more on tutoring: let’s try that right now

Once you make the meetings-as-tutoring-session switch, you’ll notice that meetings will often have this delicious moment where your teammate exclaims, “Ohhhhhhhh, cool! I think I get it!” But what do you next? 

Five magic words: Let’s try that right now. 

Help a teammate handle a sensitive situation with someone they lead? Have them take out their computer and send the message right now. Help someone understand how to structure a high-stakes meeting they’re going to lead soon? Have them write the agenda with you and script their opening. Help someone re-priortize their goals? Take out their calendar and block out next week’s work time accordingly.

In other words, as soon as you lead someone to a moment of insight, immediately practice applying that insight. What do math teachers do once their class derives some new understanding? They immediately assign kids 5 problems to practice this new idea. Running meetings with a quick insight-to-practice loop harnesses all of these same benefits: It helps your teammates to iron out the kinks of implementation, it makes it more likely they’ll retain the insight, it deepers their nuanced understanding of what to do, and it allows you provide good micro-adjustments to their implementation. 

Additionally, spending meetings acting on insights creates success spirals. There is a ton of leverage to be had in helping someone actually accomplish something they’ve been stalled on. The likelihood of them doing it again in the future goes up, given the muscle memory of doing it well with you. And it makes it much more likely that they succeed on their own the next time they face a somewhat similar situation.

-Ben