Learning vs. Knowing

It me

I'll let you in on a secret: I may be an expert in adult learning, but the truth is, learning is hard for me. Don't get me wrong, I value learning tremendously. It is one of my top 5 most important core values. But that doesn't mean it is easy, fun, or comfortable. For me, learning is almost always uncomfortable.

When I'm really struggling with the discomfort of being a beginner, it is often because I have confused LEARNING with KNOWING.

Knowing feels good. Knowing is steady, confident, informed. Learning, on the other hand, is vulnerable. Learning is stretching, iterative, messy. Knowing is what happens after you have already arrived, and learning is what happens in the midst of getting there, before you know how it is all going to work out.

I am definitely in a learning zone these days. I am pursuing certification in my coaching skill set, while at the same time establishing myself in a new industry and with new clients. After 20+ years of working in an in-house, salaried role, I am now doing fractional leadership development work as a consultant with multiple organizations. The work is fun, interesting, and challenging, but adding value as a contractor is different than adding value as a full-time employee. At the same time, I am growing my coaching practice. This is some of the most meaningful work I've done in my career, but the process of becoming "consciously skilled" is not what I'd call smooth. I have a lot to learn, in every direction.

Which is why you might cast a suspicious glance my way when I tell you I have chosen this moment to begin a new hobby: pottery. Working with clay, specifically working on the wheel, is something I've always been interested in but haven't tried since my middle school ceramics class with Mrs. Frost. I am forty-mumble years old, and middle school ceramics was a loooong time ago. Why pick up yet another challenge at a moment one could argue I'm already overextended?

Here's why. Because it feels great to get out of my head and do learning work with my hands. Because working with clay is somehow helping me learn more about fractional HR and coaching and contractor work and running a solopreneur business. Because metaphorically, throwing pots is a hugely helpful way to think about how to learn. Because maybe, if you're nice to me, I'll make you a coffee mug some day.

In my first week in clay class, I learned you have to center your clay.

Centering is how you get the clay firmly stuck to the wheel, and organized into a symmetrical, evenly distributed shape that you can work with. Centering requires core strength, which surprised me. Your core anchors you and provides stability in an ever-changing environment: the spinning wheel. Without a steady core, the shapes you end up with are unbalanced, haphazard, and weak.

As I was learning to center the clay, I was thinking about designing the alliance in coaching. Designing the alliance is an early, intentional conversation that sets up the coaching relationship as a safe and courageous place for the client to grow. The designed alliance is what gives stability and structure to your coaching relationship, because it ask both coach and client to make agreements about how to show up. If the purpose of the coaching relationship is growth, then the designed alliance is the soil from which the seeds take root.

Feeling uncentered clay spin and wobble in my hands was the best lesson I've had so far about designing an effective alliance with a client. What had felt like a checklist-type first session task when I first learned about it took on new meaning as I felt the limitations on the kind of pot I could pull from an uncentered lump of clay. I could feel the instability, the top-heaviness, the lack of structure.

Here's how you center clay: while the wheel is spinning, you pull it into a cone shape, then flatten, then pull up into a cone, then flatten...In other words, you test it. Does the clay feel stable if I work with it from here? What about here? If I put pressure on it this way (cone up) or this way (flatten), what happens? You don't start until you can feel that the clay is structurally ready. In coaching, a truly strong designed alliance takes a similarly intentional shaping. You have to test it. You make agreements, notice how your agreements are working, and then revisit, making them more specific, more supportive, more clear. Cone up, cone down.

The thing that is magical about coaching is the coaching relationship. These relationships are powerful tools of accountability, creativity, and support. It is up to both coach and client to shape that relationship into something that brings the most value to the client. It is empowering to be part of creating such a dynamic and joyful purpose with another person. This is something I know in my head. Wheel work has helped me take the brain-knowing and turn it into body learning. The shape of the pot emerges from the centered clay. It feels vulnerable and creative. Knowing thinks this, and learning feels it.

That's the thing about learning. Learning requires my body intelligence, not just brain intelligence. Whenever I am stuck in my head, I'm not learning well. I might be criticizing myself, or overthinking, or following steps like an instruction manual. I need to remember to feel it, to be messy, to play. If you see me, remind me.