Your Favourite Teacher....?

It was the annual parents evening recently for my youngest son so my wife and I trotted up to the school to hear the low down on how he is doing. After crouching down onto the little chairs and sitting around the little table I felt like I had drifted back in time....and even started to get a little nervous myself.

The teacher started to tell us how well our son is doing and also some areas where he needs to focus on. The dreaded SATs exams are approaching and we all know how important it is to get good results......

Actually I was really impressed by how well the teacher really knows my son. He can see him for what he really is and recognises his strengths and works really to hard to help them come to the surface.

I came home thinking that the whole experience has so many links to the corporate world that we all live in:

• How often is it that we only find out about our performance once a year? Sadly for a lot of people this is not unusual......
• How may managers really take the time to find the strengths of their people, and then take the next step to make the most of them? Come to think of it how many managers even bother to look for strengths and just focus on those 'development needs'....?
• How often are we too focused on results and not so much on how we might be able to achieve them. Are we focusing on the catch when we need to work on the throw?

It made me think about all the great teachers I have had in my life so far (...not just at school) and what they did to make me remember them. So this post is dedicated to them and how they have helped to shape my thinking......thanks!

If you have a moment then have a think about the people that have been your great teachers....what did they do and how can you learn from that?