He was running a session for teachers to help them develop their questioning, listening and coaching skills to use with their students, in order to inspire, engage and empower the students.
When my colleague wasn't receiving a lot of response from his audience, he became aware that the less the teachers responded, the more he filled the void by talking too much.
At this point, he stopped and shared with the teachers what he'd just become aware of, adding that one of the key principles of the programme is to engage children and to make them think.
He realised that when he was talking and giving them information, it was making it harder for them to engage. He also shared how easy it had been for him to fall into a default mode of talking to fill the space.
The acting of him stopping and sharing that this was a skill that he also found hard to do, immediately got them engaged, talking about their concerns and how difficult it was, and got the whole thing going.
It wasn't his job to give them all the answers, because that was modelling what he didn't want them to do.
In order for any of us to be the best we can be, we need to be prompted to think about what we want, why we want it, what we know, what we're learning, what obstacles we face and how we might overcome them.
So what caused the breakthrough in my colleague's session? I think his honesty and his ability to be vulnerable in front of others helped them to understand that his job, as was theirs, was not to appear perfect and that he knew everything, but to share his vulnerability and find out their thoughts, feelings and experiences.
What's my learning from this?
How can I apply it to my life?
It's that it's OK not to be perfect. Marilyn Monroe once said, "The more I think of it, the more I realise there are no answers. Life is to be lived."
Isn't that what a lot of us struggle with? Needing to have the answers and holding back until we're sure we have the right answers, such that when we present our story or our views we appear to be perfect.
Maybe the solution is not to have the right answers, or even to ask the "right" questions, but to ask any questions.
Some of the questions we could ask are:
"What feels right to me?"
"What would I love to do"
"What's it like in your shoes right now?"
"What do you think?"
"What's your experience?"
"What concerns do you have?"
"What's your dream / goal / vision?".
