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How to T-E-A-C-H Anything · The Daily Writer

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever thought of yourself as a teacher?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: On this episode, I not only want to help you see that you are a teacher, but also give you a simple formula that you can use to teach anything to anyone.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks so much for joining me on this episode of the Smart Business Writing Podcast.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Kent Sanders, and I'm a ghostwriter and professor of communications.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is the show that helps you write amazing content so you can save time, stand out from the competition, and get more leads that turn into customers or clients.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: When you think of the word teacher, you probably imagine a public school teacher in a classroom, or perhaps a college professor lecturing in front of a huge whiteboard, maybe even with one of those tweed jackets that has the really bad elbow patches or something like that.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: However, those aren't the only places where teachers are found.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Teachers are found everywhere, including right where you're sitting.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, this means you.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: You are a teacher.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before we get too far into this episode, let me set a little bit of context for this whole idea of teaching.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: There are three main things I believe about teaching.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, everyone has the privilege of teaching.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: We live in an amazing time and place where we can share our knowledge with the whole world.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think of all the amazing ways that we have to get our knowledge and our experience out to other people.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: We have social media, we can write books, we can self-publish books, which is really cool.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: We can obviously hop on Zoom or Skype.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we can send things through the mail like they used to do back in the old days.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many ways that we can get our knowledge and wisdom out to other people.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: We have the privilege of teaching here in 2020.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, everyone has the responsibility to teach.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that we owe it to people around us as well as to the next generation to share what we have learned so that they can have better lives.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then number three, everyone has the ability to teach.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, again, you may not lecture in a classroom setting or teach in front of a big crowd or work in a public school, but you as a human being, you have the ability to share your knowledge with other people.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you might agree with all of those things that I just said, and I hope that you do, but you might also be thinking, hey, Kent, I do have the knowledge that I want to share with others, but I don't know how to structure it or communicate it in a way that makes sense.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think of myself as you know a teacher in the sense of I don't know how to package my knowledge in a way that other people can consume it in a convenient or an understandable way.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've got you covered right here on this episode.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: I want to take a few moments uh here today to give you a simple template that you can use to teach anything to anyone.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And before I give you this template, I have to give a shout-out to my buddy Dan Hines.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Dan is a member of the Total Life Freedom Community, which is led by our mutual friend Vincent Puglisi.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And Dan is an awesome guy.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: He asked me a question a few weeks ago about content and content marketing that prompted me to think through well, how do you how do you teach something?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: What is what is a simple and easy template for doing this?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I just came up with this teach template.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've never heard this anywhere before, so as far as I know, it's original to me, but you know, things being what they are, uh, and me not being me not being a spring chicken anymore, maybe I have heard this somewhere and I just don't recall.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: So who knows?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't make any difference.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Feel free to take what I'm going to teach you on this episode and use it for yourself any way that you see fit.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, let's dive in.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is called the teach template, and it's called the teach template, number one, because we're teaching something and using it to instruct others and help them to learn.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also called the teach template because we use the letters T, E, A, C, H.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to go through a simple five-step process that we can use to teach anything to anyone.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And naturally, we're going to start with the letter T.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And T stands for take their attention.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when we talk about attention, we use phrases like pay attention or give me your attention.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that's the wrong way of looking at it.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: When we use language like pay attention or give attention, that puts the onus on the one giving their attention.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And in our distracted age, we can't assume that people are willing or even able to give us their attention.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that attention has to be taken, not given.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: As the teachers and as the instructors, we have to do something to take it away from them.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: We sometimes talk about grabbing people's attention, and that's exactly the same idea.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: We are the ones responsible for getting the learners or the listeners or the customers' attention, so we have to take it from them.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't mean take in like some sort of weird, violent sort of way.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this is all in love and kindness, of course.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, anytime that we're that we're teaching, that we're doing content marketing, that we're writing, that we're advertising or marketing anything, that should all be for the benefit of other people.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, mar all that marketing is is being enthusiastic about something, is being so enthusiastic about something that we want other people to know about it.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you write a book and you market it, that's a good thing because that means your book is going to entertain or educate or inspire other people.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you develop a product and you market it, you're doing that because you believe your product is going to help other people.