The Slingshot Principle

The other day, some of my students asked for worldly wisdom as it was the final class. However, we were running out of time and I didn't want to do them an injustice by saying something trite.

This is a fun time of year to be a professor. Students are about to graduate and go out into the real world. As they do, it can be tempting to act as if you know every answer at their job. But here's the thing.

No one expects you to know everything coming out of school. You are expected to have a basic skill set, but you are also expected to ask a lot of questions and to absorb as much as possible. The time to be an expert will come later.

But even with expertise, there are times when you should purposefully pull back and learn. Just like a slingshot must be pulled back to have enough tension to fire, sometimes we all need to take a step or back in order to learn something new or develop a skill, and, ultimately, propel ourselves forward. It is a lesson that I wish I had learned earlier in life, but that I have recently learned through my own career.

A Personal Example

When I came to the University of Houston, I wanted to build the best digital marketing program in the country. But I knew that at my current experience level, that would be very hard to do. I had a strong level of theoretical knowledge, but not nearly enough of the practical skills to make such a program possible.

So I looked around at who was the best in the industry and went to learn from them. We invited industry experts to help develop a curriculum, design assignments, secure projects. I had weekly meetings where I learned a lot more than I spoke, practiced assignments, and ultimately developed course work.

The first semester out of the gates was a bit too rough. We assigned labs to students that took 6-8 hours of work outside of class (not a good idea for teaching evaluations). We had a project that required students to work with a client, a budget, and a lot of pressure using skills that they hadn't ever used before. It was a lot of work for me and for the class. The overall sense from the class was that it was a very practical class but that the workload needed to be addressed.

So we took the feedback to heart and adjusted the workload. We also added new classes that followed the same model. Practical exercises that the students loved, but that weren't 6-8 hours long. At the end of this semester, one student told me that it was the most practical class she had taken at the university and that it was already impacting her career.

The Main Point

If I hadn't of taken a step back and seen where I would fall short in trying to accomplish my goal of creating a world-class digital marketing program and had an open mind about where my strengths and weaknesses are, I do not think I would be hearing such good feedback from my students. Deliberately pulling back and asking for help, learning more, practicing, and listening to feedback has helped me consistently improve the quality of the courses that I teach.

So, as you begin your career (or as you continue your own), always consider the slingshot and understand that deliberately slowing down, even pulling back, in the short term can exponentially increase your growth.