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
[Applause]
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