Is it Better to Teach or to Tell?

If you’ve ever tried to teach someone something, you know it takes way more effort than to just tell them what to do or how to do it. Even something as simple as tying your shoe. You could tell someone how to tie their shoe in a matter of seconds, but teaching, that could take days. Why waste all of that time then? If we’re talking about adults, why not leave that heavy lifting to them. Let those coworkers, committee members, and friends learn it at their own pace. You can just tell them what to do and how and then move on with your day. If we’re thinking from a time perspective, it would literally never be better to teach. Or would it?

Telling someone what to do, when they don’t yet fully understand how or why they would do it that way, might feel concise in the moment. What happens a few days, weeks, or even months down the road? You’re still telling them what to do because you never taught them in the first place. So how do you know which is better in your situation? Let’s dig in to find out. Want the secret to timing teaching and telling with a great example to help you apply it to your situation? Click here to see the YouTube video on just that.

What is the benefit of teaching?

When you are trying to lead and influence choices and behaviors of others, teaching will help you get there. Telling sets the expectation but requires a level of control to see results. It also means you’ll have to manage to it consistently if those you’re telling aren’t fully sold on what you’re telling them to do. With teaching, you get to help people understand how what you want them to do, and how, will benefit them and other people or causes they care about. It allows you to tailor the message for those who need it and speak directly to them. Teaching answers the question why that we stop continuously asking as toddlers but still naturally want answered. Why should we do this? Why should we work together? Is this really the best process? Why is this a good use of time? Sometimes people will be direct enough to ask, but always they’ll want to know the answer.

Teaching answers the value question

When people ask why, or even if they just think it, they are really asking what the value of this is. When you are teaching you get to weave in the value for every different person and style of thought. This something we’ll get deep into in the Ripple Effect workshop. Click here to save your seat, but for today we’ll graze the surface. For example, telling someone might be simply, the meeting starts at 9; be 5 minutes early. Teaching might sound more like, This client likes feeling like a VIP. It will show her we appreciate the business if we’re early and prepared for the meeting. Do you see how this not only answers the question of why to be there early but also gives insight into the value it adds. Further than that, it encourages preparation prior to the meeting to give it an added touch.

It can also connect the values of the person or team member to the action you want them to take. Connecting a person’s specific values to your cause allows them to buy into the choice more easily. Let’s take for example that you need the team to work overtime in the beautiful summer months. If you have one team member that really values money and another who desires boat time you can speak to both. You could say, If you were hoping for a little extra cash in these fun months, you’re in luck. We need to add 20 hours of overtime for the group as a whole each week. I know some of you will be more excited than others so let’s think of it this way. If you want maximum hours, please sign up first. If you want to make sure your afternoons and weekends are free please look for opportunities for early morning hours.

End result

Is everyone going to be thrilled? Nope. However, you taught them a new perspective and presented options that will work best for them. You also put the ball in their court offering the maximum amount of control on their end while influencing their choices. Often it is better to teach. However, teaching isn’t always the right choice.

Is it always better to teach?

One client of mine came to me as a good leader. She had a team that loved her and wanted to right by her. The team and manager had a great relationship and my client, the manager, took great effort to teach those team members everything she knew. She provided wisdom from her days doing the work in the trenches, like her team was now. She took great care in explaining outcomes and the why’s behind every ask she had. Her mentality was that it was always better to teach. As a result, her team was better educated than most I’d worked with or seen results from. Even on the most complex and one-off situations, every member of her team had the skills to critically think through which levers they had to pull and how pulling them would impact the outcome. It was a thing most managers dream of and she had hit it.

It was pretty surprising then when one member of her team started making mistakes on simple issues and missing deadlines. She worked with him on the why, and how his work impacted the team and the organization as a whole. (Perfect response, right?) His work continued to decline. There was always a reason he couldn’t finish his work or made a simple mistake. When she and I first met, this was her most immediate pressing issue. How do we get Joe to get work done and done right?

It may have been better to tell

I listened to her tell me everything she did to teach, research further methods, and teach again for this member of her team. After hearing all of the effort she put in I asked her why? She responded, Well, I need to hold him accountable. I told her it sounded like she was holding herself accountable, rather than him. He didn’t need more education on time management, decision making, and deadlines. He knew all that. She needed to simply tell him the expectation and hold him accountable to meeting it.

How would you know if it’s better to teach?

So, what is the difference here? How could we have known that this team member didn’t need to be taught but rather just be told what to do? The manager had laid the foundation that I teach in the Ripple Effect workshop. She had tied the value of why he needed to do this work, and how to do it, to what made him successful. In this situation he understood why making good decisions was important. He understood what would make him most successful in his job. This is a great start. It is the basics of what everyone who is trying to cultivate influence needs to teach to their team members or teammates.

The only thing his boss, my client, was missing was the clear action steps in accountability that you get through direct coaching on your situation. That is why I added the group coaching component to the Ripple Effect workshop. While I’ll be teaching for the first hour to help you build that understand the power of your influence, we’ll stay and keep recording, so you can get your questions answered on how it applies to you and your situation. Do you have more to teach? Maybe. Are you ready to tell them what you need and hold them accountable? That is what the group coaching portion of the Ripple Effect workshop is here to help you figure out. Join us here.