Performance = Potential – Interference (Gallwey); Trust = Risk + Support (Covey).
‘Vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation’. If you’ve ever taught or learnt a foreign language, these words will sound very familiar to you. We could think of them as technical dimensions. They have an almost objective feel. The students I worked with in the Philippines last week have been taught well in English yet some still lacked confidence to use it. They were, at first, also unsure about how to navigate conversations with a person from the UK. We could call these psychological and cultural dimensions. Some were so preoccupied with doing it right that they struggled to do it at all.
We opened the workshops by inviting the students to experiment with some simple ground rules: 1. Be willing to try. 2. It’s OK to make mistakes. 3. Support each other. 4. Any question is OK. Next, we introduced (playfully) that I would present a medal to every person who would come forward and speak at the front for the first time. I would not correct their English. I would simply reward their courage to do it. By the end of the first workshop, every student left proudly wearing a medal. By the end of the third workshop, every student took part enthusiastically in open group conversation.
Taking a leaf from Timothy Gallwey’s research, we engaged the students in distractor topics (e.g. ‘Skin whitening in Asia’). The idea was to choose themes that the students would find interesting, provocative and meaningful. By focusing on the topic rather than on the language itself, the students became less self-conscious about their English and actually more fluent. In Gallwey’s terms, too much attention to performance can become an interference to performance. An overall approach? Open, relational warmth and positive reinforcement throughout: ‘What did well; Even better if.’
Now – a question: what are the lessons here for leadership, mentoring and coaching?
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