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, a lot of writers feel they get very weird about marketing stuff.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a lot of people who want to write books, but they don't want to quote unquote mess with the marketing.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm like, hey, if you write something that that is great, why wouldn't you want to tell other people about it?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the best way to think about marketing is that we are doing people a favor.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: We are improving their lives whenever we make something of value and we market it to them.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's really all that marketing is.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's figuring out the best ways to share what we have created with other people.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's get back to this take their attention idea.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: How is it that we take someone's attention?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there are three simple ways that we can take people's attention when it comes to teaching.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: The first way is to tell a story.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Stories are awesome.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: We are literally wired to respond to stories.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: As human beings, we crave stories.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: We love stories.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: We spend hours every week listening and reading and watching stories.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: So tell a story to get people's attention.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, you can ask a question to take people's attention.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Every time I post a question on Facebook, well, not every single time, but most of the time, whenever I post a question of some type on Facebook, I almost always get a pretty decent response.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes several dozen people respond to it.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there are times when over a hundred people respond to it.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And why is that?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's because people love questions.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: A question draws people in, and we naturally can't stand to leave something unresolved.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we like to tie up those loose ends.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: So when someone asks a question, we want to resolve it and we want to answer that question.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: A question is basically the first part of a story, and the response completes that story loop.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, really, you can think of a question as the first part of a story, almost like an inciting incident in a story.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: When someone asks a question, they are basically throwing an inciting incident out there, and our response is going to finish that story.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's an interesting way of thinking about questions and stories.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: A question also can raise an issue or it can force us to reconsider something that we previously thought was true.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is why Jesus often asked questions in the Gospels.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: He knew that it gained people's attention.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus asked a lot of questions because he knew that it was going to cause people to think and it was going to raise an issue or bring his audience's awareness to something that he wanted to share with him.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we can tell a story, we can ask a question to take people's attention, and then finally, number three, we can share an unexpected truth or fact about something related to the lesson.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: For example, you can begin with, hey, did you know that uh 78% of men love eating at steak and shake?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I totally just made that up, and I don't even know if that's true.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I haven't even been to steak and shake in a long time, but I do love me some steak and shake, I gotta confess.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but you can share something that is gonna be a surprise or something that's unexpected for the audience.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: The basic idea here is you've got to shake things up when you when you're taking people's attention.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: You can't just start out by telling them something they already know or beginning in a way that they expect.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: So telling a story, asking a question, or sharing an unexpected truth or fact, those are great ways to take people's attention because they shake things up and do something they're not expecting, or they engage that person.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the letter T, take their attention here in the teach template.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: We always have to begin by taking people's attention.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's go on to the letter E, which is explain the main idea.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: After we have their attention, we've got to explain what it is that we want to share with them.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what I'm doing right now.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm explaining the idea of what the TEACH acronym means.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the key here when we're explaining things to people is to use simple, direct, and clear language.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: As writers, sometimes, I'm not pointing any fingers, maybe I'm pointing some fingers at myself more than anything else.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: As writers, it's tempting to make things more complicated or more flowery than they need to be.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: But remember that whenever we're teaching and communicating and writing, we're doing that to influence people and to persuade them or to inspire them or educate them.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: We're not doing it to impress people or show them how smart that we are.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, John Maxwell once said, educators take something simple and make it complicated, and communicators take something complicated and make it simple.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a lot of truth to that.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: So as we're explaining the our concepts to people, as we're teaching and instructing them, we've got to keep it simple, keep it clear, and keep it direct.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got T and A, take their attention, then explain the main idea, then I'm sorry, I said T and A, I meant T and E.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh take their attention and then explain the main explain the main idea.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Let's move on to the letter A, which is apply the main idea to their situation.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Once you have communicated the main idea, then you have to apply it.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: And there's all kinds of ways to apply something, but the the idea here is to help the listener understand how to use what they're learning in their everyday life, in their business, in their family, in their marriage, and so forth.