by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ask for information. Use it to change me\u2014not the other person.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I teach classes on a few topics at work. The best thing I can do afterwards (a few days later) is ask one of the students questions: “What is this? What is that? How would you do this? What is the definition of that?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n (1) Listen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (2) Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both (1) and (2) are essential. Let’s focus on (2) in this post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the answer is incorrect (there are, unfortunately correct and incorrect answers to factual questions), how I respond is critical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Two responses from me (there are many possible ones) are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n (a) What? Weren’t you paying attention? How could you miss that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n (b) What? What was I saying? How was I teaching? Why didn’t I communicate better?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The difference between (a) and (b) is the difference between “you” and “I.” I can change myself. I probably cannot change the other person. Refusing to admit such is my problem, and I should get to work on me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The same goes for meetings, speeches, essays, blog posts, and just about everything else. I can blame the recipient or I can work on me. And I can work on me without blaming me, but acknowledging that…<\/p>\n\n\n\n To write is to be misunderstood. (The same holds for teaching, speaking, etc.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Dwayne Phillips Ask for information. Use it to change me\u2014not the other person. I teach classes on a few topics at work. The best thing I can do afterwards (a few days later) is ask one of the students questions: “What is this? What is that? How would you do this? What is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,312,102],"tags":[154,313,217],"class_list":["post-2958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-humility","category-teaching","tag-communication","tag-humility","tag-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2959,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2958\/revisions\/2959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}