How did a celebration lead to near-disaster on the Golden Gate Bridge?
In 1987 there was a celebration to honor the 50th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge. Thousands came from miles around to walk over the overpass on foot. The crowd swelled with barely an inch between each person. Unfortunately, the bridge began to sag under the weight of so many pedestrians. The towers began to bend inwards. The cables started to stretch. As a result, organizers got everyone off the bridge.
You can’t expect the average citizen to know how many people can walk across a massive bridge, so the safety of the event is the responsibility of the organizers. Similarly, when it comes to learning, it’s not the students that are responsible for results but the teacher.
I know that’s a pretty radical position. Doesn’t the student take some responsibility? Yes, the student must show up. The student must try to follow instructions. But if the student gets stuck, the teacher must be there to correct the method of learning.
When we get stuck we have been taught to blame ourselves
“I didn’t work hard enough.”
“I must be lazy.”
“I must not be good at this.”
If we buy into these thoughts, then we just give up.
And why do we buy into self-blame?
We think the teacher must know what he or she is doing. We’ve been taught from an early age that the teacher knows the answers. If we didn’t do well in school, we were told to work harder or work smarter, we were never told to get a better teacher.
What is the way out of this self-blame trap?
You discover the real reasons you didn’t learn. And there is one principal reason:
You were not given small enough steps.
A colleague of mine took a $2,000 copywriting course from a famous internet marketer. The first task she was given was to make an avatar. She was to answer questions such as “Who are your ideal clients?” “What do they dress like?” “What do they eat for breakfast?” “What do they like to read?”
These questions may not seem too hard. But she was stuck. She said “How would I know any of that? I have no idea who my ideal client is let alone what they eat or wear.” This is bad instruction. The very first step was too unclear.
I actually don’t use the concept of avatar in my work, however, if I were to teach this concept, I would break the steps down into small bits.
- List 5 clients who got great results from you in the last year.
- List 5 clients who you most enjoyed working with.
- You now have a list of 10. Take that list and circle the three clients that you’d most love to clone.
- Of that list of three, decide on the one client whom you’d like to work with most.
- Call that client up. Ask them the avatar questions.
That almost seems too simple, doesn’t it? Listing a few clients is easy. Calling one on the phone to ask the questions is so straightforward. And that’s the job of the teacher, to make the complex simple. To break down the most daunting task and make it relevant and accessible to anyone who wants to learn.
I have a mentor that taught Photoshop years ago. He taught the first lesson in a cafe away from the computer. In his first lesson, he guided his students into knowing the keyboard shortcuts. Here’s how his lesson would proceed.
Teacher: If you want to apply text to an image, what letter key would you press?
Student: T.
Teacher: To make the text bold, what key would you press?
Student: B.
Teacher: To make the text bigger do you hit the right arrow or the left arrow?Student: Right arrow.
By guiding his students through learning several keyboard shortcuts in this way, they had confidence before they ever opened Photoshop.
The first lessons must be exceedingly simple
It must leave nothing to chance. From there a teacher can build on each idea. Eventually, the students get to a point where they look back in awe at how far they’ve come. If you failed at learning anything, you didn’t really fail. The teacher failed you. The teacher’s steps just weren’t small enough. Good instruction must be nearly fool-proof. Which leads us to a big question.
So how do you find a great teacher?
There’s one easy way. Find the smallest and cheapest information that the teacher provides. It may be a report, an ebook, a print book, or a video. Try applying what you learn from that material.
If you find you’re able to understand and implement it, then it’s likely this instructor knows how to break other subjects down into bite-sized pieces. But if you find that you struggle with these materials, then it’s probably better to look elsewhere for instruction.
Summary
- When we fail to learn, we blame ourselves.
- But in reality, if you work and don’t learn, the fault lies with the method of instruction, not with you.
- The main reason we fail to learn is the steps were not broken down into pieces small enough for us to digest.
- A good instructor knows this and will make the steps smaller when students don’t get results.
- You can find a good instructor by getting some of their free or cheap information and seeing if you can learn from that. If you can, you might try their more expensive materials.
Our brains are not that dissimilar to a bridge. We can handle only a certain amount of information at a time before we start to buckle. But if the flow of information is given in small enough bursts, we can take on challenges that previously seemed beyond reach. Find a good teacher and there’s little that you cannot learn.
