I’ve always hated that old saying, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” I hate it not only because it is demeaning to teachers, but because it’s absolutely not true. Some of the worst teachers I have had in my life were very successful in their fields. They may have been highly acclaimed for their knowledge and skill, but they certainly didn’t have any idea how to convey what they knew and did to others.
Whenever we speak, we are teaching, and teaching is a skill unto itself. There is a lot more to it than just being good at something.
A good teacher or speaker needs, first of all, to be able to distill the essential building blocks of knowledge. The vast majority of information in any discipline is trivial detail. A good teacher or speaker teases out the most essential facts and ideas, principals and procedures that the audience needs to understand.
The next step is to craft a clear and simple expression of each of those essential ideas. Albert Einstein once said, “If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it.” A good teacher or speaker labors until he or she can express each essential idea in one short, crisp, memorable statement.
The teacher or speaker then takes those essential ideas and orders them in a logical and intuitive flow that builds a scaffold of understanding for all of the information that is to follow. One class, seminar or presentation can’t possibly cover every bit of information about any subject, but a framework of essential facts and principals can forever influence the understanding that the student or audience brings to any future learning by helping them judge the validity and relevance of any new information and showing them where that new information fits into the overall scheme of things. That’s what a good teacher or speaker does; shape the way others will think in the future.
There is no right or wrong way to do any of this; only ways that are more, or less, effective in a given situation. It’s as much an art as a science and comes mainly from experience.
In time, good teachers and speakers learn to read their audience. By monitoring facial expressions, body language and the atmosphere of the class or venue as a whole, they get a sense for when it’s working and when it’s not. They just know when they need to slow down, repeat or review and when it’s time to move on to the next point. They can feel when they need to turn up the energy or to tone it down.
Teaching is a talent that some people seem to be born with, a skill that some develop over time and a mystery that others just never seem to get a handle on.
It’s a hell of a lot more than a fallback for those who can’t hack it in their profession.
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