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: As a college teacher, there are a lot of ways that I try to help students apply what they're learning.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: I like to use stories, illustrations, exercises, group discussion, writing assignments, case studies, debates, examples, video, audio, and multiple other ways to help students see how they can use the concepts I'm teaching them and apply those concepts to their life or to their leadership or to their ministry in some way.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, one of the standard assignments that I give students whenever they have reading due from their textbooks is something that is called a 3-2-1 paper.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is not original with me.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I stole this from my older brother, who's also an educator, and I'm pretty sure that he stole it from somebody else.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know where this came from originally, but uh but it's great, and so I I like to use it.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: So what a three-to-one paper is, is uh students do their reading, maybe it's a couple chapters in a textbook, and then they have to write a three-paragraph summary of the reading.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: They write two questions based on the reading or questions they have about the reading, and one paragraph of application, and that's just a simple what I call a three-two-one paper.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the reason that application is so incredibly important.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's because we live in a culture that consumes knowledge, but we don't always apply that knowledge.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, especially in the entrepreneur and in the writing communities, we love to listen to our podcast and we love to read tons of books.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, sometimes we like to brag about how many books that we've read, and you know, and I've I've done this as well, so it's not like I'm innocent of this, but you know, many times we like to almost seem like we're getting a leg up on other people because we've read more books or we've listened to more podcasts or we've been to more conferences or whatever, whatever it is.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the deal that knowledge doesn't actually help us unless we apply it.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't know about you, but I have oftentimes been extremely guilty of reading a bunch of stuff and you know, attending webinars and signing up for email newsletter lists and listening to podcasts and all that stuff.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I but I get overwhelmed and I don't stop and sometimes apply it.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna make a suggestion here, and this is gonna be totally contrary to to what I think many people would say.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: I would suggest that we stop reading and listening to so much stuff and we start applying what we do read and what we listen to.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason is because too much knowledge and content ends up confusing us, and we get paralyzed because we can't apply it all.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a real problem and or it's been a real problem in my life.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've gotten a lot better at it the last couple of years.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: But if that's a problem for you, I would encourage you to stop reading so much stuff.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Stop listening to so many podcasts.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if my podcast is adding to the noise in your life, hey, turn it off and and listen to something else.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's actually going to help you.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm here to help, but I have no illusions.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: I am one podcast among however many hundreds of thousands, I think it's up to over a million unique podcasts uh these days, and who knows how many actual millions upon millions of episodes.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: So um, if there's something that's adding to the noise and not helping you, then you need to shut it off and focus on the things that are helping you reach your goals.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is exactly the reason why in my college courses I have about half of the content that I used to, maybe even more like 35 or 40% than I did maybe six or seven or eight years ago.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: I hardly ever these days do lecturing or straight up teaching, like standing up and teaching in front of a whiteboard.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: I do now I do some of that, but it's not a lot.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: I do way, way less than I used to.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: I see my role these days as a teacher as someone who's not a just not a dispenser of knowledge, but a coach and a guide, and almost like a a shepherd that's taking the students through the material, not to be the person who's giving them all of the knowledge.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: We've got all the knowledge in the world out there on Google.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Students don't really, you know, our students and our learners and our listeners, they don't really need us to give them the knowledge.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: They need us to help them apply it.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why in my college courses I focus on using less material, but applying that material in a lot of different ways.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got T, take their attention, E, explain the main idea, A, apply the main idea to the learner's situation.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh the letter C is counter their objections.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now this might seem a little bit strange because in education circles, people don't really use language like this.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: We don't typically say things like counter their objections.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's language from the world of sales and marketing.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: But guess what?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Salespeople, if they're good, are masters of persuasion.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And what is communication?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: All communication is persuasion.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what other reason is there to communicate?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're always trying to persuade people of something, even it's even if it's just negotiating with our family about where to have dinner.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, this happened just today.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm recording this on uh Sunday evening, September the 13th, and just this afternoon, my family drove over to so I live in St.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Louis.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: We drove over to this this uh town called Chesterfield.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you may know where that's at, if you're familiar with the St.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Louis area.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And there's an area in Chesterfield where there's tons and tons of malls and restaurants.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's a tons and tons of stores and restaurants and so forth.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we couldn't decide where to have lunch.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: So each of us had a different idea about where we wanted to eat.