Senior Huh?

Senior is a senior as long as there are juniors following him/her. Usually number of years is the criteria to identify who is a senior or junior. But just that may not be enough. If a person knows something, but does not share that information periodically and voluntarily in an organized manner, then there is no way new persons to learn that from him/her. If they do not learn something new from the more experienced person then they may not give the due respect to him/her.

Now question is what holds the experienced person to not share or others feel that he/she has not shared. There are many reasons, I will discuss few here.

1. Ignorance: Here ignorance is not about the knowledge but about Not knowing when, why and how to share.

With more experience people tend to assume that others should know that he/she knows something more. But they forget that there is no way others can know about their knowledge. They share when somebody asks a question. This either makes others feel that the person is not willing to share or sometimes juniors feel uncomfortable asking questions every time. 

Sometimes they do share but not in an organized manner, which can help others to understand the subject easily and appreciate the knowledge. So here sharing became an one sided affair. People get confused and do not consider the source as a knowledgeable one.

Not knowing if this is necessary or right time to share is another problem. Knowledge which is not timely shared is not considered as shared at all.

Not knowing that you have knowledge. This is the most dangerous type of ignorance. This requires regular self evaluation. Unless you consider yourself as knowledgeable there is no way others can identify that.

Sometimes the opposite happens. The person with little or wrong knowledge thinks that he/she has lots of knowledge. They when they share initially people may take it but later when it gets exposed it works negatively and completely takes away all respect out.

2. Trying to teach fishing at the very beginning:

There is a great Chinese proverb “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. “.

Many follow this blindly from day one. This is a great thing to teach fishing but first few occasions it is necessary to fish in front of the novice so that they see the process and the outcome easily. So that they appreciate that fishing will yield results and it is not impossible to fish then you start teaching how to fish. They would have see the results and also developed  interest to fish.

3. Fear of loosing seniority:

This comes when you see some bright young people showing interest to learn what you have already learnt. You find them as your competitors and start hiding information. Confuse them intentionally to save your position. This is a typical characteristic of a looser. They forget here that this trick does not work for long. If somebody has quest to learn then nobody in this world can stop them to do so. But if you be the person to teach, then the junior will develop respect for you. Also you will get some challenges to learn more.

4. Too busy to teach:

This may be a genuine reason but not to forget that like Linked in Connections, Facebook Friends and Twitter followers, unless you have people respecting you for the knowledge you have you have many chances of loosing the professional battle irrespective of how much good work you may have done.

Now sharing always does not mean class room trainings. It can be preparing documents, recording, blogs or sharing via emails. In this information technology age you have hundred ways of sharing with ease.

– Stray Dog