RT: Handholding

As much as I hate to repost this: HERE IT GOES...
http://sifucheng.blogspot.com/2008/06/handholding.html

Read it. Re-read it. And then think on this...

"A word to the wise isn't necessary - it's the stupid ones that need the advice."
- Bill Cosby.

Handholding, while irritating as F--KIN' HELL and unbelievably time-consuming for the leader, can be one of the only ways of making efficient progress for the student who recognizes the importance of the leader's message, yet doesn't have a clearcut understanding of how to implement the leader's knowledge.

Far too often, we as instructors (at least in this country) want to just teach and set someone free to do their own thing. Unfortunately, that often results in the student floundering about in his/her own randomness, wasting energy trying to reinvent the wheel instead of swallowing their overinflated sense of self and independence and ASKING wholeheartedly to learn a step-by-step process.

[Man, that's some harsh sounding rhetoric there. I don't have an overinflated sense of self!... BULLSH!#... If you didn't have that overinflated sense of self, you'd have recognized your own lack of understanding and done something concrete towards improving that situation. Did you handle it yourself? Did you ask an expert for help? Or do you still think you've got your $h!# completely under control?]

Parenting can be the same. We want our kids to evolve and expect that we've set the stage for them to bloom by providing them with an education, food, shelter, and boundless love. But sometimes that's not enough.

Take me for example. If I hadn't taken it upon myself to find masters and mentors (outside of the schools my parents paid for) to guide me personally, then there are plenty of instances where I'd never be at the level that I am now.

However, I made sure that for every bit of energy my masters & mentors poured into me, I poured back into them OR poured into my own education so that I wouldn't be such a dead weight on their lives. Throughout the years of my education (which continues to this day), my friends and past girlfriends often criticized me harshly, saying stuff like...

"Why are you kissing so & so's ass?"

"Why do you have to do so much for so & so?"

"How come so & so isn't paying you?"

"Why are you working so many hours for such low pay?"

"For someone with a college degree and a professional licensure, why are you getting up so early just to scrub down an herb cooker and do someone's filing?"

I heard all sorts of $hi# and then some. And I won't lie. It irritated me having to explain some of these issues, and there were more than a few times that I began to see things through the eyes of my friends. And my inner attitude occasionally shifted from grateful to entitled.

Thank God I have a better grip on the situation now. These days, I understand that the people that say such things say them out of ignorance or entitlement, and that their attitudes don't have to reflect on me or how I choose to interact with the people who do so much to teach me and provide opportunities for me.

Even among the readers of this blog, I've heard comments like, "You do an awful lot for Pavel" or "I know Gray's your teacher, but I still think he should've paid you to write that book and given you more credit on the Turkish Get-Up" or "Why are you paying the Lee family a big lai-see when you spend more time teaching at Gee Yung than you get to train?" or "How come you killed off your clinic practice for so many months while you were translating, editing, and rewriting Master Lin's book without pay?"

Here's my reply... SHUT UP and listen more... and then DO more. Your speculation is worthless. Your actions, your generosity, your giving of self and resources is all that's meaningful.

Those of you who think or talk that way do so because you're trying to curry favor with me in a cowardly and unethical way, and most likely, you don't really understand the way my relationship is predicated with my teachers.

What makes me a strong leader and a great instructor is the fact that I am first and foremost a devoted follower and a hungry student.

* I am not afraid to ask others to handhold me through certain steps of a process, or to spoonfeed me information, even though there are times when those I ask may look at me with great disdain for having asked.

* I am not afraid to work twice as hard as anyone else around me or around them because I know that the handholding, mentoring process is a laborious, time-consuming, and usually financially punishing undertaking.

* I am not afraid to devote more of my time to my teachers because, in teaching me, they are spending hours they could have spent on someone or something else that would bring them more income or greater joy.

* I am not afraid to put someone else before me, since you cannot lead from the rear and you cannot follow from the front.

* I am not afraid to reprioritize my "friendships" and other relationships since the views of others in my social circle may get in the way of the progress and growth I can best make by serving others.

