Do you remember a time when you worked for someone else and they tried to explain something that was simple to them but totally perplexing to you? I have on frequent occasions over the course of my life and it seems to be the curse of those that ‘know’ (and sometimes at a highly proficient or expert level), but can’t teach to save themselves!

Just recently I was learning a new process from someone and I was getting more frustrated the more I did it. They were watching over my shoulder while I was attempting to complete the tasks and pointing-out all my mistakes as soon as I made them. All I was getting was "you don’t do it like that" and "why did you do that for?" really useful stuff for a learner.

I realized that doing what I felt like doing (picking up something heavy and throwing it as far as I could), was probably not the best way of venting my frustration. So, I focused on remaining calm so that my stress levels wouldn’t rise too high and cloud my brain so that nothing at all would get in.

I reflected upon my ’learning experience’ later that night and came up with ten reasons why many people who are experts, professionals or just know something that others want to know, can very often be hopeless at communicating that information to others.

So here they are:

1. They don’t have empathy for the learner or try to understand how the learner might view their communication

2. They forget the process involved in learning the information, skill or knowledge that they now possess

3. They enjoy the power of knowing something that someone else wants to know

4. They enjoy telling learners that they are wrong or watching them fail when they inevitably make mistakes

5. They are impatient

6. They are not aware of nor allow for the vast amount of subconscious knowledge that they may possess

7.  They have not structured the necessary learning in a series of building blocks for the learner

8. They do not encourage, inspire or motivate the learner

9. They do not utilize rich communication tools that feed the learner information on multiple levels

10. They are assholes!

That’s probably a reasonable list to start with but please let me know if you can think of some others?

Thanks for reading and have a great week - Jason

 

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