You Can Lead a Horse to Water and Make it Drink

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can i see why i show events

who of you have heard the saying

you can lead a horse to water

but you can’t make a drink

all right quite a few of you

this is a proverb that was first

introduced to us by a gentleman by the

name of john heywood

back in

1175

one or two years before i was born

and effectively what this proverb means

is that you can give somebody as many

opportunities as you want

but unless they actually

accept the opportunity and want to make

use of the opportunity

your actions are and attempts are

fruitless

it’s useless

now as trainer and a coach

we very often

in the training and skills development

industry joked

about the saying

and we’ve said that

you can lead somebody to knowledge

but you can’t make them think

you know as a speaker

as an author

as a trainer and a coach i very often

need to use graphics

to

help me get my message across

so i looked at a number of these

software packages

powerpoint

canva

coral draw all of these and the one that

stood out for me

was adobe photoshop

it seemed easy enough

so

i got the package for myself and i

dabbled around with it a little bit

and then i realized

maybe i’m a little bit technologically

challenged so i need to get some help

so i enrolled in a course for photoshop

it’s an amazing course very interesting

we took our laptops along

and we

did practical exercises we were shown

how to create new layers how to

manipulate pictures

and change colors of things

i mean i was at a point where they

nearly taught me how to remove the bags

under my eyes from my photographs

and then

i left

and i used it once or twice

the end result

is that i still suck at photoshop

every time i need to do something or i

need to create a graphic

then

i get to a point where i know things

have to be done and i know it should be

able to be done but i can’t quite

remember how and then i’ve got to shout

and get somebody to come and help me and

it’s very frustrating for that person

and it’s very frustrating for me not

being able to learn

and the biggest problem is that

i didn’t practice the skill enough

so this brings me back to the horse

i want to say to you tonight that you

can lead a horse to water

and you can make a drink

all you need to do is feed it enough

salt

now you may ask

what does a horse and salt

and water

have to do

with us and life in the new normal

and leadership for that matter

glad you asked the question

let me explain

we live in

disruptive times

yeah it’s this covert 19 pandemic that

we’ve experienced

artificial intelligence

you know things like global warming all

kinds of crises that we face on a

regular basis

and it affects the performance of our

teams

because our teams and our team members

get to the point

where

they are feeling despondent they are

feeling threatened yeah i’m gonna lose

my job to a robot

we

went through this pandemic now all of a

sudden everybody has to work from home

and your role as a leader is primarily

to make sure

that your team is properly skilled that

they have the necessary skills to carry

them into the future and to be

high performing teams

now we use a lot of cliches

and

all these fancy terms when it comes to

leadership and teams and the performance

of teams

the problem that i find is that leaders

today do not want to invest the time and

the effort in their people we want a

quick tricks

send them on a photoshop course for a

half day let them learn how to do a

couple of things and there we go they

all sorted out

it doesn’t work that way

you need to

apply

more salt

now as you would have realized by now i

like pictures i like graphics i like

analogies i also like acronyms so i

thought it a good idea to take the word

salt and turn it into an acronym

and the s insult for me

is the first part of where you are

teaching your people

show and tell

that’s the knowledge component this is

teaching them how to do it showing them

demonstrating it coaching them

but they’re not necessarily going to

learn anything from it

just by giving somebody or by telling

somebody something doesn’t mean

that

they

will

learn it

i once

saw a

comic strip

we all know charlie brown

where

linus was saying to charlie brown he

taught peanuts how to do a trick

and

charlie brown says to him

so

i don’t see him doing the trick he says

i taught him the trick didn’t say he can

do it

the problem is that we expect people to

just do something every time we tell

them i mean i take my children for

instance you’ve got to

over and over and over tell them

something before they accept it

so just giving somebody knowledge or

just explaining somebody something or

showing something to a person is not

going to help

you need to let them try it out

they need to apply that skill

so if you’re teaching your child to

tired shoes

you got to let them actually try and tie

their shoes

because there’s no point in explaining

it to them

because what goes from here and

eventually comes out here doesn’t

necessarily work that way

so it’s important they have to apply and

try it

and practice the skill

but if i take you back

to my photoshop example

then you will find that trying it once

or twice or applying it

is not necessarily

going to guarantee that you know the

skill

you are going to have to try it over

and over

and over

yes and over

a number of times for a long time and

this is where leaders fall short we want

to teach them you want to try it once

and it looks like they can do it so off

you go and go and struggle on your own

we don’t want to invest the time it’s a

long term project

and the strange thing that happens is in

this

process where they are learning it by

experience and they are trying it over

and over all the time

they’re going to make mistakes

and you have to allow those mistakes

because i can guarantee you not one

person sitting here tonight

learn something

maybe one of you might have

but not

you wouldn’t have learned something the

first time when somebody’s just

explaining it to you you would have made

a mistake

i can remember as a child

learning to ride a bicycle

and i fell off

crying because i scraped my knees and my

elbows and my father looked at me and he

says to me

you won’t be able to ride a bicycle

until you’ve fallen off at least seven

times

am i thinking another six times of this

you have to learn through your mistakes

all of us learn through mistakes

any role that you fulfill whether it’s a

leadership role or any role you didn’t

wake up one morning

and you suddenly

that was that i had it

i was now

a leader a teacher driver whatever

if you allow the people

to learn by experience to make the

mistakes

they will grow and they will learn that

skill

and then you will reach a point where

they can teach it forward

now teaching it forward comes from a

concept that benjamin franklin

introduced many years ago where he said

that if you want to understand

or you want to see if somebody has

