In the daily routine of running a business, it can become easy to look for patterns that make our lives easier. In fact, looking for patterns is built into the human psyche. So many strange photographs and ghost sightings can be explained merely by the fact that the human eye is predetermined to find the shape of a face in any given amorphous shape. It’s what we do, it’s who we are. When it comes to teaching, the quickest analysis we seek to make about a new student is an assessment of what kind of student he/she will be and what it will take to train them.
Impressions people make on us are often involuntary and our reactions are based on adapting to a new situation. We want to know exactly what we’re dealing with right away, so that a correct course of action can be taken. But of course, like so many other aspects of our lives, we’re not always right, and our snap judgments of a situation can lead us to mistakes, humility or worse.
It was about three or four years ago when, one day, I was sitting in my office and a mother walked in with her child of about six or seven years old. Class had not started yet, so I was more than happy to go talk with her. I noticed that, as soon as the kid walked through the door, he started banging on the ground and the walls around him, making noise and causing a disturbance. In those first few instants, my mind raced to classify the situation and bring to bear a proper response.
As the kid slammed away at his surroundings and I approached the mother, the first thing that went through my mind was three letters, KFH: Kid from Hell. This is the code we use to identify problem children to our fellow instructors and when I saw this little monster banging his pint-sized pistons around my place of business, that’s what I thought.
And quickly after, a flurry of other thoughts followed: What will I tell my instructors about him? How will they handle him? We’ll have to make special arrangements when he comes in to train, etc. My mind was suddenly kicked into high gear thinking of how to deal with this new situation.
So as I approached his mother, I thought I had the kid figured out. He was a demon child: loud, wanted attention, disrespectful, won’t follow orders. I knew it all.
But when I reached her, finally, she said to me, “Do you teach blind kids?” Blind kid! I was taken aback, humbled and relieved all at the same time. In those first few moments, I hadn't taken the time to understand the situation and had jumped to conclusions. What I forgot is that, in new situations, it's important to understand before you’re understood.
As one of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Successful People, seeking to understand before you’re understood is what gives us the humility and grace to face unknown situations with a fair and adequate assessment and not appear judgmental.
At that moment, I realized that it’s not a good idea to have every student figured out before he or she even walks in — and that our business will become better if we start treating people as individuals and not as a series of groups. Every person is different as is every situation, and our natural tendency to put things into recognizable patterns may sometimes have the effect of jumping the gun too quickly and losing sight of the real picture.