* I am not afraid of investing time and money in learning a skill set that I've researched and believe in. The investment of time & money in these skill sets will eventually turn into revenue as long as I know how to use those skills to provide meaning and value for others. More importantly, I must know how to communicate that value and meaning for others instead of thinking that they will magically flock to me just because I got business cards printed.

* I am not afraid of telling someone that I don't have time to do whatever it is they want to do if it doesn't move me towards my goals and competes with something important that WILL push me towards my goals.

* I am not afraid of taking the time to spend handholding any one of you who needs it, appreciates it properly, esteems the process and all that's involved in it, benefits from it, and then shows me that you can do all of those things with CONSISTENCY.

Handholding

This is the first blogpost where I'll talk about some of the issues that you'll face while teaching. This particular issue is fresh in my mind, so instead of letting my insights on this sit inside, I figured I'll allow myself 15-30 minutes to type as fast as possible and get this on the blog before trying to get more work done.... or maybe rest up some more and try to kick the remainder of this damn cold.

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Handholding is one of the most useful and useless parts of the teaching/learning process. For the really self-motivated, it's a very powerful means of walking a student through a process in a very piecemeal, step-by-step fashion with a ton of encouragement along the way. For these self-motivated and strong students, the handholding process is a form of very committed mentoring. It signifies a kind of high-level personal interest, attention, and devotion to the improvement of a particular student or disciple.

But the handholding process should be curtailed as quickly as humanly possible. The sooner a student has the chance to fly on their own (or crash and burn miserably), the faster they will learn the importance of what you've been teaching and how to apply it to their own lives. SUCCESSFUL APPLICATION or PROGRESS is THE deciding factor as to whether or not the student is getting what you're teaching or not. Anything less is fantasy or denial.

For the emotionally stunted, handholding is a crutch that encourages feebleness and dependence. These students will, even after long periods of instruction and detailed coaching, habitually ask you how their performance is. They use words to indicate that your opinion and your feeling about them decides their self-worth, whether they are conscious of it or not. In extreme cases, like one I just had to deal with, you can outline the process for a positive outcome and excellent progress to the nth degree, but they will ALWAYS leave themselves some sort of an "out", a backdoor, or some other means of denying total commitment.

The student I'm talking about had the audacity to tell me that "success is a decision", and angrily defended her inability to commit to doing what I'd laid out in high detail for her. Stifling my knee-jerk reaction to tell her to "Go and F--K right off, then!", I simply said "Enough" and ended the conversation.

The student I'm talking about has made considerable progress during the time I've been working with her, but the energy I have to put out to move her an inch out of her reflexive and defensive inertia is monumental. And for someone like me who absolutely disdains the "kiss my arse & coddle me indefinitely" method of pedagogy, having come from a traditional East Asian and military background, this is irritating beyond measure.

It'd be like having Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora spending months teaching me how to play their hit single "Dead or Alive" from scratch, but I spend a lot of time practicing without a strong intent, without a strong mind, without a strong and focused spirit. Instead of following his instructions and doing exactly what we practice doing together, I decide to waste time looking on Youtube or Wikipedia or somewhere else for shortcuts or tips or some "other" way of doing exactly what he taught me to do. Instead of practicing the way he laid out for me and trusting his experience and deepening my skill, I flounder about like a fish on dry land; flopping from one thing to another and making no real progress. I gain no real familiarity with what I need to, and I grow more anxious because I'm not confident in my ability to perform.

Whenever I try to play the song or a few bars in front of him or his other students, I always do so in an apologetic manner, doubtful of myself or what will come out from my guitar. This is a phenomenal waste of time for both myself as an aspiring guitarist and for my esteemed mentor. Skills practiced in a way that can only be duplicated in total privacy are like babies born into and raised in a sealed Ziploc bag; they die quickly due to the lack of energy put into them.

What you as instructors and instructor candidates have to decide is who is worth handholding, who is worth letting go of, and how much YOU are over-dependent on someone else. When I tell you to do something that's outside of your comfort zone, you have two real choices - DO IT with real commitment, long-term dedication, and enthusiasm, and grow stronger from the experience, or don't do it and tread water for the rest of your life.