In the often-fiercely competitive and insecure corporate world, very few people make a strong impact for one to acknowledge someone as a teacher. After all - in order to be a good teacher you really do need a good student. Someone with an open enough mind which can absorb the learning and then make it their own. Too many times we focus on the traits needed in a good teacher - maybe if we spent a little time on what makes for a good student, we will be able to push up the learning curve a wee bit more.
To make matters worse, hesitation and ego often comes in the way of actually acknowledging our own roles as both Teachers and Students.
One of my pet peeves at work has been that too often we all rush to blame the new generations joining the corporate world as being bad students. Not as often do we stop and think if the older generation at work (Us of course!) are anywhere close to being the kind of high-quality teachers we had when we were starting off work ourselves.
From my very first job onwards - I have some really Great Teachers... Maybe I was an excited student with an open mind to receive the teachings too, but that only made it a better-than-normal state of affairs for us.
Some of my early experiences as a 'Teacher' were not necessarily the best - maybe I needed to learn more before trying to teach. Maybe I didn't get good students. And I have to admit it made me push my instinctive teaching inclination to the back-burner. I am amazed to recall how I would feel embarrassed that I was wanting to teach to people who I perceived to be very reluctant students. It became more about getting tasks done rather than ensuring grooming and learning was happening.
Thankfully I had the good fortune to again have very good teachers who even taught me the importance of staying on course with the desire to teach. So I became a good student and again wanted to become a good teacher.
So what did I do differently than earlier -
- Taking the effort to explain why I want something to be change; instead of just saying what I want changed to what
- Resisting the urge to do things myself from the word-go. Its just much simpler isn't it? Instead of waiting for someone else to do the task and then having to examine it and then make changes if needed.
- Proactively trying to understand the ambitions of the team members and then modifying my inputs to suit them
- Offering unsolicited but (hopefully) timely feedback!! Trust me - this one took me the longest time to get over the hesitation for. But I strongly believe in it now.
The reward for all this - Not only do I get to wish my amazing teacher on this beautiful day; but today for the first time, I got WISHED!! That too by TWO of my team members :)
Trust me - Nothing more could have been more fulfilling - no award at work felt better, no salary increment either.
Take my word for it - Its worth it!
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