The Benefits of Slow and Steady in Work and Life
Patience was never really my strong suit. I am pretty sure not being patient got my hired on multiple occasions, or at least declaring such as my weakness in job interviews did. Let’s face it, very few organizations want somebody who describes herself as “patient” responsible for growth. And the same goes for the lead strategist. Instead, there is a preference for quick thinkers and fast talkers who can dazzle with speedy synthesis and a bevy of potential solutions that can be applied today (“Let’s get started!”). Experience has taught me the hard way this is a mistake.
Being impatient frequently means not thinking enough about the actions one plans to take. We often mistake “doing something” (anything!) with being proactive and/or taking one’s job seriously. There is not enough time, or so we think, to consider both the benefits and drawbacks of our actions. The sociologist, Robert Merton, talked about manifest and latent consequences back in 1949, and this idea is worthy of consideration today. For simplicity’s sake, his belief was there are “unintended consequences” associated with any action.
Watch a child with dyslexia try to learn to read when the most efficacious method for teaching literacy is not what most are taught in school. Instead, the prevailing method for teaching reading focuses on whole words with a picture or two thrown in to help the child make connections between the word and what it means. Most children, even those without learning disabilities, struggle with this approach by the way.
If you’re a parent with a bias toward action and your kid struggles to read, you might make more time at night for your child to do his reading homework, use school dropoff to point out signs on the drive in, spend time on weekends at the library, buy a subscription to ABC Mouse.com, and the like. But will your child learn to read? And if not, what might be the unintended consequences of all of this work that doesn’t work for your child?
It is pretty likely that none of the above actions will teach a kiddo with dyslexia to read even though it might feel good, as a parent, to take action. Instead, your kid may end up feeling pretty darn frustrated, they might equate a lack of learning with a defect in themself, or even shut down to the learning process altogether. These are pretty devastating unintended consequences: many of which I know personally from my experiences as a parent.
So what does work? People who know how to teach literacy talk a lot about phonemes, essentially the distinct sounds that can be found by taking words apart. To learn to read, one must first learn phonemes, then the rules of the English language, and finally their exceptions. This is slow and steady work that requires patience and skilled and empathetic educators. Reading does not happen overnight even after a strategy has been identified.
It took time for me to recognize all of the actions we were taking—and putting our child through—were not moving him forward. How did we finally get there? Ironically, through research, which helped us to:
Find experts with the skill and training to uncover his learning disabilities.
Select the appropriate assessements that could yield a proper diagnosis.
Identify the right people to apply the “research findings” who would:
Listen to our thoughts
Set realistic expectations
Provide clear guidance
Help to chart a plan
Be flexible in adapting the plan based on real-world experience with our kiddo
Today, slow and steady is winning the literacy race. And this learning is being applied to other areas of our life and work too.
Slow and steady is seeing progress when it is tiny, and taking the time to reassess a plan when it does not seem to move one closer to a goal. It is slowing down enough to ask important questions about possible unintended consequences, and welcoming feedback from naysayers whose experiences may not jibe with the plan. It is breathing into action, and allowing oneself the grace and space to do so.
