My dojang at the university is naturally a revolving door simply due to the fact that people graduate and leave. By the same token though, there are always new students that arrive on campus each semester that begin their training with me. Sometimes these students are true beginners. Other times they have experience in other forms of martial arts or have Tang Soo Do experience themselves.
One such black belt student that began training with me this semester has a very open mind, and when I asked him to teach a form to a group of green belts, he immediately asked to see how I did the form so that he would be sure to teach it the same way! Now this was very polite of him to defer to the master instructor, but I declined to show him how I did the form. This was not because I was unwilling to show a student how I did things. Instead, I wanted him to stick to his guns and teach the form his way and express his honest self to the junior students.
As a low ranking instructor, or even a new person at our workplaces, it can be very easy for us as individuals to deal with Imposter Syndrome (You can read my article on Imposter Syndrome here) or feel like we need to choose our words and actions very carefully for the sake of conformity. Instead of worrying about how we are going to conform with others, we need to understand what our assignment is. We were hired by the companies that we work for to share our experience from our previous employer or experience from our training/upbringing. Likewise, as instructors we need to understand that we are put in front of the class to pass on what we learned to others even if there are variances. This may mean that the way that we do things is different, but we need to remember that there is still truth to what you are sharing.
In a world, where automation is on the rise, there is still a need for human decisions to be made. Those that have expertise in their fields are still needed to provide their input and ideas to help guide a project or assignment. What good are we in the workplace if we don’t share our ideas openly with the team that we work with? Likewise, what good are we as instructors if we robotically regurgitate what the Master Instructor says?
There are many different routes to arrive at the same destination. These routes, while different, can still be correct. There are times where an instructor will explain something slightly differently where suddenly the light bulb in the students’ heads will glow! At work, you may have a brainstorming idea or a way of doing things that might make improvements across the team. In either case, Stick to your guns and make your voice heard. You are qualified and your ideas can make a difference.
