These 3 Words Are a Sign You’re Talking to a Master Teacher

You can read this two different ways. Firstly, you can take the perspective of the student auditing your teacher. Second, you might be a teacher and this man serves as an audit of your work. 

The power dynamics of the teacher student relationship are ripe for an unfortunate reality:

• Teachers aren’t incentivized for humility. 

• Student ignorance supports teachers who overreact with their knowledge. 

Ultimately, the three words you’ll only hear from a teacher who is on the path to true mastery is “I don’t know.”

Lacking humility is the trait of an amateur learner. 

If you’re a student of something… anything… I’d hope that you’d hear these three words from your instructor at times. Sure, they should have answers to many things in their domain but if you haven’t heard them admit some lack of knowledge and curiosity to find it, you’re probably dealing with someone whose lack of humility is blunting their expertise. 

If you’re a teacher and these three words never come out of your mouth, you’ve likely fallen into the trap of a defensive position. You’ve become entrenched in your current knowledge-base and must defend the value of that knowledge. If when confronted with a question that lands outside of your scope of knowledge and you can admit that fact, you can only get better!

The more you learn, the more you realize how much you don’t know.