I’ve been learning to play disc golf this year. It’s a great way to get outside and move around. I also like anything where you can keep score and measure results and improvement.
I had an interesting decision to make when my brother joined me for a game.
A few things to know:
- I’m very new to the game. I’m two months and maybe 5-6 rounds into the sport.
- I’m not very good. On a scale of 1 to 10, I’m maybe a 3. That might be generous.
- My brother is a natural athlete.
My struggle was regarding my obligation to teach or advise my brother.
Although I was the more experienced player, should I be offering any tips?
What if, due to his natural athleticism, my brother would be a 4/10 without any input from me?
Would my advice, while coming from a good place, technically make him worse?
I’ll share what I did in a moment, but after some reflection, here are my takeaways:
- Helping others learn something feels good. Being a teacher is rewarding.
- We are wired to overestimate our competence.
- There is a difference between “knowing more than someone” and “being qualified to teach them.”
The third bullet is the tough one, especially considering the pull of the first two.
Here’s where I landed:
- As a teacher, I need to be at least two levels of competence above the student to be worthy of teaching them.
- If I’m unsure about whether or not I am a worthy teacher, the answer is no.
- The measure of a potential student’s competence should be based on an observed result, not an assumed one.
- If you don’t meet the criteria of a worthy teacher, but someone asks for your advice, repeat the advice of someone even more experienced than you. Resist the urge to offer your take. Better yet, use technology to ensure the clarity of the message.
- Even when our intentions are good, we may taint an expert’s message through our inexperience and incompetence.
- If you must give advice, heavily discount it.
- “I’m still learning myself, and this might be wrong, but here is what I am doing/trying” is a much better way to share tips than an overconfident, “This is how I do it.”
I resisted the urge to teach, only offering verbatim tips I had learned from others far more experienced than me.
(We tied.)
Iterations 