Guru's Handbook

Teaching a colleague is one of the more subtle and challenging forms of teaching, because unlike the manager-subordinate relationship, or the classic teacher-student dynamic, there is no mutual assumption of authority with which one person can hold the other’s attention. A more delicate and deft approach is needed.

Teaching without assumption of authority is a sort of stealth teaching. For those accustomed to being known as the teacher, this approach can be mysterious; how do you teach someone who does not consider themselves a student? Such skills can augment formal teaching and can extend a teacher’s range, but these skills can be hard to come by, especially if you are used to relying on your position to command attention.

I was fortunate to see an unusually effective example of this sort of teaching. Kate works in a male-dominated engineering field, so she is faced with some need to prove herself to gather collegial respect. Even so, she is often the one other technical people approach with problems. Over decades she has developed a manner of teaching that is not always obvious as teaching. Simply put, she makes it easy for people to come to her with questions.

I asked her how this had begun. She said, “Early on I worked in a group of people with varying levels of technical savvy. I began to see all the funky, time-wasting procedures people build because they can’t get someone to spend 10 minutes explaining something. They get stressed. It distracts me when the people around me are stressed.”

To avoid being distracted, Kate makes herself available to answer questions. Watching her work, I notice that those who come to her are willing to show uncertainty and lack of knowledge. They ask questions easily and openly. How does she she evoke this?

“I listen to the explanation. I listen until they stop talking before I start asking questions. This gives me a sense of what they already know.”

She listens until they stop talking, before asking questions. She listens to find out what they already know. How many people do you know — teachers or not — who do this?

“Frequently I have the advantage of being asked about something I don’t know anything about, so we can explore and figure it out together.”

Kate considers it an advantage to be asked something she does not know. In practice, she often knows more about the subject than her colleagues, but is able and willing to take an approach that makes problem-solving a mutual exploration. Even when she is doing most of the work she manages to make her co-workers feel as if the answer comes from shared effort. That is, it feels like co-working. Collegial.

In business situations, it is rare to see this sort of non-judgmental, blameless problem solving. At very least, the person approached will highlight the gift of their time and knowledge, leaving the questioner with a sense of indebtedness and inadequacy. Not so with Kate. She comes across as available and approving. This lowers the barriers to asking for help, to asking for knowledge.

She says, “I think a lot of the blame reflex comes from fear. People are afraid that they don’t know enough, or that someone will blame them for doing it wrong. I don’t believe my co-workers are trying to break things or are being careless, so, logically, they must be doing their best with the training and equipment they have, right?”

This is a fine method. It is not always the case, of course; not all students — or colleagues — are doing the best they can. But who would you rather come to for help: someone who assumes the best about you or someone who assumes the worst?

Acceptance gives ease to voice. Where there is no blame, no incurred obligation, no implication of inadequacy, asking becomes easy. When asking becomes easy, teaching — here in the form of guided mutual exploration — is a natural outcome.

It is one of the marks of excellent teaching to create a dynamic in which inquiry and exploration arise often and smoothly. What Kate does is hardly effortless, but from years of practice she makes it look effortless, as if this is simply who she is. People go to her because she is easy to approach and over time they trust her with their problems and their unknowns.

This sort of subtle teaching is powerful because it comes in under the radar of defensiveness and fear. No one is being told they do not know enough, or that they should try harder. The “teacher” is simply solving problems as an equal. And learning happens.