Learn by teaching others

This is a chapter from Amplio Development: The Path to Effective Lean-Agile Teams

In “Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Create Insights.” Gary Klein presents a variety of approaches people use to create better models of understanding. It presents ways to help people become more insightful. It continues showing how understanding how you become insightful enables you to help others “connect the dots.” This actually goes both ways. As you help others connect the dots, you see more connections than you had before.

It is well known that a great way of learning something is to teach it to someone else. Doing so forces you to notice your own thinking more clearly and helps you discover any errors in it. While reading guides or trusting others’ insights are useful, if you follow them, you’re not learning why they are right. It is this deeper knowledge that is more important. And it may be that they are not as right as they think.

It is important to reflect on what you believe and how it can connect the dots for others. This brings in another’s perspective and highlights any assumptions you will need to convey. This often uncovers some you were not aware of.  Once you notice these, ask yourself, or better yet, other people, if they are correct. This helps break any echo chambers you have set up. When having a dialog with people, this also helps focus on what’s being said and loosens any presumptions that of being correct.

The “curse of knowledge” is that we stop questioning our understanding which leads to not exploring new ways. That we jump to conclusions without investigating the path we formerly took to get there. We have a tendency to think that others who disagree with us are wrong. This is natural – it’s called being a human being. But just knowing this does little good. One must take action. Looking to see how others can understand by reflecting our thoughts is good action. Both they and you will learn something.

This often takes courage because we expose our thinking to possibly be wrong. Instead of identifying ourselves with our thinking we should identify ourselves as learners.

Telling others to follow is a lazy path. When you dig deep and explain why things work you both learn more. And it’s more respectful besides. That speeds learning for them, and provides a degree of openness thath speeds learning for you.