Teaching people to fish

One of the things that I think is sometimes difficult for coaches, mentors and parents of team members to understand when they email asking a question is that I usually send them the link that answers their question instead of crafting a well written email answering their question.   I occasionally get snide/sarcastic replies that suggest that the person is annoyed with having to follow a link and read information instead of me just answering their question.

The short answer is that I believe in teaching people to fish, versus giving them fish.   There is just 1 of me answering nearly 100% of the emails that come into the fll, jillw, fllvolunteer, teaminfo and a variety of other emails – yep, just me.   We are setting up infrastructure for having others to answer those emails eventually but at the moment it is really just me.    And there are hundreds of you – in fact between just these 4 emails addresses, there are over 1,000 of you.

I need people – you –  to spend a few minutes actually looking for the answer.   If you send me an email that says, I looked for this piece of information, here is what I found but it doesn’t quiet answer my question – that is great.  I will in fact answer your question as  best as I can AND will try to improve the articles/links/whatever to try to make this answer easier to find  (a win-win in my mind).

As one point of reference,  on Saturday 12/7,  I sent out a couple of emails letting everyone know WHERE information about the championship tournaments will be posted and a link to the exact article that has the latest status.    Since then, I have received nearly 40 emails from coaches, parents of team members, and interested others asking questions about where/when are the championships or similar information.    All of which are actually answered on the championship site.

Right now,  until Playing At Learning raises enough money to actually add staff,  I choose actually planning events and teaching people to fish instead of spending the limited time nights/evenings on answering the questions that have already been answered.