Listening to a podcast, I heard Fred Shoemaker describe a scene with Timothy Gallwey. Shoemaker was in a training led by Gallwey. And he remembers how Gallwey had told the participants that they were dangerous people.

Instead of becoming angry at what they had heard, the participants started to think about what Gallwey could have meant.

Hearing that story, I started to wonder when our society had become so interested in people using the right words or having the right language that would not hurt others. We have shifted to a preference for a politically correct language.

Maybe it’s because that training with Gallwey was quite a while ago that the reactions were different, and maybe it is also due to the learning environment. However, I wonder what we’ve lost by leaving that question aside: “What did he mean?”

Interestingly, what Gallwey meant when he described the golf pros as dangerous people was that most of them would start to train their pupils assuming that they know what is right and what the pupils have to learn from them. Gallwey assumed that there is no one right way and that much of the learning can only be done by the pupils themselves without having the possibility to access a blueprint of that learning.

Just like toddlers have to learn to walk on their own, a golf player can only develop awareness of the club face during the swing on his own despite all the support he may receive.

This idea goes far beyond golf or physical movements.

What awareness do you have of the impact of our questions or instructions on others? How do you know if others captured what you meant? How can you develop it further?