans and roam-maps to great success. This works well because the vast majority of the audience have all been in a kitchen at some point in their lives. They have probably cooked something, so they understand the effort and process, and it is a non threatening images that does not run the risk of exposing anyone’s potential short comings and allows for communal engagement.
In contrast I have also used Hungarian brothels to explain risk to share holders. I’m not saying any of them have been there, but it’s one of those things that evokes the desired context in most people. I don’t think I need to dig down into the sticky details but you get the point, brothels are risky at the best of times, or so I’m told. Choosing contextually accurate imagery for the story and explaining in simplified terms, that does not patronise the subjects, is vitally important. Also don’t use brothels to explain stuff to kids that’s a no-no.
I promised a summary and a summary I shall provide:
Skill 5: Summation is key to ending the experience!
a Reach Strategy without a summary is about as useful as a hand full of hornets. To give you and idea of what I mean, right now with the summary below included we are on about 2200 words in this article. That is a lot to remember and summaries are great at helping to bind the content to the experience in an easily digestible, and very often printable format.
In a vocal environment where little is read and written down it is always good to summate as often as possible. In a spoken forum it looks more like a recap than a summary, a sort of “On the last episode of…” idea. Recapping takes a bit of practice but you will get the hang of it after a couple of interactions. It is best to recap after major context points, just so the last thing spoken about isn’t the only thing in everyone’s mind. Recapping also helps to keep your story on track whilst building the full context picture along the way.
Skill 1: Know the difference between one-on-one and group action, like that film from Mexico you can’t watch with your parents.
- There is a massive difference between interacting with a person one-on-one and in a group, no one is the same, adapt to that fact.
- Manage your Reach Strategy, adapt it where required for maximum effect!
- The Goal is reach first, transfer second!
Skill 2: Using imagery to make content, contextualised, accessible, engaging and communal.
- Imagery is effective at generalising content to communal understanding
- Imagery has to be contextually accurate for the environment.
- Imagery engaged more parts of the human brain.
Skill 3: Adding Glitter to the Superglue-Honey-Brain makes it an absolutely fabulous sponge yearning to soak up more!
- Plan what you want to say, then follow that plan, continuity is key to a successful reach strategy.
- Your voice is extremely powerful, use the natural intonations and range to emphasise and paint the story.
- The Human mind is limited in it’s capacity for new pieces of information, be effective and repetitive in a creative way to make information stick, summaries and recaps are key!
Skill 4: A Glittery, Superglue-Honey-Drenched mind is not the mind of a fool! You have their attention ,now watch your step!
- You can be simplistic without being simple, don’t dumb things down just generalise it to an easily understandable context.
- Make sure that your context binds to your story and the story binds to the content.
- Do not patronise your audience be there with them through every step!
Skill 5: Summation is key to ending the experience!
- Especially for complex learning summarises are great, especially if your story has a few stops in between the content elements.
- Summaries and recaps are a key tool in the reflective process. They allow you to relive a learning especially if the same series of key words are used.
- Germany – see a key word.
Now go forth and cover the minds of the unsuspecting potentials with your Superglue, Honey and generous helpings of Glitter…pun intended.
Mind, on the rocks?! 