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: I actually wanted to eat at the um it's at the restaurant called the Old Spaghetti Factory.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: They have a location there in Chesterfield.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think my son wanted something else, and my wife wanted something else.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I tried to use some techniques of persuasion to kind of make my case that we would all enjoy eating there.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that is where we actually end up ended up going, but the meal was not that great.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry to anybody who works at the old spaghetti factory.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um they actually have a limited menu, so they didn't have some of the dishes that that my son likes, so um, it was just okay.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's usually really good, but uh this time it just wasn't so great.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: So uh don't let that influence your future decisions to eat at the old spaghetti factory, by the way.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what I'm trying to say.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm trying to say is that all of us are using persuasion every single day in all of our interactions with people.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's really no other reason to communicate other than to try and persuade people or express our point of view.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Even if it's just expressing something bad that happened to us, we're we're trying to, you know, we do that because we want to be empathized with, we want to be heard and listened to by the other person.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I think all communication in some form is persuasion to some degree.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a lot of the teaching process is also about persuasion, and it's helping students to be open to new ideas and concepts.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the deal most of us don't like change.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us want things to say the same, and we're naturally resistant to new ideas because as human beings, we like things to be predictable.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, of course, we have objections.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem is that most teachers don't think through what their learners' objections are going to be, and they don't address those objections.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, this is a really key part of the learning process, whatever form that learning takes, whether you're writing or speaking or um presenting a lesson or doing a sermon of some kind or a podcast or whatever it is.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, let me see if I can read your mind right now.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, some of you who are listening, I bet you're thinking the following things.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a teacher, all this sounds too complicated, I'm not a salesperson, and I don't even know what you're talking about with the objections deal.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Kent, I think you're wrong about the persuasion part.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: I've never heard that before, and you know, all this persuasion stuff sounds kind of fishy and marketing and salesy.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: So those are some objections that some of you may have as you're listening to me teach about this.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: So let me take a second to address those.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I believe you are a teacher because you're human.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: And this teach process, T-E-A-C-H, this is actually quite simple.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you can do this.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: You're already teaching what you know.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you do any kind of writing or communication, you're already teaching people.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: So this isn't so much a matter of are you a teacher or are you not a teacher?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's really more a matter of, hey, is there is there a great way to structure and package what you're teaching so that people can understand it uh in perhaps a little bit more effective way?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I would also say, yes, you are absolutely a salesperson.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: You just haven't thought of yourself that way.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're always selling ideas and trying to persuade people.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: The art of living is the art of negotiation, whether you're negotiating with your coworkers, your kids, parents, neighbors, boss, husband or wife, and everybody else that you interact with.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: You are constantly selling your ideas and selling your point of view.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, all that social media consists of is people trying to persuade others of their point of view or bringing them into their orbit in some way.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, right now, I'm trying to persuade you, I'm trying to sell you on this idea that you are a salesperson.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, whether or not it's working, that's for you to decide.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that it's working, but I really am trying to persuade you of this teach process, this teach template, as well as just trying to help you see that you are a salesperson, you are in the in the business of persuasion and communication.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one more thing about countering people's objections, it requires us as teachers and communicators to put ourselves in the shoes of the learner or the listener.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's really important.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: This requires a high degree of empathy and also the ability to see their perspective and their point of view.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: But whenever they feel like you understand them and that you value their point of view, when they feel like you understand their pain and what their life is really like, that goes a long way toward people being more open to what you have to say.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: So as I'm creating this podcast a couple times a week, I'm always trying to think of okay, what is the listener going to think about whenever they hear what I'm talking about?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Are they going to be open to what I'm saying?
