If you know me, you know that I teach martial arts – and you probably know this because I talk about it all the time. I’ve gained a lot from teaching, and one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that, if you want to learn something well, teach it to somebody else. Not only has being a teacher made me a more adept martial arts practitioner, but encouraging students to teach a newly acquired skill or principle to somebody else – another student, a friend or a family member – as soon as possible has become one of my primary instructional techniques.

This concept can be applied to nearly all areas of endeavor, including qualitative research. A great way to help research participants crystalize and refine their own thinking is to ask them to explain their point of view to another participant. And, if you want to be a better researcher, find opportunities to educate others in the profession. That’s one of the reasons I write this blog: my own professional development. Hopefully, if you’ve been reading it regularly over the past three years, you’ve learned a thing or two, and that’s certainly been one of my goals. But I can assure you that nobody has learned more from this newsletter than I have. Similarly, I speak regularly at market research industry conferences and events. This forces me to acquire new knowledge or deepen my understanding of what I already know.

The reason this principle – learning by teaching – works so well is that most skills are self-taught, particularly advanced ones. Like many advanced skills, qualitative research is as much art as it is science. You need a solid grounding in fundamentals, basic facts and principles. However, when it comes to actually doing the thing, it just takes a lot of hard work, failure, and repetition before you become proficient. And this whole process will be improved and sped up if you make a point of finding opportunities to teach what you’re learning.

So, think about your own life. There must be things – personal or professional – at which you want to improve or that you want to know more about. Put this principle to work for yourself – find a way to teach those things to others. If nothing else, this is an opportunity to exploit the people who love you. Turn them into your students, whether they like it or not. My long-suffering wife would probably tell you that she has been on the receiving end of this sort of thing far too many times,  but somehow, she still tolerates me.