What is happening? And why is it happening to me?
Those two questions hit me on the morning of day two.
Day one had been fine. Normal, even. Until 5:30pm, when a participant, I’ll call him Nick, cornered me after class.
Nick wasn’t happy. He’d been in the industry a long time, had his own way of doing things, and the content I was delivering didn’t line up with what he believed. So he told me I was full of it. Only with two letters added to the front.
I’ve dealt with pushback before. Honestly, a class full of nodding heads makes me nervous. That usually means people are coasting, not buying in.
But I didn’t handle Nick’s friction well.
Real engagement has friction. That’s the difference between training and facilitating.
Instead of getting curious, I got defensive. Instead of asking him to tell me more, I dug in. Two red faces, slightly raised voices, and a lot of wasted energy later, nothing was resolved. And I’d given the entire class a front row seat to a preview of me losing my composure. Fortunately, this interaction occurred after training had ended for the day.
A mentor of mine once told me there’s no such thing as a bad class or a bad participant. Every class and attendee takes on the identity you assign them.
I had assigned Nick the troublemaker identity before he earned it. I stopped calling on him. I challenged him when he spoke. And the class felt every bit of it.
That’s what was happening. And it was happening because of me.
I walked away knowing something I hadn’t fully understood before: the moment I feel the urge to win in the training room is the exact moment I need to get curious instead.
The best trainers aren’t the ones who never get challenged. They’re the ones who stay curious when they do.
Am I here to be right, or am I here to be useful?
I ask myself that question before every training now. Not because I always get it right, but because I got it very wrong (more than once). And a room full of people watched it happen.
If you facilitate, lead, or coach others, it’s worth asking yourself the same thing.
This moment is one of the reasons I wrote I Don’t Know, What Do You Think? The whole book is built around what happens when a leader stops trying to win and starts trying to listen.
Grab the free Lead Like Jim Checklist at the link below. Four leadership habits you can start this week.
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Want more like this? Start with Chapter One of my book.
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