The beginner mindset makes you a better teacher—and it’s fun too!

Well, hey there. Welcome back… to everyone who is an old pro at this podcast and those who are just beginners because at some point you are a beginner and we tend to forget that don’t we? In fact, there’s a phenomenon I would like to raise your awareness on and then do our usual discussion of.

The Expert’s Curse: Forgetting the Beginner’s Mindset

So, let’s think about this. There are skills and methods and things that you have immersed yourself in, things you’ve gotten better in, things that you have been doing for quite some time, things you take for granted. And one of the interesting things that happens when you are really good at something or you’ve amassed a certain level of skill in something or you may have put together some disperate skills and abilities and created a brand new thing and because of that you forget what it was like to be a beginner. To me, you get so far ahead in your skill, you just completely become out of touch what it even feels like to not be good at it, to be nervous about it, to wonder what you’re doing wrong, to wonder if you’re doing anything right, to even search to find answers to how to be better at it, or to look at someone who’s really good at it and think, “I could never be like that.” If you are someone who’s really good at something, and I know you’re really good at more than one thing,

you may have become out of touch with what it’s like to actually reach the level you’re at, to be at the very beginning stage.

The Excitement of Starting From Scratch

Here’s the interesting thing. Being a beginner in something can be really kind of well, exciting. If you’ve played video games or really any games, including cards or board games, you know what it’s like to sort of reset and start from scratch. Now, board games and card games may be a little bit less intense of an analogy because everyone kind of starts at a at an even playing field, but if you’ve amassed a lot of something, whether it’s wealth or knowledge or skills or experience, it can be sort of exciting to have that voluntarily, let’s underline that, taken away from you. or if you voluntarily decide not to take advantage of it. But see, if you still have the knowledge that you have the skill or the wealth or what have you, it’s not exactly the same thing. Truly feeling like you don’t have something and then needing to go forward with it is the feeling I’m talking about. It’s the beginner feeling. And it’s that beginner feeling that someone who’s excelling in something gets disconnected from.

Why Experts Often Make Bad Teachers

So here’s what happens with that from the position of the let’s say the learner. Let’s say you are a beginner and you’d like to learn something from the master. Well the master can be excellent at what they do but they can be completely out of touch with how to relay that because they may process things very very quickly. And you’re probably thinking about this in in your own world of of whatever it is that you’re really good at. Something that takes you a minute to do that would take them an hour or maybe they’d never be able to do it because they simply haven’t learned that particular method that you know. Uh, hey Mark, write a fivepage article on this subject. Oh, okay. You can’t use chat. No, I’m not going to use anything. I’ll just sit down. Can Can you leave me alone for just a few minutes? I mean, someone else would say, “Well, wait, what’s the subject again? And why do I like this? And what’s the outcome? And and can I research this? And I don’t know what all sounds the same, and oh my god, I can’t get started. I don’t know what the first sentence should even be. Is how does this even work?” Like, those are all questions that are instantly answered in someone’s mind if they’ve used to doing that, including writing books, including creating a podcast episode. I’ve actually worked with a few people recently about starting a podcast and had some interesting discussions with them about what to talk about.

Also, the the length of it uh what format should they be visual? Should they just be audio like me since I have a face for radio? Thank you very much. But we are learning and adaptable to a fault kinds of beings. It’s especially notable at the two ends of the spectrum. Uh the the hands-on trades and the cerebral pursuits like being a professor, a teacher, etc. In the hands-on trades, you have the old guy who’s been doing this forever that somehow can just get through something. He does something with his hands and there there you go. Might even seem like he doesn’t measure a lot and yet it’s always perfect. In the other end of the spectrum, there’s the professor that seems to know the answer to everything. You can’t trip them up. You can’t confuse them. They just happen to know. But in both cases, statistically speaking,

they make really bad teachers.

The True Skill of Teaching: Becoming the Beginner

And you can say, “Wait, Mark, you just said a teacher could make a really bad teacher.” Well, yes, because people who are professors sometimes aren’t really teachers. To me, teaching is a separate skill unto itself. And part of that teaching is putting yourself in the mindset of the beginner

because you can’t just be aloof as a professor and say, well, you know, read this and read this and you come back to me when you understand that or be the the old hands-on guy with grimy giant fingers that says, oh, you got to work at that. You’ll figure it out.

Neither of those things are helpful for the person who is in the beginner mindset.

And how do you cross that gap? Well, you as the teacher become the beginner. This is all probably sounding very zen to you. And it sounds zen to me. You know, the the teacher must become the learner and stuff like that, but it’s very true. I spend the majority of a podcast episode like this being the beginner. I want to see it through the eyes of you and say, “Okay, well, if I’m listening to this, I don’t know any of the stuff I know. I what would I what would I want to know and and in what order? And how quickly would I need to ramp up?” And that’s part of my my goal of saying, “Okay, I want to raise your awareness and then talk about what’s next.” So the raising of your awareness means I sort of drop my awareness because if I didn’t do that, I would just say, “Hey, you know, there’s this thing that’s happening here. Here it’s called this. Let’s talk about it. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.” But if you don’t know what it is, you don’t know how to even look for it. And so that’s the raising awareness part of these 10-minute episodes.

From Fear to Excitement: Embracing “Level One”

So the the bullet list would be you are an expert in something or extremely good at it to the point where you may have forgotten what it’s like to not even know that to be at square one. And and just thinking about square one might not be exciting to you as it might be to someone like me. It might actually be kind of scary. And it’s that being at square one that can scare people in many ways. If they’re starting out in a relationship, if they’re retiring, you I have a number of episodes on that. They’re starting a brand new job, they’re starting in an entirely different field. But the scary fear of not knowing something and once again being a beginner can quickly turn to sort of excitement in which you start learning and you start going up the levels and you’re like, “Oh yeah, that’s how this feels. It feels really good to learn things cuz now I look back and now I’m sort of a level three on this and now I learned this stuff and oh my god, this part was driving me nuts. I read it in a book over and over and over again.” And then I talked to another person who does this for a living and they and they told me something that I that that allowed me to make the connection. Oh, well that makes sense.

How to Be a Better Teacher (and a Better Learner)

So from the perspective of the teacher. So if you’re put in the position and hopefully you are because everyone should be teaching something to someone. If you’re in the perspective of teaching someone, whether you’re onboarding someone new at your company, you have a friend, you’re helping, it’s your kids, you’re mentoring, what have you,

understand that you need to be in the mindset of the beginner, it will make you a far better teacher. If you are the beginner in something, and hopefully everyone continues to be a beginner in something because that’s a very exciting life to lead. Try to embrace the excitement of being the newbie. Don’t put yourself down and say, “Yeah, I’m new at this. This is dumb.” But understand that if you’re working with others and they’re in a position to help you a little bit, you don’t need to put yourself down. You could just simply say, “I am new at this and I’m willing to learn.” It’s a very powerful mindset to be in. Sometimes we put ou...