The Teach-Preach Dilemma
Amidst all the madness that was Thursday night, I did have a very interesting conversation with a friend regarding her own pursuits in life and how her efforts could be enhanced, even multiplied. After listening to her initial description of the problem, it was clear to me just what the dilemma was - too much preaching, not enough teaching.
What, exactly, does that mean? Well, it’s actually a problem quite common to individuals who are extremely passionate about a particular subject matter - say entrepreneurs, activists, and others endowed with their own “cause”. Now don’t get me wrong, passion is a wonderful thing but it needs to be made actionable for it to spread.
Consider this example. I have another friend who is on the verge of making the move to the Bay to get his new company off the ground (much as I did just two months ago). I’ve been working with him for the past few months trying to get him to refine his pitch into something that a business-minded investor or partner might be able to sink their teeth into. In the course of this work, he’s constantly fallen back to some fairly lofty positions that, to be honest, just have little to bear on the conversation at hand. As I mentioned to my friend last night, pitch me the message you want me to leave with, not everything leading up to it.
The difficulty we have, as passionate beings insufferably attached to our own belief systems, is that we simply can’t deny the story leading up to our own conclusions. The problem, of course, is that all stories have their own lives, take unexpected twists and turns, and ultimately, terminate in places most unexpected - and most people don’t have the time for the drama.
The solution? Teach, don’t preach. It sounds quite simple on the surface but it is undeniably one of the more difficult skills to master. Why? Most people are not very good at being concise - it’s hard. I always remember this quote from Mark Twain, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Given enough time, I think most people can communicate some semblance of an idea - so long as their emotional blinders don’t prevail. Unfortunately, that also provides enough time, and rope, for them to hang themselves. Worst of all, though, is that most of us are too impatient to wait for the punchline - we’re quite impatient with these sorts of things.
To increase your odds of impression, it’s often a sound practice to learn how to boil down your ideas and remove the emotional angle. I’m not advocating being emotionless, nor am I denying the power of passion - but if you’re having a hard time moving your ideas forward, consider it might be the vehicle you’re using that’s getting in the way.
Naturally, the exact opposite of this argument is true as well. If the facts don’t sell the idea, perhaps you need to do a bit more preaching. I’ll leave that alone for another post.