Coaching Secrets ...

This one is really for those who understand that each of us, at some time or another, plays a teaching/coaching role during the course of our lives. If you are trying to teach someone, to instruct or educate someone, you need to understand the most basic (yet amazingly powerful) of teaching strategies: START WHERE THEY ARE!
The most common teaching strategy is what I call the LECTURERS PODIUM - where you take a stance, and shoot the information at the student (or students) beckoning them to step up and come to your 'point of view'. You demand understanding - and speak to them from the PLACE WHERE YOU YOURSELF ARE COMING FROM. This basic and most common model - is far from the ideal model. My rule is this: START FROM WHERE THE STUDENT IS - NOT FROM WHERE YOU CURRENTLY RESIDE. If I want to take the student on a journey of understanding, I will as often as I can, begin by putting myself next to them to start that journey from where they are. Then, step by step, I move them toward the place I want them to be.
Educating people means that we need to SHIFT them. We need to shift them from their PRESENT STATE to another MORE DESIRABLE STATE. That, my friends, is a JOURNEY. And where does any journey begin? Exactly - right where you are.
JBW