My wife & me had a difference in opinion today on how to teach our 9 year old maths. Being the impatient & dotting father, who wants to spent as much quality time doing fun things, I hate to see my son struggling to do his maths problem. My proposed solution was tell him the answer, explain how it gets done and being a smart kid, he will know how to do it the next time and nobody waste any time.
On the contrary, my wife feels that the only way to learn is to do it... she sits down with him, patiently guides & coaches, explaining the mathemathical concepts & theorems, leaves him to do it on his own, comes back and corrects if he makes a mistake ...and work on it problem after problem.
She believes that there is no shortcut to understanding & learning ... my son however doesn't share the same opinion ... I'm the fun dad & she's the strict mom !
I would have to admit however, that maybe she's right ... learning is tough but teaching in the true sense, whether its a child or an adult, is definitely tougher ...
I guess the same applies in engaging the leadership team members ...do I just tell them what I want done ( and get it over with without any stress ) or do we go through an adult learning process ?
2 comments:
The word strict is actually FIRM in this context and in a family it is good to have a balance of a fun father and a firm mother or vice versa. However, in order not to confuse the child, the father and the mother must respect each other on the methods they used to educate the child.
The education system that we have has made most parents to behave certain ways towards their child in order to keep up with other ‘ kiasu’ parents. If not, they feel their child will be left behind. Another thing is that community perception that if you have a degree that you are smart and successful. There is not wrong or right way to educate the child…..as long as he understand, value and appreciate what he learn that is important.
The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn. ~John Lubbock
"I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas."-Agatha Christie
When confronted with such issue ,ask yourself this question ,What do you want to achieve?
1.A self reliant ,thinking team/child or Dependent team/child. that waits for the next move.
2.Short term no stress or long term “goodnight sleep”
I do not know whether it is my bad karma but life has taught me there are no shortcuts. Your approach of telling what to do and later know how to do it next time is a very typical method of quick results but not sustainable results .The real learning is thru self discovery ,nobody actually taught us crawl ,walk etc .
As far as learning , I have come to a conclusion,learning will happen when there is fiery desire and willingness to perform comes from inside the individual.
More importantly treat the child as "adult to be" and on your leadership team members the "respectable adult". Finally the secret in successful engagement is give the glory of sense of accomplishment to your team members ,after all you are already the leader.
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