The Most Effective Way to Create a Teachable Moment

My daughter and I had a huge fight. It was mid fall and we had a surprise snowfall and temperature drop. It was below freezing outside with 6 inches of snow on the ground.

Despite this, my oldest daughter, who attends private school, was going to go to school wearing her summer uniform, which was a skirt, shirt and socks but no leggings to cover her legs.

I tried to point out very reasonably, I thought…, that if the temperature is cold enough for snow, she should not be going to school with bare legsand no sweater or coat.

My daughtercompletely dug in. She insisted that all of her friends went to school like this and that I was just being unreasonable. All the other parents let their children dress like this et. Etc.

You may have heard that one before yourself…

After a lot of back and forth, I gave up on the reasonable father having a mature discussion approach and went into total dictator mode instead. I told my daughter that she had to go back to her room and put on some warmer clothes. No more reasonable discussion.

Fortunately for me, looks in fact cannot kill so I survived and she stormed up to her room and changed into warmer attire.

We started our drive to school with her not talking to me.In the middle of the very silent trip in, I noticed a man wading through the deep snow wearing a pair of rubber boots, khaki shorts and a heavy winter coat.

Curious to hear what my daughter would say, I said “Look at that!”. My daughter, in her first words of the drive replied, “Wow, that’s crazy” and then, after a beautiful pausewhich I shall always treasure in my memories for the rest of my life said “ohhhhh…”.

We still laugh about it.

I am not kidding myself. That was not brilliant parenting on my part.It was sheer luck. But, as a parent, with a teenage daughter, I will take my parenting help any way that I can get it.

Interestingly, it was also a great example of how you can create a teachable moment for a member of your family, a work colleague or even a client.

It is very hard to get people to change perspective on an issue that they are personally invested in. Human nature is such that when we are challenged on a personal belief or action, our first reaction, is to go into adversarial mode and think of all the arguments, rational or not, that can defend our position. Once we have that mindset, we have a very hard time backing down from whatever our belief or action is.

It is just human nature.

That story about what happened with my daughter is a good example of what I believeto be the most powerful way to create a teachable moment.

That technique is to use a story or “parable” so that the client/colleague/family member is not personally invested in a specific outcome and can judge the idea as an outsider in an objective manner.

My daughter, when personally challenged by me about the way that she was dressed, dug in emotionally and was not able to accept that it might be a good idea to wear warmer cloths given the freezing temperatures.

But, when she was removed mentally from being the person challenged and saw someone else doing what she was going to do, she was able to see the logic in the argument.

I love stories and I talk about how powerful they can be in some of my videos on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3iS2HDTxfVmuGXFPv921Ug).

It is not a coincidence that the great educators of the past and present use stories to get their point across.

Look at MalcomGladwell and how he uses stories to help educate on the ideas that he wants to share. Or listen to a sermon given by TD Jakes. Man, can he tell a great story!If you are a fan of Ted Talks, the best ones always contain one or more stories within them.

My point is this, if you want teach someone or challenge them on a belief, use a story so that you take them out of their own context allowing them to judge the idea objectively.

I know that a lot of sales techniques involve directly challenging the client on what they believe or do. Don’t get me wrong, there are times to use these techniques.

But, my warning is this. Human nature is what it is and fighting it makes for a much tougher battle. If you want to teach someone or change their perspective, often the most effective way to do it is to remove their personal involvement by telling them a story with your idea or lesson in it so that they can look and learn from it without a personal emotional bias.

If you want to influence someone to willingly change their behavior, and lets face it, this is the only way that you will get real long term change, this is the most powerful way to do it.