Perpetual Student of Leadership and Transformational Teaching

I love the Buddhist saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” In my many years of teaching formal courses at the university level, I am a student right along with the class I am teaching.

When I teach, I learn.

I have yet to teach a class where I have not learned something from my many teachers, also known as my students. We are ever changing in this world and the cycle of learning and teaching never changes, unless of course we find ourselves closed off from learning. In order to be a good teacher, we must first be a good student.As we teach, we must remember that we are not transmitting information—we are transforming lives.

That may sound a bit dramatic, but that is exactly what good teaching does; it transforms. Transformation comes about through many different forms: motivation, persuasion, mobilization, influence, and of course miracles. When we teach, we are in essence saying, I care about you, you are important, and I want to help. Wow, who wouldn’t be motivated forward with that type of message? Motivation also comes from demonstrating belief in others.

Teaching affords us an opportunity to build esteem and self-efficacy. Think of Maslow’s needs hierarchy; esteem and self-actualization are the top highest levels. Teaching and learning meet both of the high order needs for yourself and for those you teach.Through the process of teaching, we build trust when we facilitate teaching with a learner-centered approach. Remembering that we are not just transferring information, but transforming others, we teach according to the needs of others. I use the same approach when I do training, coaching, or motivational speaking.

First, I discover the needs of the audience and tailor my work to meet those needs. Of course, I provide resources and information to support their transformation, but first I must find out where they are stuck and where they want to grow.Effective teachers in a classroom setting know this and adjust their lesson plans to accommodate emerging needs that come up during instruction. We call these moments, teachable moments, when we can seize the opportunity and use it as a springboard for learning.

A Native American proverb illustrates this concept, Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me, and I may not remember. Involve me, and I’ll understand. Once we identify the needs of the people and address those needs, then learning occurs and the outcome is performance.

Remember this acronym:

  • Time – Take the time to invest in the development of others.

  • Empathy – Have empathy for those you teach, respecting the place they are in at that moment.

  • Awareness – Come into the teaching exchange with full awareness and presence.

  • Care – Create a safe space for learning to occur that is filled with care and compassion.

  • Help –Remember that when we serve others, we are truly love-based leaders.

How do you teach in your leadership roles?

I love hearing from you.

With love,

Maria

Change Your Leadership Future - Challenge Your Perspective

Perceptions are the stories we tell ourselves regarding what we see and how we interpret the world around us.

Les Brown, one of the great 21st century storytellers said, “How people live their lives is as a result of the stories that they believe about themselves.”

What are your stories?

Do they serve you as your aspire to reach your highest potential?

Do your stories lift you up or do they bring you down?

Do your stories represent who you really are, your true essence?

Let’s look at a possible story: If you greeted someone in the morning at work and he or she did not return your greeting, what would you think? Are they mad at you? Do you wonder all morning what you may have said to tick them off? Do you toss and turn that night because you’re afraid that when you laughed too loudly at something they said two weeks ago that you thought was a joke, but it turned out it wasn’t?

Or what if the answer is simply that they didn’t return your greeting because they didn’t hear you? Or perhaps, they were distracted replaying a discussion they had with their teenager the night before.

What are the stories that you tell yourself?

These skewed perceptions can sabotage our relationships with others and our relationship with our self. If your stories no longer resonate with who you are, it’s probably time to create a new story.

Change your perception and you change your world.

The uncomplicated beauty in this lesson is that by standing in awareness and looking at our beliefs and thoughts, we can simply make a choice to keep them or release them.

When we release those beliefs and thoughts that no longer serve us, we take back our power from fear to love, from negativity to positivity, from ego to Spirit. We see and understand perceptions and stand in our power to change those beliefs to experience miraculous shifts in our reality, lives, and work.

As always, I love to hear from you. What story are you proud to tell?

With Love,

Maria