While waiting in the security line at the airport last week, I saw a special line for TSA pre-check passengers and a different line for regular passengers. I proceeded to my gate and saw two more options: a line for first-class, frequent flyers and another line for general boarding passengers. I boarded my aircraft and thought about the many seating options I could have selected. My choices included first-class, preferred seating, extra-room, and economy seats. Gee, so many labels for so many options! We are a society of labels. We label people, places, and things.
Labeling may be good for sales or marketing purposes, or to help when buying airline seats, but it isn’t always a good idea for instructors to label students in the classroom.
What kind of labels do we use? Maybe some of these sound familiar: fast learner, slow learner, beginner learner, intermediate learner, advanced learner, difficult learner. I could go on and on. It’s part of human nature to do this, and I am no exception. However, there are times when it may not be a good idea to label a learner, especially the ones we label as “difficult.” Let me give you an example. A long time ago a colleague told me about a “difficult learner” who was disrupting her class. She called a break, and rather than labeling him a “difficult” learner and telling him to stop disrupting the class, she asked him how he was doing. He opened up to her and told her about some extremely tragic things that were going on in his personal life. On top of that, he told her that his boss was sending him to training to fix his performance or his employment would be terminated! No wonder the man was acting up in class! I learned a very important lesson from my colleague that day.
This experience matched a quote I once read: “Find out the pain they are in before you tell them about the pain they are causing.” Since my colleague found out what was going on with the learner, she was in a better position to act from a place of knowledge and compassion. She offered to provide personal assistance after the training was over to ensure he applied what he learned. She also showed compassion for his personal situation. After their discussion they both returned to the training session and his disruptive behavior vanished.
So, whenever I teach people in my workshops about how to deal with difficult people, I caution them to ask first, try not to judge, and then act accordingly. The end result will always be better!
Do you have a similar story to tell?