After some feedback from my last blog post, I decided to share some of the original transcript, with edits of course. In case you missed it, I did an interview in 2020 with a Master’s student. Their study was meant to explore how coaches understand and use teachable moments in their approaches to coaching.

As a life-long educator, and learner, I continually strive to be in, and create, learning environments. I am thankful for those people in my life you make me

Better.

Every.

Day.

Q: How would you define a teachable moment?

A: A teachable moment is a moment in time. It’s a very small window where you can have a lasting impact on an individual or a group.

Q: What kind of qualities would you associate with this moment in time, or this window of opportunity?

A: Growth. There is a very fine moment where you can point something out, help someone identify what is happening, and they connect with it to some degree – emotionally, spiritually, mentally, or physically. And then you help them recognize what it is, and from that moment, they are never the same. They never go back to what they were.

Q: With teachable moments, you talked about how it should involve recognizing or identifying, and being able to point them out, is it something that you can implement or more random and you just need to recognize those random occurrences?

A: I think it is both. Being able to pick up on them is really important, because those are probably the best ones, but I think you can set up teachable moments. I think you can create an environment where… You will create these instantaneous “Aha” moments for people. Actually, “aha” is a really good description of a teachable moment. For example, you can create a small group discussion and ask: “What do we need to improve in terms of this or that” and so conversations begin and, suddenly, someone says “Oh that’s a really good idea” and then they feed off those moments. You can create it, but you also need to be aware of when it is happening and then identify it.

Q: With the teachable moments you’ve had in your experience, how do you know it’s a teachable moment?

A: Oh, it’s in my gut. It’s a gut feel. Like knowing in your gut why you’re making a decision. I just know when it’s happening because I’ve just seen it so many times. People talk about flow, or being in the zone, sometimes I can feel it at a cellular level. You know something magical has just happened, and you’re fortunate enough to be there, and to identify it. And that is when you know you’ve got a pretty special moment, and you’ve built something that is really, really special. And sometimes, they will identify it too. But we work, we try to work a lot more on self-awareness. I ask a lot of questions with the team, at practice, in our group meetings. When you’re answering questions, you’re reflecting, you’re self-reflecting, which I don’t think a lot of young people do. When you start to self-reflect, you start to become self-aware. And then when you’re self-aware, that is when you can recognize what changes are needed and then you make a choice to make the change or not. I try to get them to think, to reflect. And with that, I think these moments, I think they might start to be able to recognize them themselves.

Q: What do you think of choice and teachable moments? 

A: Well, you need to make a choice, whether or not you are going to see this teachable moment, whether or not you want to use it as a teachable moment. You’re teaching someone in the moment, they need to be willing to learn. And if they’re not open to it, they won’t change. I think that is a bit of a choice, isn’t it? That’s why I think timing is really, really important.

Interested to hear your thoughts on teachable moments. What will your moment be today?