Being Coachable When You Have No Idea What You're Doing #EdTech

In my last post, I wrote about feeling like an imposter and how that is something many people feel at one point or another in their career journey. Leaving the classroom after over 20 years was scary. I finally felt like I knew what I was doing and I had crushed most of those imposter feelings. Then I decided to leave the classroom and start all over again.

Now I'm a rookie and those feelings are back.

The good news is that I've been a rookie before. If I take the same approach I did as a teacher and surround myself with amazing people who are willing to mentor me, ask lots of questions, and be willing to learn, I should be in a good spot.

Since I started my corporate life, I've gone from Curriculum Manager, to Community Manager, to Senior Manager of Advocate and Champions Program, and some new duties this past month will likely lead to another title change. I have been surrounded by amazing mentors who have been helping me grow along the way without it ever really feeling like I was being taught or mentored. I'm invited into meetings to see how things work, I have been given parts of projects to manage, and the next thing I know, I'm managing entire projects.

Looking back at it now, I can see the scaffolding.

As a teacher, this is something I did with students all the time. You don't just hand a student something completely new and complicated and tell them to figure it out. You give them some support, see what they can do, and slowly pull back as they become more comfortable.

It turns out that is exactly what people have been doing with me.

The key to this growth has been being coachable.

One of my managers said I am one of the most coachable people he has worked with. I thought that was funny because it was said as if being coachable is an option.

Apparently, it is.

Maybe that is the teacher mentality in me. There are things I do not know and I want to know them. I have to figure out how to learn them and go from there. That just seems normal to me.

As a teacher, things didn't work all the time. Lessons bombed. Students didn't understand something that I thought was perfectly clear. A new tool came along that I needed to figure out. I would ask questions, get feedback, make some changes, and try again.

That's the job.

I didn't realize until entering the business world that being willing to do those things is actually a valuable professional skill.

I've also started to realize that being coachable means you have to be willing to admit that you don't know things.

That is tough when imposter syndrome is hanging around.

Imposter syndrome tells you to hide the things you don't know because someone might figure out you don't belong.

Being coachable requires you to admit you don't know something because that is the only way you are going to learn it.

I'm trying really hard to listen to the second one.

The business world is interesting in that upward mobility is an expectation for many people. Teaching is different. Once you have your classroom, you are pretty much set. Unless you want to become an administrator or move into another position, you can be a teacher for the next 30 years. You can get better and better at what you do without your title ever changing.

That was one of the biggest adjustments for me.

I was so happy to start as a Curriculum Manager. I'm good at building curriculum. I had been doing some version of that for years, so it felt comfortable.

Then there was a chance to manage the community. I've spent years being part of different education and edtech communities, so it made sense to take that experience and leverage it into building out a community.

Every step along the way, there was someone offering little nuggets of advice and opportunities for growth.

Sit in on this meeting.

Take this part of the project.

What do you think about this?

Can you handle this?

As a textbook people pleaser, my answer was usually yes.

Then I would do everything I could to make sure it was done to the very best of my abilities.

The important part, though, was what happened next. Someone would give me another little nugget of feedback. I would take that feedback and use it on the next project. Then the next project would be a little bigger. I would get more feedback and use that on the project after that.

It was basically the same cycle over and over again.

Opportunity. Try. Feedback. Learn. Bigger opportunity. Repeat.

I get asked pretty often about how a person can make the transition out of the classroom and into the business world. The more I think about it, the more I believe being coachable is key.

Teachers who are thinking about leaving the classroom can get caught up thinking about all of the things they don't know.

I don't know business.

I don't know marketing.

I don't know sales.

I don't understand how corporate teams work.

I don't know what half of these acronyms mean.

I didn't either.

I still don't know plenty of them.

But I think teachers sometimes overlook one of the most valuable skills they bring with them when they leave the classroom.

We know how to learn.

Teachers are constantly learning, adjusting, trying new things, failing, getting feedback, and trying again. We do it so often that we might not even think of it as a skill.

It is.

Maybe the way through imposter syndrome isn't convincing yourself that you already know what you're doing. Maybe it's being comfortable admitting that you don't know what you're doing yet and finding people who are willing to help you figure it out.

That's what I did when I was a rookie teacher.

I asked questions. I watched people who were better than me. I tried things. I screwed things up. I listened to feedback. Then I tried again.

More than 20 years later, I'm a rookie again.

It turns out, I already know how to be one.