I recommend a very simple exercise: when you find yourself in a situation that someone is explaining something to you, focus on your feelings. What do you feel? Push back? Resistance? Doubts? Something says inside you that you know it already and know it better? Or you feel curiosity? Do you feel excitement and feel now you learnt something new and you are grateful for that?
- Do you immediately start pushing back?
- Do you feel resistance?
- Do you think you already know it better?
- Or do you become curious? Interested? Maybe even slightly excited that you might learn something new?
Teachability is not about what you know, it is about how willing you are to learning in a continuous way: a willingness and capacity to learn from others. This learning or teaching situations are most of the time not clean ones. For me teachability is a mix of curiosity, trust, respect, active listening.
We, I, us, professionals don’t have the luxury of learning in a formal way every day or frequently, we have very rarely have a possibility to take a day or couple of days off and go to a training. But there is plenty of knowledge around us! All our colleagues are experts in their field.
One of my mantras: let everyone do their job, as they are expert in their areas so I don’t want to tell them what to do, but I expect them to deliver the highest level of quality work when we work together.
And when we do, I am always open to listen to others perspectives and learn from them. It can be a specific SME knowledge or anything around, you might have learnt something during your professional career.
Teachability is according to definition is capable of being instructed, as a person; capable of being taught, as a subject.
But also indirectly someone who’s always open to learn, to teach themselves. We are not ready, we don’t know everything, and even our knowledge is getting outdated every day! Just think about AI, it is actually getting outdated even more frequently, one software update released and we already slightly behind, need to learn something new.
And we do learn! We try a new product when shopping, maybe intuitively, we ask information about opening hours of a museum, and when we go to the museum we might spot a new painting and learn more about its painter or the subject or the historical period and motive why that was painted.
So, we do this, I am sure we all do. Let us do this more frequently and concisely at work, I guarantee that will be rewarded. First of all because your colleagues will enjoy and value that you really listen to them and ask questions on any topics!
I did a little research on the topic and fond the below book:
Teachability and Learnability: Can Thinking Be Taught? From the Author Paul Fairfield who is Professor of Philosophy at Queen’s University, Canada.
I copy the preface here unchanged:
“Deep disagreements exist regarding what thinking and critical thinking are and to what extent they are teachable. Thinking is learned in some measure by all, but not everything that is learnable is also teachable in an institutional setting. In questioning the relationship between teachability and learnability, Fairfield investigates the implications of thinking as inquiry, education as the cultivation of agency, and self-education. By challenging some of the standard conceptions of thinking, the author explores the limits of teachability and advances critiques of standardized tests, digital learning technologies, and managerialism in education.”
I also found the following book which is closely linked: The Art of Active Listening by Josh Gibson and Fynn Walker.
And for me the actively listening is a key. And I know it is extremely difficult to listen patiently and actively etc. when you are under time pressure and you need results NOW. Do not do it in such situations.
Work on your active listening, improve it, as that can be a barrier in some situations,
One of my old colleagues, Angela, used a simple technique that was every Friday she dedicated some time in her calendar to Learn something, teach something, share something.
Maybe that was linked to something from earlier that week she wanted to learn more about or she remembered and wanted to share with a wider community but she actively worked on this area of her. And she is extremely teachable person also an even more teaching person, and I loved learning from her!
Quick tips, how to improve it! How to increase teachability:
- Make growth part of your professional life, be curious, have a training plan, know what area you want to work on now. …
- Look for Growth and learning possibilities in every situation. Maybe you don’t want to start digging into a topic you find interesting but make sure you circle back and ask learn on it even shortly, don’t let your intuition die
- Ask Questions!
- Keep track of what you learned. I hope you will find this blog a good demonstration for this!
- Be like Angela and share!
Thank you for reading, I hope you found this blogpost useful, if you want to share anything on this, please contact me.
