Chapter 92.
Teach Them to Teach
Themselves

If you want a man to be for you, never let him feel he is dependent on you. Make him feel you are in some way dependent on him.

—General George C. Marshall

Scott remembers a story that Mr. Mercado told him about the musical virtuoso Jascha Heifetz and the always unplayable Tchaikovsky violin concerto.

Heifetz’s teacher was the great German violinist Leopold Auer. Mercado said, “Auer himself could not play the Tchaikovsky violin concerto up to speed. It’d never been performed up to speed before Heifetz.”

Heifetz was the first one to perform this piece up to speed! And if Auer, his teacher, could not perform it up to speed, and he was teaching Heifetz, how then was Heifetz able to do it?

Some people might say, “Well, he was just a talent.”

But that wasn’t the explanation according to Mr. Mercado. He said, “Scott, if Auer was only teaching Heifetz how to play like Auer, then Heifetz would have never performed that Tchaikovsky violin concerto up to speed. But that isn’t what Auer was doing. He was teaching him how to teach himself how to play the instrument. And that’s how he learned to become better than his teacher.”

This is a very powerful distinction. And that really is why Auer was such an extraordinary teacher.

Your goal is to teach like Leopold Auer taught, absolutely unafraid of the people you lead being better than you are. Because that’s what a great coach and leader does. They don’t teach us how to have a great career. They teach us how to teach ourselves how to have a great career.