The shocking truth about learning
UNUSUAL FACT: the proper introduction to this article is below this introduction. On reflection, I realise that my real nemesis here is not amanda but is, in fact, myself. Sometimes you learn the most when you not only listen to what’s happening externally — but internally. I mention context further down the page; context doesn’t just relate to situations outside your control, but inside. amanda, whoever you are, wherever you may be: thank you for teaching me a life lessson I may never forget.
Serendipity is everywhere. It was even on the shelves of Blockbusters, courtesy of the worst acting ever witnessed from Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack.
I’m off to Skegness this weekend for the Great British Folk Festival. I knew I had a blog post to write beforehand, but I was scratching around for inspiration when my latest gift of serendipity arrived.
It could have been so different. Before Sharon Dippity came knocking I was going to mither you about the importance of a killer strapline so people are in no doubt about why they should buy from you. Sell the sizzle, not the sausage, right?
But then this happened:
https://twitter.com/DaveThackeray/status/540573539645272064
As you know I’m outrageously generous giving my time away. Let’s be honest, it doesn’t really come for free: while you don’t pay me in cash, I do earn an enormous amount of happiness seeing people take their business and turn it into something amazing with my help in some way having contributed towards their enormous success. Of course, not everyone can pop a gift horse in their mouth. Introducing “amanda”.
I’ll admit I took a bit of a gamble on this one. When amanda got in touch, all she had to show for her Twistory was the spammer’s favourite profile pic — or rather, no pic at all and the dreaded egg placeholder.
The guy in the Twitter convo above is a genuinely great Tweep, by the way. His request for marketing help I was enormously pleased to answer.
I cautiously advised our egg-lovin’ amanda that un oeuf was un oeuf.
https://twitter.com/vella_mandy/status/540601569788825600
My next challenge to unroboticise amanda was to have her add a short bio. Which she did, with the same irritating response.
I’m generally pretty patient and I understand how things can so easily be taken out of context and misinterpreted on social media, when all you get is a string of characters with no emotion or nuances of behaviour attached. But I have a heavy cold and this week has been a tough gig.
I have a million ideas how to turn her blog into something special. But we need to get the basics right before she reaches out to tell @jamieoliver his days are numbered.
First line of enquiry: What’s your favourite food, amanda?
Jarred. This gambit doesn’t fit with amanda’s worldview. This is where she starts a sequence that grates me like cheese and leads to us not having the world’s best professional romance.
https://twitter.com/vella_mandy/status/540602602019627008
Let me say here that in my career I’ve coached dozens — literally, several score — of young people how to use social media, and get ahead in digital marketing.
If someone comes to me with the hunger to learn and change, I’m all over the situation like a very pretty rash. But when my defences are low my ire is yours if you approach me for insight and then interrogate my way of working in a brusque and confrontational fashion.
It’s at this point I start to understand why media maker Philip Bloom can be interpreted by those who don’t understand the great man, as a miserable bastard.
I’ve given him a couple of sharp elbows in the past, and felt the roughness of his tongue when it lashed in my direction. But now I get it. The guy gets thousands of questions, many of which are inelegant facsimiles, and those apparently so eager to learn are too lazy to research. I completely empathise.
It’s not easy being in demand, and naturally as an information concierge and advisor, you want to help those who have the same respect for learning as a long-term desert wanderer the monsoon. The long and the short of my latest experience is the dance turned into a theatre of war and having careened to the precipice we’re now at a do-or-die moment.
https://twitter.com/DaveThackeray/status/540604443352645632
But there’s an incredibly valuable lesson that both parties in this tete-a-tete can learn from where we’re at.
If you want to coach, be prepared to change. Everyone’s different. You have your own worldview of how your model muse should behave. Except rarely is a muse the mannequin you envisaged. Some are more curious than others, others are more churlish. Deep down we all yearn to learn, but we express ourselves in a million different ways. If you’re teaching on social media, you need extra empathy. If not, but you must deliver coaching virtually, have a word with CreativeLive to see if they’ll have you. If not, register with Google Helpouts (good luck with that — my application went in moons ago and I still haven’t heard back; but many swear by, rather than at, it). Otherwise do it face to face, in classes, workshops, or at conference breakout sessions. If you have no patience, you’re better off finding a podium. If you have no patients and are a GP, find a new career.
This blog post has been hugely cathartic. I now realise that my frustrations have been in part self-initiated. And it’s all because of a little learning experience of mine.
After conducting a highly-regarded presentation and in the final furlong of a detailed report on my leadership attributes, I’m just about done with my ILM Level 5 course. It’s been a blast, and some of the lessons shared haven’t necessarily been ingested.
One of our workshops focused on arbitration using the ‘three chairs’ method.
The theory goes that whenever someone feel animosity towards another, they find a trio of seats and choose one in which to sprawl.
There they explain their own view of the situation, and how they feel.
They then take a second chair, and speak from the perspective of the offending party. What they have done from their perspective, and how they feel.
Third, the seat of an impartial onlooker. What do they see of the two people who have just expressed their feelings and frustrations?
The result is the grumbler has a good perspective on the situation. Which more often than not, resolves the situation.
