Managers: Are You Teaching? Know Can Do!

I spent most of my day yesterday newly creating a class that I have now given dozens of times since MWA was published. The task could have been done in less than a half hour versus the six it took me, but my goodness I loved those six hours!

Within a half hour I could have pulled all the lesson pages and resource pages I usually use from their time-tested digital files, compiled the workshop binder I normally give everyone, and further personalize it for the group I am presenting to tomorrow.

So what did I do with the other five and a half hours?

Plan the class using what I have newly learned from our Know Can Do! study on how learning is best retained – do you remember those MWAC lessons?

One of my biggest take-aways from doing that study with you, was that we who teach normally spend most of our time on the design, organization and delivery of curriculum, and very little on the follow-up after the actual teaching. However if true retention and the habit building of lessons-learned is to happen, our efforts should be the other way around: We should be concentrating on the follow-up, and in particular, planning for future instances of ‘spaced repetition,’ teaching important concepts over and over again, until they have become ingrained in the way people think and behave.

Your repetitive advantage in the workplace

Now in my case, I have one shot spending time with most of the people I will be teaching tomorrow: I will not personally be with them in the future to provide that ‘spaced repetition’ they will need to best retain what they will be learning from me. I will not be there for the repeat classes (if they are held at all), future edits and integration that should occur.

Therefore, what I charged myself with accomplishing yesterday, was delivering the same MWA-proven content to them in a better way, one that would better enable them to create their own instances of ‘spaced repetition’ of the content-learning individually, either without me, or with resources that I point them to.

For example, I gave them a listing of addresses to specific web pages here at MWAC that precisely align with the course content we are covering.

If you are a manager, you should be within your own continual learning process in regard to the way you create work-related curriculum for your people too. Sometimes you will hold a classroom session, just like I do. Most times they will be mini modules for you within meetings, or on the job itself as it occurs. [For more on this, see Coaching Debrief: Do with, not for, not instead.]

And who knows? One day, when your time is done in the current workplace and management role you have, you may have found that you love it so much you start doing it all the time as part of your calling, with your own experience-lived evolution of living, working, managing, and leading with aloha —just like I do! It is a very good, very rewarding life!

No open-ended questions for you with this particular article...

Instead, choose to teach!

I will be offline for today through Friday teaching four different MWA classes – quite excited about it! This article will remain here, top of page at MWAC while I am gone. Time for our ‘spaced repetition’ too!

Use the time to review those Know Can Do! articles (listed for you below), and choose something you want to teach anew in your workplace. Follow the rule of thumb to spend twice as much time thinking about the follow-up you will do in the months which follow your actual teaching, and you will discover, just as I did, that you will get several aha! moments about a better way to deliver the teaching itself. For example, another thing I did was change my in-class exercises so they are doing them the first time with my facilitation and coaching, and then could repeat them either with a different team of people, or with the peers they’ll have in class with me, and with a twist of some kind to change things up and enliven the exercise.

Have fun with your curriculum building – I did! I will be back for Sunday Mālama.
Enjoy the rest of your week,
~ Rosa

1. Sunday Mālama Book Review: Know Can Do! ~ Part One
2. Sunday Mālama: Know Can Do! ~ Part Two
3. More on ‘spaced repetition’ and Coaching Your Beginners (at Talking Story)
4. Another article you may want to review is this one:
   The 1 List That Every Manager Must Work With for it is all about follow-up.

*Our Know Can Do, Less is More Language of Intention ~ ~ ~ Know Can Do! ~ is a parable book written for every learner who wants to improve with converting the knowledge they gain into better usefulness in their lives. Less is More ~ is the short version of the Know Can Do! coaching that "People should learn Less More, and Not More Less" Spaced Repetition ~ is the "missing link" with learning retention: it is a learning technique where you don't learn something in just one sitting. You're exposed to the information periodically over time, so that it sinks in. Trading Up! ~ is a book which teaches us to Shift the Context from which we think, behave, and interact with others. It asks the question, "How good are you willing to let your life be?" Green Light Thinking ~ is possibility thinking with positive expectancy. When ideas come up, the call for a time of green light thinking explores all the positive possibilities before the yellow (cautionary filtering) and red (negative filtering) lights come on (and into the discussion.) Contextual Leadership ~ "Once a person connects with her passion and recognizes that it cannot be created in isolation, that person becomes a true leader, connecting with and helping to transform others, drawing the like-minded to her cause."—Rayona Sharpnack