learned something and understand

something

let them explain it to somebody else

because if they’re able to explain it to

somebody else it means that they have

learned the skill they know what it’s

about and that’s the thing

so you

are stressed out

in whatever function you are i mean most

of us no matter whether your parents or

school teacher whatever you are you own

a leadership role

and you are responsible for the learning

of others

but if you can get to a point

where they are able to teach it forward

you no longer

have to worry

about spending all the time training

them you have now duplicated yourself in

other people to train

the next generation

just add a bit of science to it

oh before i do that

let’s use an example that’s what i

wanted to do

you

are now the proud owner of a coffee shop

and

you have employed a number of baristas

and

you need to teach them how to make

coffee so if i use this sole technique

that i’m trying to

convince you to

apply

you’re going to show them how to make

the coffee you’re going to

teach them all the skills you’re going

to

about the temperature of the water how

much coffee to put in

all of these things how to serve

the whole process that makes it easy for

them to do their job

but they might not be able to grasp

how to do it from just explaining and

showing it to them so you’re gonna let

them make a cup of coffee or two

you might not want to serve it to your

customers

but at least they’ll be able to know how

to make a cup of coffee

if you now allow them to on a regular

basis practice and make coffee over and

over they are going to start getting

better at it

you can do it under supervision you can

do it in a controlled environment

without exposing them to your customers

but they are going to learn

and what will happen

is that

through making mistakes

which they will make

they will learn and gain the experience

but in the process by allowing them to

make the mistakes they will realize that

it’s not the end of the world

and it will free them up to be more

creative

and you’ll be surprised and find that

they might even

start finding new ways and different

ways and better ways of making the

coffee and creating a better service

environment for your clients and your

customers

i had a large client once that

was in

the warehousing industry and when they

introduced new people they worked

against the clock and they had deadlines

to meet when it came to getting the

containers packed and ready for shipping

so you couldn’t allow a new person that

was slow because

it would slow up the whole process so

what they would do is the first two

hours of the day they would allow half

of the people that worked on the shift

would be new people

and they knew they’d be slow but by 10

o’clock at t time they would remove them

and then they’d put the regular people

on so that they could catch up and meet

their target at the end of the day and

what they found is the more they did

this after two or three weeks these

people were working full shifts at the

full speed but that’s because you

allowed them in a controlled and a safe

environment to learn that skill and to

get better so that’s the concept of the

soul

as i said let’s add some science to this

i didn’t do science at school i did

accounting so i’m not going to claim to

be a scientist or know anything but

basically

our brain is made up of a whole bunch of

nerves

actually a lot more than a whole bunch

and

it sends electrical pulses back and

forth between the brain and the rest of

the parts of the body that tells the

brain what’s happening in this and what

happens

in these

nerve endings or nerves in the brain

called axons is that

the more

you do something the more you repeat an

action

the faster these electrical pulses start

moving

and eventually

it becomes part of your subconscious

that you do it automatically

years ago

i attended a course

and

they were trying to explain about how to

create habits it was actually more about

positive attitude and they explained

that if you take your horse

and you put it in a corrode in those

round wooden things that the horse on

the farm walks round and round and the

horse moves continuously in a clockwise

direction

you can turn that horse around in the

other direction it’s automatically going

to turn round and go clockwise again no

matter how many times you turn it this

way you’re going to have to forcibly

lead it in the opposite direction

for at least 30 days

and if you then leave it it will

automatically walk in the anti-clockwise

direction and if you turn it back

clockwise it’s going to turn

anti-clockwise and the same applies to

anything that we’re teaching people it

has to be done over and over and over

again

so if i take

this concept of salt

what i’m saying to you if you want to

train people no matter what environment

you’re in and you want people to learn a

skill and to make sure that they know

and that they are safe with applying

that skill

give them the knowledge

allow them to practice it over and over

again

until they gain enough experience

that it practically becomes automatic

and you will then achieve your goal that

you want and have your high performing

teams or your successful groups

whatever it is that you are trying to

achieve

another story about salt that i thought

i’d add

salt is a very interesting

product

it’s one of the cheapest products in the

world

and it’s the one product that almost

never gets advertised

and it’s used everywhere it’s mentioned

everywhere even in the bible

it talks about salt

now my cousin

had owned a hotel

in south africa on the west coast of the

western cape a little town called

paternoster if any of you know about it

he since retired and handed over to his

son but in the area the locals there

have a delicacy

we call it the delicacy

it is salted dried fish

it’s called bokums

if you ever go down to the western cape

you ask for bocoms it looks similar the

fish is similar to a trout and it gets

placed into an extremely salty brine

mixture for a couple of weeks and then

it gets taken out and hung in bunches in

the sun to dry and when it’s dry it’s

like a fish jerky

or as

we say in this part of the world fish

biltong

but it’s incredibly salty so what my

cousin used to do

is he owned this hotel so in the door of

the pub walking into the pub he used to

hang one or two of these bunches of

bokus

in the door

and everybody that used to come in used

to say

ah

those are these he said no no help

yourself it’s free go for it and they

used to take the bokums and peel them

and certainly eating the bokums what

they didn’t realize is that the more

they ate the thirstier they got because

of the intense saltiness

and the thirstier they got the more beer

they drank

and he was happy

he had achieved his goal

so to get back to my original statement

you can lead a horse to water

and you can

make a drink

all you need to do is feed it enough

salt and will drink by itself

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