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Posts by Hana Yen:

How to Increase Member Engagement By Turning Experts Into Fearless Beginners

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Hana Yen Jun 23, 2016 3:00:00 PM
How to Increase Member Engagement By Turning Experts Into Fearless Beginners

 

Beginner’s Mind

What do all beginners have in common aside from the theme that they are novices? As intuitive as it may seem, beginners are often owners of beginner’s mind, a concept in Zen Buddhism called shoshin. Shoshin refers to an attitude of eagerness and openness towards and with no preconceptions of what is being studied. As such, beginners have a freedom and an ease to ask questions, decode what is unknown to them while evolving their clear slate of mind to absorb that which is new. Experts or even intermediate learners often lack this attitude imprisoned by what they think they know or what they think they should already know and, as a result, fail to ask the right questions--the ones that would stimulate deeper understanding or a new way of approaching the concept. Their rate of growth the moment they lose shoshin diminishes drastically, almost exponentially. But are these students also the best teachers?