Diagnose Before You Prescribe - How To Help Struggling Clients Learn
Three steps to end the frustration of learning challenges
The trees kept falling over before maturing.
They were given great soil, enough water, and sunlight, yet they couldn't stand under their own weight.
Why? The answer was far from obvious.
This happened in the Biosphere 2 project—an enclosed environment created by scientists to study Earth's living systems.
When the biologists examined the fallen trees, they discovered why they were so weak. The trees lacked "stress wood." Without stress wood, a tree is not strong enough to support its weight. But why no stress wood? Stress wood develops in response to wind and there was no wind in Biosphere 2.
Scientists had diagnosed the root cause and could then address it. As we can see, finding the root cause of a problem is essential to solving it.
When it comes to helping our clients overcome learning challenges, we, too, must diagnose the root cause of their problems so we can address them.
If we don't, we might try one random action after another to help them, which wastes time and can be demoralizing. Imagine how hopeless you might feel if someone tries every trick in the book to help you and nothing works.
How, then, do we go about finding the root cause?
First, we make an assumption that there's something essential our client doesn't understand. Lack of talent or ability is not the culprit.
Second, we make it our goal to discover the client's misconception.
Third, we find a way to correct the misconception using explanations and exercises.
I'll show you two examples. One from my days as a tutor and another from my work with a coaching client.
It was the start of a new school year and Imran was struggling with a review assignment in Algebra. He kept getting the answers wrong when equations required the multiplication of negative and positive numbers. I tried showing him the two rules for how to handle this
A negative times a negative is a positive.
A negative times a positive is is negative
But somehow, it wasn't sticking.
What was the misconception?
I asked Imran if he knew what "negative" meant in Algebra. He didn't. So, I drew a number line on a piece of paper. I put zero in the middle and positive numbers 1 through 5 on the right, and negative numbers 1 through 5 on the left.
I said, "In math, negative means opposite. So the opposite of positive 2 is negative 2."
He nodded.
"So what is the opposite of positive 5?"
"Negative 5," he said.
"Right."
"Now here is the tricky part. What's the opposite of negative 3?"
He thought for a moment, "It's positive 3."
"Yes, exactly."
He seemed pleased. Then, I had him work through some problems that involved multiplying positive and negative numbers - the same type he got wrong earlier. He got them all right.
To help him, I discovered the misconception, corrected it, and gave him exercises to reinforce it. His own effort did the rest.
Now, a business example.
One of my clients struggled to convert on discovery calls.
I observed that he would describe the client's problems in a way that made them seem very difficult to solve. After discussing this with him, I learned he was trying to be honest. He didn't want to be like some marketers who falsely claim everything will be easy.
I helped him see that the way he was framing the facts made his prospect's goals seem hopeless. So I showed how he could frame challenges honestly and in ways that give people a sense that the challenge can be overcome ... with his expertise at the client's side. Once he grasped this, he changed how he spoke to the next prospect, and she became a client.
Because I diagnosed the problem, I could give him an explanation that addressed it. But without this diagnosis, I could have talked to him about how to "close a deal" until I was blue in the face, and he would have gotten nowhere. The essential problem would stay in place.
But sometimes, isn't a person just bad at a skill?
Few people are "just bad" at anything. If they are successful in one domain, that means they can learn and get better in other domains. They may not become world-class, but they can grow their skills with the help of a good teacher. If you diagnose their learning challenge, you can be the teacher who helps them when others could not.
To sum up
To help a client overcome learning challenges, we diagnose it before we prescribe a solution.
We assume the client doesn't understand an essential concept, we discover this misconception (the diagnosis), and we find a way to overcome it (the prescription).
Imagine if the scientists at Biosphere 2 had tried to help the trees by adding more nutrients to the soil or intensifying sunlight. Such random actions would have gotten nowhere since they were not the root cause of the problem. Once they discovered that the lack of wind was the culprit, they knew just how to solve it. The same is true when we help our clients. By diagnosing the challenge, we find a solution that works, and they can learn even when everything seemed hopeless before.
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