As The Saying Goes

Is it really true, that old adage: "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach"?

Deep in thought this morning at my desk I was reevaluating my current work/life balance and wondering if, in fact this was true.

As an instructor, I cared very much that the content provided to my students was meaningful, timely and valuable. I tried to relate it with the real world and give as much opportunity for group discussion as could be allotted to our tight course timeline.

I facilitated many successful sales, telesales and customer relationship management courses over my many years of instructing. I read many books, listened to audio tapes and knew what to do in any given situation.

What I couldn't do was put everything I knew, had learned and successfully instructed, into practice. I was not a very good sales person, but I knew what made a good salesperson great and could share that information with others.

Many of the individuals in my training sessions have had very successful careers in sales and I've had many of them remain in contact with me. I received an email not long ago from someone in one of those sessions thanking me for the time I took to share my knowledge, my pain, my ideas, feedback and wisdom and for being frank when I told her at the end of the three days that she really wasn't cut out for sales and strongly suggested she think about other career opportunities. She (like me) knew what had to be done but just couldn't do it…so guess what?

She is now teaching sales management for a large multinational – taking many of the same approaches I did with her and mentoring new sales professionals in her company.

We talked for an hour about how we could take all those great exercises we did in class and translate them to an E-Learning environment, and it's got me thinking about it more and more…

Maybe, just maybe, that saying really is true. I can't so I'll help someone else do.