Make the horse thirsty

Mon, 21 Oct 2013
2 min read
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Having prata with the 5N1 boys.

So my relief teaching stint at Saint Gabriel’s Secondary School ended last week.

I’m very glad for the opportunity to have returned for one last hurrah; to have come full circle in my teaching journey and for this very meaningful and enriching experience to mark the end of my teaching career (for now).

Something I found valuable from the experience: a lesson that resurfaced during the course of my stint.

When I was a trainee teacher at St Gab’s four years ago, I remember telling Mr William Ng, our School Coordinating Mentor then, about how one class was making it difficult for me to teach them.

The exact words I used was in the form of the idiom “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”.

Mr Ng took one look at me and replied, “Then make the horse thirsty.”

My instinctive response was to shoot him a WTF look – though I stopped when I realised he made sense.

(That was a very powerful exercise in reframing for me; I’ve since learnt the power of reframing situations like that in order to break out of what might be a seemingly hopeless circumstance.)

In any case, being a beginning teacher, I didn’t know how to make the “horses” thirsty then.

So I completely forgot about the phrase and about making “horses” thirsty until I was a week into my stint and I reconnected with Mr Ng.

Recollecting his words was both an empowering and inspiring experience; I finally understood what he meant.

I also felt a sense of relief: at some point last year, my teaching journey had finally led me to learn what it was I had to do to make the “horses” thirsty.

A couple of people have asked how to make the “horses” thirsty. An ex-colleague has even quipped that it’s “even more important than what…the fox say[s]“.

I’m not normally the type to hold my cards close to my chest, but this time round, I will, for personal reasons.

In any case, if you’re a teacher, keep teaching well and make making “horses” thirsty one of your priorities too.

P.S. not related but still amusing, nonetheless: Rockson’s Horse.

The thing about work

Thu, 19 Sep 2013
4 min read
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"The bid offer is so wide you could drive a bus through it".

A month ago, I wrote about love and how being with someone should make you more awesome than you already are.

(That hasn’t changed; please keep on with the search for finding that someone if you haven’t already found her/him.)

A month on, some of my friends and loved ones have moved from finding love and romance to finding new careers – or at least gaining some traction in their current ones.

I’m happy for all of them, and thankfully, this time, they’re relatively happy with what they’ve found.

Unfortunately, some of my other friends and loved ones are still stuck in jobs that they dread, dragging their feet into the office in the mornings to do work they can’t stand.

Why?

After five years of being in the workforce and one year of leading the freelance life, I’m convinced that the main reason why people hate their jobs and/or leave is because of the quality of the leadership.

No doubt, there may be other reasons at play.

But if my experiences – and those of my peers – are anything to go by, a good leader makes all the difference.

Like love, the thing about work is that it needs to add value to your life (assuming, of course, that you’re already bringing something to the table).

But a job is a job; it’s something that you do in order to earn your keep.

The real game-changer is the leader who’s giving you good feedback so you minimise the possibility of making mistakes; guiding you so that you avoid pitfalls; and providing you with opportunities for growth and demonstration of value, among others.

I’ve written and posted about the principles of leadership before (read Part I here – the difference between a boss and a leader – and Part II, on what kind of vision a leader needs to have).

Google also has well-researched rules on how to become a better leader, which reiterates what I’ve written about leadership.

At the end of the day, the easiest rubric for measuring how good a leader is is this:

How, and in what ways, is my leader preparing me to take over her/him?

I know this sounds counter-intuitive and self-destructive: who would want to consume herself/himself, break his/her rice bowl, etc.?

But think about it: the moment your leader actively begins to prepare you to take over her/him, isn’t s/he fulfilling all the requisite characteristics a good leader should have, namely:

  • Empowering the team and its members;
  • Being a good communicator; and
  • Helping employees with career development, among others?

(Assuming your organisation is interested in keeping employees, because of the benefits such as talent retention and utilisation, institutional memory, etc.)

Furthermore, if your leader is preparing you to take over her/him, it also gives her/him the impetus to either step aside so that you can grow – or move upward to replace her/his leader (who, ideally, should also be preparing your leader to take over her/him), and so on.

So borrowing from my earlier post about love, if you’re with a leader who constrains you; curtails your development as a human being; turns you into a shadow of your awesome self, then is that leader really good for you?

We shouldn’t let past happiness or promises of future bliss in the work we’re doing cloud our vision.

What we should be doing, really, is focusing on the fundamental issue of how much our leaders are preparing us to take over her/him.

And if the gauge shows a reading that is minimal, negligible – or even negative – then I’d say you know the answer for what you need to do to be happy.

The thing about love

Mon, 19 Aug 2013
2 min read
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Face off

So, many of my friends and loved ones have paired off or are pairing off.

I’m happy for all of them. Unfortunately, not all of them are happy, and some want out.

In a case like this, what’s the best way to decide?

The conventional decision-making process utilises happiness to decide whether to stay or to go.

That’s not wrong, but the focus is – because it usually tends to be on: are you/am I happy with X?

I’ve come to realise – from both conversations and experience (recent and otherwise) – that this question needs to be reframed so that we address the more pertinent issue at hand – that of added value.

Because the thing about love is that it isn’t merely about value i.e. happiness with X; the thing about love is that it’s about added value i.e. how happy X makes us feel about ourselves.

Assuming ceteris paribus – i.e. we’ve cleaned up our act and sown all the wild oats we need to sow, we’ve let go of any issues or people that need to be let go of, etc. – the real question we should be asking ourselves is:

Does X make me more awesome than I already am?

I’ve seen it in the friends and loved ones who are happy, and I’ve felt it for myself too: a good partner is someone who explicitly supports you in becoming better than you already are.

And rightfully so – if being with someone constrains you; curtails your development as a human being; turns you into a shadow of your awesome self, then is that person really good for you?

It’s applicable to not just love, but at work and in friendships and family relationships too.

For as hard as it may be, all of us will need to cut the strings to relationships that are toxic or stunting at various points of time in our lives.

In making those decisions, we shouldn’t let past happiness or promises of future bliss cloud our vision.

What we should be doing, really, is focusing on the fundamental issue of how much X will be able to help us grow.

And if that growth is going to be minimal, negligible – or even negative – then I’d say you know the answer for what you need to do to be happy.