Whoever said you’ve got to be a subject matter expert to teach or train anything wasn’t thinking clearly. In my opinion, training or teaching anyone requires you to have curiosity than mastery. Heck, if you are a “master” you know that “the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.”
I’m not a designer by any measure. Some of my friends say I have an “eye” for design, which is flattering to hear but I honestly don’t know a ding about design. I do, however, have a chockfull of advice when it comes to presentation design, thanks to the boatload of presentations I’ve given all these years. But that’s about it!
My design team at the workplace would like to explore the creative process as part of their professional development program. The learning and development budget is tight (what a surprise, right?) and that leaves me with just one option — learn “design thinking” myself and teach it to the team. In fact, we plan to go over an online (free) course on the matter and go in-depth over the next few weeks.
Super excited! Not to get another opportunity to train and teach them something valuable but to learn something new. I’m sure I would be pushed beyond my comfort zone, my schedule will get messy (yet again) and there will be a lot of work over the weekends… but all of that is worth it!
Moreover, coping with all that stress is meta-learning too. Ask Lao Tse who said, “To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.”
See, you can’t escape learning. But the fun begins when you embrace it to become a life-longer learner.