Wednesday 8 February 2012


Sharing and Teaching


I Teach K When I teach classes on lesson-learning, I always tell people to think of a lesson not as something you have learned, but as something you can teach.

I think there needs to be an element of teaching, in knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer. By this, I am not talking about a passive Teacher/Learner relationship; I am talking more about an active mindset within the person who is providing, or sharing, the knowledge.

By "think of sharing as teaching", I mean that if the knowledge provider is interested in effective transfer of their knowledge, they should think through carefully what the receiver needs to know. They should think about
  • Explaining the context
  • Telling the story
  • Showing why the knowledge is important
  • Providing their best help and advice, based on their own experience
The responsibility for shared understanding between knowledge supplier and knowledge user, should be shared by both parties. It's not easy to transfer knowledge - there are so many barriers that get in the way - so the more help that the knowledge provider can give, the better. The more of a teaching mindset they can develop, the more chance that the knowledge receiver will understand the context, understand the importance, understand what it means to them, and then get in touch with the knowledge provider to learn more.


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