What a teacher is for

Han Yu wrote this essay when he was a teacher of the imperial academy and the culture around him had a problem: it was embarrassing to ask an older or higher-status person for instruction. The polite thing was to know already.

His argument starts with a definition. A teacher is someone who transmits the way, and teaches a craft, and clears up confusion. Then a sentence that has been repeated ever since: it does not matter whether a teacher is older or younger than you. Wherever the way is, that's where the teacher is.

He follows with the paradox that makes the essay stick. Ancient sages, greater than anyone alive, treated learning from others as a priority. The mediocre people around him debated whether it was shameful to learn from someone below their station. The result, he says, was that the excellent became more excellent and the mediocre became more mediocre.

It's a simple mechanism. Asking a question costs status. Learning is only available if you're willing to spend it.

I watch this in coaching more than any other single thing. The clients who grow fastest are usually the ones who don't mind looking like beginners in a room where they were supposed to be the expert.

If asking for help in your field feels like a hit to your standing, then Han Yu's essay was written about you in the ninth century and is still accurate.

MOJOWAY asks a coach to be a beginner in front of their own client, which is the only way the work moves.