Teaching Skills

Successful teaching requires you to inspire others to want to cooperate with you.

When you endeavor to teach new skills to others, you are attempting to motivate specific behavior changes in them. This is more effective if you can convince those you are teaching that, by acting as you suggest, they will gain something that they value. Successful teaching requires you to inspire others to want to cooperate with you.

However, different people consider different skills to be more or less valuable to them, so you will also discover that the majority of responsibility for the learning of a new skills rest with the person you are teaching. Learners who really want to improve their skills and are willing to put in the effort will be successful.

ACTION POINT: Ensure there is value in what you are trying to teach.

Eighth Fruit of the Spirit: Patience

Ask and it will be given to you...
Matthew 7:7

The eighth Fruit of the Spirit is Long-suffering (patience). Long-suffering is certitude in God's unwavering fidelity to his promises. Our security is no longer based on anything we might possess or accomplish, but rather on our conviction of God's unfailing protection and readiness to forgive. Hence we are not easily disturbed by the ebb and flow of human events and our emotional reactions to them. Feelings continue to be felt, at times more strongly than ever, but they not longer dominate our awareness or our activity. We are content to wait with confidence for God's deliverance in every situation, especially during prolonged periods of dryness and the dark nights. We have interiorized the words of the Gospel: "Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened to you"

Matthew 7:7
Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened to you

Rules of Thumb

Brilliant Guestimates, Shortcuts, and a few Shots in the Dark.

• Not sure which puppy to pick from the litter? Choose the one whose tail wags in sync with its stride, a sign of calmness.
• Exercising for life: For every hour that you're physically active, you can expect to live two hours longer
• Calling in an order: When buying something over the phone, ask for the salesperson's full name. Then he or she is less likely to make a mistake with our order.
• Buying an eyesore: The best way to make money in residential real estate is to buy the worst home on the best street.
• Saving for Retirement: Buy age 30 you should aim to be saving an investing at least 10 percent of your income for retirement.
• Handsome handwriting: the most pleasing height for lowercase italic letters is five times the width of the pen pint, or nib.
• Four Legged Search parties: One trained dog equals 60 search-and-rescue workers.
• Caught Napping: An hour's nap in the middle of the day equals three hours of sleep at night.
• Sleeping in Tongues: You know you've become comfortable with a foreign language when you dream in that language.
• Pausing to Think: When asked an important question, always pause for at least a silent count of three before answering. You will appear to be more thoughtful and intelligent.

Teaching Skills

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand"

As a manager, an important part of your role is to help those you are managing to develop their skills. If you can encourage the development of skills such as self-awareness, communication, and time management, you will be rewarded with a high-performing team.

People learn faster and retain more information if they have to exert some kind of active effort. The famous quote, attributed to Confucius: "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand" is frequently used to support the value of learning through experience. A major implication of this notion is that new skills can be learned only through experimenting with new behaviors, observing the results, and learning from the experience. The learning of new skills is maximized when learners get the opportunity to combine watching, thinking, and doing. The experiential learning model encompasses four elements: learning new concepts (conceptualization), planning how to test the ideas (plan to test), actively applying the skill in a new experience (gaining concrete experience), and examining the consequences of the experience (reflective observation). After reflecting on the experience, the learner uses the lessons they have learned from what happened to create a refined conceptual map of the skill, and the cycle continues.

To use the experiential learning model to teach skills you need to: ensure that the learner understands the skill both conceptually and behaviorally; give them opportunities to practice it; give feedback on how well they are performing the skill; and encourage them to use the skill often enough so that it becomes integrated into their behavioral repertoire.

ACTION POINT: Teach new skills by using the following:

• Helping the learner to form a conceptual understanding of a new skill.
• Plan how the learner can test their understanding of the skill.
• Get the learner to apply the new skill in concrete experience.
• Observe what happened and discuss ways in which they can improve.

Decoding the Truth

If a person says one thing but communicates something different through intonation and body language, tension and distrust can arise;

The visual part of nonverbal communication is often called body language. It included expressions eye movement, posture, and gestures. The face is the best communicator of nonverbal messages. By "reading" a person's facial expression, we can detect unvocalized feelings.

Appearance is important, people do judge a book by its cover, and most of us react favorable to an expected image. In terms of dress, color can convey meaning (brown can convey trust; dark colors, power), as does style (pure fibers such as wool or silk suggest higher status). Posture is important--a relaxed posture, such as sitting back with legs stretched out and hand behind the head, signals confidence.

If a person says one thing but communicates something different through intonation and body language, tension and distrust can arise; the receiver will typically choose the nonverbal interpretation because it is more reliable than the verbal. For example, if you ask your boss when you will be eligible for a promotion and she looks out of the window, covers a yawn, and says, "I would say you might have a chance in the not-to-distant future," you should not count on being promoted soon.

ACTION POINT: Consider the importance of body language, appearance, and posture in the process of communication.