Teaching by example

My friend Chris is a professional climbing and mountain guide.

He loves to teach. He has a hard time not teaching.

On a recent climbing expedition with two of his mentors—men who have been climbing in the mountains longer than Chris has been alive—Chris made a conscious decision not to teach. While he uses more current and more efficient techniques, he figured they probably didn’t need or want his advice. After all, they’d made it this far.

The cool thing is that they noticed the difference and ended up learning from Chris anyway.

“Hey, it looks like what you’re doing works better than what we’re doing. Could you show us that?”

Teaching by example. 

Those who are open to learning from you still will.

And you avoid the risk of making someone feel like you know better than they do.

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You can hear Chris’s story in this episode of the podcast.