Teach It to Keep It

🍞 A Student of Leadership

Where Food Industry Leaders Are Developed – One Habit at a Time
Teach to Learn

A seasoned line cook guiding a rookie’s hands on plating—focused, collaborative, dynamic.

Alt text: “A leader reinforcing their own mastery by teaching others.”

You never really know how well you understand something… until you try to explain it to someone else.
And when you do, something happens that most leaders don’t expect:
You become the student again.

🔥 Real-World Story

After hanging up his sneakers, Steve Nash stepped into a new role: player development. Not coaching. Not managing. Just helping.

But here’s what he learned:
Explaining the game—step by step, moment by moment—forced him to reprocess what he thought he knew. He found new layers of insight in old strategies.

Teaching others helped Nash see the game more clearly than he ever had during his MVP career.
It didn’t just make the players better. It made him better.

🧠 Leadership Insight

This idea—“By teaching, we learn”—was first written nearly 2,000 years ago by Seneca. And today, science proves he was right.

It’s called the Protégé Effect, and it’s been tested in classrooms, labs, and yes—boardrooms.

Here’s what the research shows:

🧠 The Cognitive Trifecta:

• Better Organization: Teaching forces you to structure knowledge clearly, which improves memory and understanding.

• Deeper Processing: The act of explaining out loud forces your brain to process information more actively than passive listening or reading.

• Immediate Feedback: When you stumble trying to explain something? That’s a clue—you don’t fully understand it yet. That moment becomes your cue to learn more.

🔄 It’s Not Just What You Know. It’s How You Prepare to Teach It.

In one study, students who believed they would be teaching material performed far better than those who expected only a test. Just the expectation of teaching sparked better retention and clarity.

Why?
Because when we teach, we think about how to make something understandable. We take ownership of the material. We feel accountable to others—and that changes how we engage with learning.

🍽️ What This Means for Leaders

This isn't about running workshops or formal training. It’s about everyday leadership.

Here’s how teaching shows up in the day-to-day:

✅ Narrating your thinking in decision meetings
✅ Explaining strategy to team members, out loud and without jargon
✅ Mentoring a rising star on your team
✅ Letting someone else teach you what they’ve just learned

Teaching isn’t about expertise. It’s about clarity. Humility. And the willingness to think through your own ideas out loud—so others can grow, and you can too.

And here’s the best part:
Even if no one’s listening… it still works.
There’s a reason “rubber duck debugging” is a thing in tech: explaining a problem to a rubber duck can reveal the answer.
Because explaining teaches you what you actually know.

🔁 Habits That Stick

Exceptional leaders don’t wait until they’re experts. They:

🔹 Teach what they’re still learning
🔹 Use teaching to clarify, not to impress
🔹 Encourage reverse mentorship—learning from others at all levels
🔹 Use casual moments—over meals, rides, or walks—to “explain to learn”
🔹 Turn every reflection into a teaching moment

The mistake? Believing you must master it before you share it.
The admired behavior? Start teaching while you’re learning.

🧘‍♂️ Food for Thought

💭 What’s one idea or behavior I’ve been trying to build—but haven’t explained to anyone yet?
💭 Who could I teach it to, even informally, to deepen my own understanding?
💭 What would change if I approached every learning opportunity as if I were going to teach it tomorrow?
💭 Who on my team could teach me something they’ve just learned?

🚀 Action Challenge

Pick one concept, tool, or leadership behavior you’re working on right now.
Then teach it—this week.
➡️ To a teammate
➡️ In a meeting
➡️ On a voice memo
➡️ Or out loud to yourself

Don’t overthink it. Just explain it. The act of articulating it will reveal what you know—and what you still need to work on.

🔜 Next Week:

Silent Signals – What great leaders communicate without speaking. From posture to pause, presence to pacing, we’ll unpack the unspoken behaviors that define a leader’s influence.