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I try to be cognizant, I try to be aware of what you're thinking and feeling and experiencing as I do my show, and I try to just have an awareness of that so that I can understand what it's like to be in your shoes, and so that I can counter some of those objections and roadblocks that we all have to new ideas and new things.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so we've got the letter T, take their attention, the letter E, explain the main idea, the letter A, apply the main idea to their situation, the letter C, counter their objections, and finally in this teach template, we have the letter H, which is help them take action.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this is an area where we as communicators and teachers uh sometimes miss the mark a little bit.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: We like to give content and we like to talk about ideas.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes people don't know what to do with that information.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to help them to take action on it.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that idea of helping them take action.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a great reminder that our job is to help them not just to dispense information or data.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: We are there to support and encourage our listeners and our audience or our students.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're there to support them as they grow and learn, no matter who they are, no matter if it's a podcast listener, no matter if it's college students, no matter if it's people in your congregation at church, no matter if it's uh potential clients or customers that you're marketing and advertising to, it doesn't make any difference.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Our role there is to support them in their journey.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And whatever it is that we're trying to deliver them or trying to persuade them of, that's got to be something that's going to help them, that's going to support them.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's somehow going to make them better in their life or their business.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: The most important principle here when it comes to taking action is to give the learner something to do.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: And in the education world, this is called active learning.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever the learner is doing something to actively put into practice what we have just taught them.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is exactly why in kindergarten they have the kids up and moving constantly.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow we forget that adults need that too.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: We forget sometimes that we've got to be up and moving, that people need to take a break, that people need to move their bodies and to stretch and to get up and move around.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we forget in the education world that people don't learn best whenever they're just sitting on their behinds for hours and hours on end.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, that's where a lot of people are stuck right now with online learning and Zoom courses, and especially with the public education system, having to, in many areas, transition to that model.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, everybody's doing their best to adjust to it.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact of the matter is that we don't learn best whenever we're just sitting there for hours and hours.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: We've got to do something.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: We've got to put, we've got to put our learning into practice in some way.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever I was in grad school at Lincoln Christian University in Lincoln, Illinois, this has been a number of years ago, of course, each one of our classes had an action step where we had to put the material into practice in some way.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was really a challenge sometimes, but it was also a great exercise because it forced us to actually do something with that material.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, sometimes it also opened your eyes to the fact that you just took a whole class that doesn't really apply to your real life.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it's almost like the the more the harder it was to come up with an action step for the class, the more you kind of realize, oh, maybe this isn't really highly relevant to my life right now.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that's like a whole nother story and a whole nother realization that sometimes we have as learners that we just went through this whole thing that maybe doesn't really apply all that much.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's take a step back and take a look at where we've been so far with the teach template as we begin to wrap up this episode.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is a little bit meta because as I've gone through this teach template, I've also actually used that template to create this episode.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let me explain what I mean.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: So at the beginning of this episode, I posed uh a simple question.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: The very first thing I said was, have you ever thought of yourself as a teacher?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: On this episode, I not only want to help you see that you are a teacher, but also give you a simple formula you can use to teach anything to anyone.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: That was my way of taking your attention to help you see, oh, there's a simple way to teach, and also the fact that you are a teacher.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I also, after that, I explained the main ideas, which is the T E A-C-H template and what each letter stands for.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: I applied that to different situations and scenarios as I went through it, and I also countered some of your objections.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the final thing here is how should you take action on it?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that depends on who you're teaching and what methods that you're using to teach and communicate.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: But here are some places that you can use this formula whenever you're communicating and teaching.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: You can use it in, and this is just gonna be a long list of things, blog posts, book chapters, podcast episodes, social media posts, speeches or talks, videos, lessons, sermons, devotions, and pretty much any other type of content that you're creating.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: So your action step, I'm gonna give you a little assignment because I'm a teacher and that's that's what I do.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Your action step is to choose one piece of content to create in the next 48 hours and to use the teach template to then communicate that content to other people.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's very, very simple.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: T-E-A-C-H.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Just go through what I've taught you here.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Don't overthink it, just use it and see how it goes.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: The big problem we have as writers, I think this is by far the number one problem that we have as writers, is that we overthink almost everything.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: We overthink it to death and we get paralyzed, we worry that we're not doing it correctly, and then we just get stalled out.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: So just give it a shot.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Use this template to try and communicate something to someone else in the next 48 hours, even if it's just a simple social media post.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: And let me know how it goes.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: I would honestly love to hear the results from this.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thank you so much for listening to this episode.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: I know this was a little bit of a long one, but I think this is really, really valuable stuff, and this can benefit you in a lot of different ways in your leadership and in your writing and in your communication.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: As always, remember that you can find lots more resources for writers at KentSanders.net.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember that your writing has the power to change people's lives.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you in the next episode.