When Your Need To Teach Exceeds Their Desire To Learn

Rescuer Alert!

Recently, Next Element attended and exhibited at the Association for Talent Development (ATD) International Convention and Expo.

Of the hundreds of people who visited our booth, the vast majority were curious. They asked great questions and shared their goals for attending the event.

Except for one. One person who came by our booth several times was neither curious nor open. He was a representative from another vendor exhibiting a few stalls down the row.

In both interactions, his very first move was to provide unsolicited advice on what was wrong with our stuff, and his ideas on how we could improve things. This, without knowing anything about our products or services.

When your need to teach exceeds their desire to learn, we have a problem.

What is Rescuing?

Do you know one of those people who appoint themselves the expert on everyone else’s business? They don’t care about learning, only teaching. They don’t seem to care about whether the other person wants to hear their feedback. They are unaware of the negative impact this has on relationships and learning. This is called Rescuing. It’s one of the three Drama Roles people play in distress.

Stop Rescuing By Being Open

One of the main tenets of our Compassionate Accountability framework is to start with being Open. This means tuning into another person’s experience and being transparent about your motives and feelings. The purpose of openness is to create a safe space for learning. My friend Chad Littlefield says it so well – it’s about focusing on connection before content.

Learning only happens in a safe and curious environment. When our need to teach exceeds their desire to learn, it’s time to step back and ask ourselves what we can do to create a safer, more curious learning environment.

Compassion Skills Among Learning and Development Professionals

This year at ATD, we invited visitors to our booth to take the Compassionate Accountability Assessment and learn about their strengths in three signature Compassion Skills: Openness, Resourcefulness, and Persistence. Here’s an aggregate summary of all the assessments taken by this group of learning and development professionals at the conference.

Scores can range from 0-100, with 100 being the highest. Resourcefulness is the highest score among this group of L&D professionals, and is consistent with data we’ve collected over the past 10 years in this industry. Not surprising since we are in the business of teaching, consulting, and learning.

Whenever one score is much higher or lower than the others, there’s a risk of imbalance. The risk of overdoing Resourcefulness at the expense of the other two Compassion Skills is that we can easily slip into Rescuing. Rescuing is when we help others without their consent and without revealing our motives, just like the person who inspired me to write this post.

So here’s a gentle reminder to my fellow L&D professionals. Pay attention to whenever your desire to teach exceeds your learner’s desire to learn. That’s a great time to shift focus to the Compassion Skill of Openness so you can tune in to your learners’ experiences and create a safe space for them to engage in the process.

Learn more about the three Compassion Skills in this article from Training Industry Magazine.

Three Steps For Helping Without Rescuing

1. Disclose your real motives. Why do you want to help? What are you hoping to achieve? Why do you care?
2. Ask for permission. Never help without permission, unless you are saving someone from a burning building.
3. Solicit their perspective. Ask the other person to share their perspective on what you offered. If you truly want to help for the right reasons, you’ll take the time to see how it landed.

Copyright Next Element Consulting, LLC 2025