What if we all refrained from telling people what to do, how to do it, how they should behave, and so on? Outrageous! Would the world collapse in chaos and disharmony? Or would people just get on with things and sort things out between them?
Definition: Here I’m using “tell” in the sense of : instruct, order, judge, announce, analyse, advise or proselytise.
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Here’s some fundamental shifts that not telling might imply:
No More Consulting
The entire consulting industry is predicated on telling people and organisations things. I’ve long felt this creates situations dead set against what the folks involved would generally like to have happen.
No More Training Or Teaching
At least, we would see an end to the tedious and unproductive style of training based on lecturing (telling) from the front of the room. This might provide an opening for more effective means of helping people learn.
“You know that I don’t believe that anyone has ever taught anything to anyone. I question that efficacy of teaching. The only thing that I know is that anyone who wants to learn will learn. And maybe a teacher is a facilitator, a person who puts things down and shows people how exciting and wonderful it is and asks them to eat.”
~ Carl R. Rogers
No More Experts
Experts love to tell people things. Like what they should be doing, what they’re doing wrong, and how to fix it.
“Labelling and diagnosis is a catastrophic way to communicate. Telling other people what’s wrong with them greatly reduces, almost to zero, the probability that we’re going to get what we’re after.”
~ Marshall Rosenberg
We might not see an end to experts, but we might see a shift in their style of interaction. Perhaps something more Socratic?
No More Managers
The commonest role of any manager, in practice, is to tell. Absent telling, would managers have anything to do that we could recognisably label as “managing”?
No More Process
“Process”, by and large, has come to mean coercing, obliging or otherwise telling folks what to do and how to do it.
More Therapy
The therapist’s stance is by default one of refraining from telling people things. Of encouraging people to find their own answers. Of simply being there, rather than being there to tell.
How do you feel about the whole issue of telling? And has this post brought to mind any other shifts you might be willing to share?
– Bob
