Having Everything Polished Together vs. Showing Awkwardness When Teaching
Cathy: Have you ever wondered if it’s important to have everything polished in together or if it’s okay to show some awkwardness when you’re teaching? What’s better and when does it serve? This is Reid Mihalko from http://ReidAboutSex.com/
Reid: This is Cathy Vartuli from http://TheIntimacyDojo.com/. And if you’ve seen any of our videos or maybe even if this is the first one, I’m sure we’re role modeling that you don’t have to have anything perfect and people might still like it.
Cathy: So, we just role model, we were doing a video on how to do Facebook live streaming with two different phones and it didn’t work. And we were learning as we were doing it and we still didn’t figured it all out.
Reid: Yeah. Technological difficulties — this was a video that were aimed at our sex educators, workshop facilitators, people who are in the sex positive entrepreneurial teacher realm. When I wear the green sex geek summer camp t-shirt- the green t-shirt, indicates usually this is business advice or something like that.
Cathy: Yeah. So, one of the reasons we do this is well, because we didn’t know what we’re doing but we didn’t polish…
Reid: We do exactly what we didn’t know what we’re doing.
Cathy: Exactly! A lot of people, if you see everything going really smoothly and polished all the time, when you run into difficulties, a person at home learning it, it can feel like you’re the only person that doesn’t have it going smoothly. And for a lot of people, a lot of people that I know in the sex geek community, sex-positive educators, they’re very heart based. They’re doing this because they care so much about the messaging and making a difference in the world. And some of them are not tech geniuses or I’m pretty smart technically but I still can run into problems. And if…
Reid: And that problem is Facebook.
Cathy: Yes. If you feel ashamed or feel like you’re stuck and you’re the only one that can shut things down and it can block people from actually seeing that, “Hey, I can be clumsy, I can be awkward and I can still make a difference.” So, we like to role model, “Hey, look at what we’re doing. There’s good information here most of the time and we stumble and fall and we’re figuring it out too.” So, one of the reasons we do that is to role model just like you might be role modeling to your clients, that it’s okay to be awkward, to stumble, to fall, to do something say something that’s really clunky that you have to clean up or to have it not go perfectly the right time. You’re role modeling what actually happens in human life as you go out and date or start interacting in a different way.
Reid: From a business perspective, for some of you and your brands, you may not want to be role modeling things can go wrong. If you’re a brain surgeon or a heart surgeon, maybe you don’t want to do that. Hey, just you know, pulling shit out of my ass while I’m poking around in your heart. Yes, there’s a reason why those people do not want to show themselves as fallible. And, Malcolm Gladwell and Tipping point talk about you know, doctors who get sued for malpractice, screw up in the same rate as doctors who don’t get sued but the doctors who don’t get sued spend more time connecting with, and leaving their clients, their patients feeling seen and heard. Where this all starts to make sense for me is if we’re working around, helping people be better human beings in their love relationships and in their interpersonal relationships, to attempt to role model perfection is in and of itself horrible advice to role model for people. So, here as business geeks, we can show, “Hey, we’re excited and we’re trying this thing in real time with you now as you’re watching.”, which is the gift of Facebook live or if we were trying something new, we could videotape it for YouTube like we’re doing here. And you get to come along for the ride and we’re normalizing that it’s okay to have stuff go, you know, horribly wrong.
Cathy: We didn’t actually succeed at getting Facebook live work for two phones but it got people excited and share the information.
Reid: We succeeded in sharing with new information about Facebook live where you know, we might be able to you know, do a Facebook live and it have somebody else’s Facebook live in and you talk to them in a separate little window in the Facebook live. I mean, that’s really exciting and super useful from a marketing and teaching perspective. So, we’re role modeling or teaching that there’s this new information that’s supposed to be possible and let’s try it while we do it and it might not go well. Teaching people that they can attempt new things and it might not go well and that the world’s not going to end and that we can still do this together and get through it, that’s really useful relationship advice. So again, you know, you have to pick and choose and figure out what’s a good congruent fit for your brand but for us as educators and relationship models and teachers, sometimes getting it wrong will help people more than you always getting it right.
Cathy: Yeah. So what I say is bring your shyness, your bigness, your awkwardness, whatever it is and role model that you can still do things because there’s so many people out there that are so scared and shy or big or awkward. And if we should prove to them by role modeling it that they can make a difference and they can have a life that they want to live, that is worth more than getting Facebook live going right the first time.
Reid: There you go! Hope that was useful. Pretty well, pretty well, I think.
Cathy: Yeah. Not too bad.