Attention, Class!!! 16 Ways to Be a Smarter Teacher

9. Repeat the important points.

If you want your employees to remember that new mission statement or market strategy, you need to give it to them more than once. "The first time you say something, it's heard," says William H. Rastetter, who taught at MIT and Harvard before becoming CEO of Idec Pharmaceuticals Corp. "The second time, it's recognized, and the third time, it's learned."

The challenge, then, is to be consistent without becoming predictable or boring. The best teachers keep it fresh by finding new ways to express the same points. For Craig E. Weatherup, chairman and CEO of the Pepsi Bottling Group, the message that he is constantly pushing is that bottled water -- not cola -- represents the biggest future growth potential for the company. The 25-member operating council has heard him expound on this strategy repeatedly -- but he hasn't repeated himself too much. "You have to cheat a little bit and disguise the themes so that people think, 'I haven't heard this before,' " he says. "I always try to find a new slant on the water category, but the underlying message doesn't change: It's important to the success of this company."

9. Repeat the important points.

10. Good teachers ask good questions.

Effective teachers understand that learning is about exploring the unknown and that such exploration begins with questions. Not questions that are simply lectures in disguise. Not yes-or-no questions that don't spark lively discussion. But questions that open a door to deeper understanding, such as, "How does that work?" and "What does that mean?" And GM's Grates's personal favorite, "Why?" "If you want to get to the heart of something, ask why five times," he says.

David Garvin, who teaches at Harvard Business School, interviewed a number of teaching executives for his book Learning in Action: A Guide to Putting the Learning Organization to Work (Harvard Business School Press, 2000). He found that one way they teach sound decision making is by playing devil's advocate. Teaching executives ask colleagues, "What if we did the opposite of what you're suggesting?" The idea is not to undermine a decision but to bolster it through a thorough examination of the options -- even the outlandish ones. "Although you get promoted by having the right answer," he says, "it's more important to ask the right questions as you climb higher."

11. You're not passing out information.

You're teaching people how to think. The last thing you want to do is stand up and tell people what to do. Or give them the answers that you want to hear. The best instructors are less interested in the answers than in the thinking behind them. What leaders have to offer is a "teachable point of view," says Noel Tichy, a professor at the University of Michigan Business School and author of The Leadership Engine: How Winning Companies Build Leaders at Every Level (HarperBusiness, 1997). It's how they look at the world, interpret information, and think through problems. The best teaching leaders help people learn how to think on their own rather than telling them what to think.

"You want a forceful group of people who know what you want but at the same time feel free enough to make the day-to-day judgments themselves," says Gene Roberts, a longtime editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Times who now teaches journalism at the University of Maryland at College Park. (During his 18 years at the Inquirer, the paper won 17 Pulitzer Prizes.) "You have to know when to let go so that people don't become dependent on you. In the newspaper business, speed is everything, and if you have people waiting to hear what you have to say before they will react, you'll get beat."

12. Stop talking -- and start listening.

When it comes to teaching, what you do is nearly as important as what you say. After all, your students are watching you. One way to show that you care about them and that you're interested in them is by listening. Effective learning is a two-way street: It's a dialogue, not a monologue. After asking a question, bad teachers fill in the silence rather than wait for a response. Instead, says Muir, the training manager at SC Johnson, try this: Wait 10 seconds. "If you want to be a good teacher, you need to get comfortable with silence," he says. It's in those quiet, perhaps awkward, moments that some of the most productive thinking occurs. Don't interrupt it.