Most of us need training because:
- We are unaware.
- We don’t do what we want, or know how, to do.
- We don’t practice.
We are not aware of how we come across. We have blind spots. Blind areas. Our education is incomplete. We have not read the great books on the subject of effective speech. We have not trained under masters of the art. We need to expand our awareness.
Even when we know what we should do, or want to do, we don’t do it. Doing it a new way is hard. It takes time. It feels weird. We experience a drop in our abilities before we see a rise.
We need a teacher, mentor, trainer, guru, or coach to keep a tab on us. We need that coach to give us the right tools—the right suggestions—convince us that his or her ideas are the right ones, and then attend to us, patiently, until we are able to make use of the optimal techniques he or she is offering.
We need greater awareness of ourselves and of the inherited traditions of highly effective speech, and we need a chance to practice those techniques under the watchful eye of a coach.
All top performers have coaches. They used to be called Dutch Uncles—guys you went to for advice. Now the uncles specialize in narrow little areas of life, and get paid for their knowledge and their ability to help you implement that knowledge.
You need Dutch Uncles and coaches because this stuff is important, it doesn’t come naturally, and it takes time and effort to make it real.