I read somewhere that one of the best ways to learn and remember a skill is to teach it. On the surface this doesn’t make much sense… if you’re teaching something, you should already know it, right?

Dig a bit deeper though, and you’ll realize that teaching something not only requires you to understand the skill or concept - it requires you to rethink how you understand it in a way that helps someone else understand it. That sounds a bit odd, but hear me out. 

When I teach someone something, it doesn’t help them if I explain it in a way that makes sense to me (ok, well maybe it helps them a little).  This is due to a few reasons, but mainly - they don’t think the same way I do, and they have a different background and set of experiences. These differences blunt the impact of any explanation I provide that is entirely tuned to my background and my thinking. It also forces them to spend time and energy trying to relate to my explanation - time and energy better spent learning.

The challenge in teaching, then, is reshaping how something is explained to best match the learners background and understanding. This requires a great amount of mental gymnastics on the part of the instructor, as not only do they have to hold the idea or concept, they have to understand their student pretty well too.

This is what makes teaching a great way to improve your own skills. It essentially forces you to relearn something from a different perspective, which helps solidify concepts, challenge assumptions and bring up new ideas.

Working with one student, or a group, over time makes this easy.  The longer an instructor and student have together, the better in tune they’ll become. This is what makes long-term relationships with a teacher so powerful - they get to know you, but more importantly they know how you think and learn.

I find it odd that more people don’t teach skills - it’s an amazing way to solidify a skillset.  I definitely understand that some folks don’t want to, and that’s totally OK… but for the rest of us teaching a skill is an incredible way to get better.

How to start

Teaching something doesn’t require us to be college professors in a classroom with dozens of students. You can teach something to an individual on a coffee break. It doesn’t even have to be a complex skills - a simple introduction to a concept or idea helps both the student and the instructor get better. 

The size of the group does change how someone should approach teaching, as does the medium…. Teaching one person over Zoom is a LOT different than teaching 20 people in person, which is different from teaching 1000 over a recording, which is different then a 1 on 1. And while the instructor will learn different things from different groups and sizes, teaching someone you’re comfortable with, in a setting that works for you is still really beneficial.

Go teach!

So, my challenge to everyone is to teach someone… something. Pick a thing you understand well and find someone who wants to learn it. Take some time to get to know them and what they want to learn, and then expand your own thinking and teach them that thing. Pay attention to how you have to challenge your own ideas about the topic. What do you have to rephrase? What new analogies did you come up with?  How did YOU grow and learn from teaching that person?