Teaching as a growth tool

Teaching transforms the way you think, learn and grow. When you explain something to someone else, you activate deeper parts of your mind. You are forced to organize, test, refine and question your knowledge in ways that studying alone does not demand. That’s why experienced educators, leaders and innovators often say that the best way to learn something is to teach it.

In professional growth, teaching isn’t just an extra skill. It is a strong growth accelerator that sharpens your thinking, improves your communication and builds confidence. In this article, you’ll explore how teaching speeds-up your development.

Teaching is not about reciting facts. It’s about structuring knowledge so another person can understand and use it. When you teach, you confront gaps and assumptions you didn’t notice before. This is intrinsic to the well-known idea of “learning by teaching” – a method where students teach material to each other to reinforce mastery which is a concept studied in pedagogy for decades.¹

In professional contexts, that means when you mentor a teammate, lead a workshop, or guide a junior colleague, you are actively testing your understanding. You clarify, you contextualize, you simplify. And as a result, your own understanding becomes stronger.

Teaching provokes key cognitive changes that align with high performance.

These benefits translate into more effective leadership, better decision-making and clearer communication.

Unlike traditional classroom teaching, professional teaching is iterative. You test an idea, you see how others react, and you refine. It becomes a feedback loop that expands both your skill and your perspective. This is why peer learning and mentoring are powerful, they expose you to new angles while you consolidate your own expertise. 

Consider what teaching does to your confidence and satisfaction. When you help someone understand a complex topic, you experience your own growth – it reflects a real shift in capability and readiness to tackle new challenges.

In formal education fields, professional development for teachers is known to improve performance in the classroom. The OECD notes that PD activities involving active methods, collaboration with peers, and long-term engagement are more likely to result in improved professional practices.³ 

Though research often focuses on school settings, the underlying principle holds true in any professional domain, when you teach, you refine your practice and absorb new strategies more deeply than through passive consumption alone.

When you lead knowledge sharing in your organization, you don’t just build your own skills – you help shape a learning culture that is extremely important in companies and societies. Studies of professional development emphasize that collaboration among teachers improves practice more than isolated training. In teams, mentoring and peer teaching spread insights, reduce knowledge silos, and build shared understanding. Whether you’re in tech, healthcare, finance or creative fields, this dynamic improves performance and retention.

Below is a structured view of the ways teaching helps your growth – from personal to organizational impact.

Growth dimension	How teaching accelerates it	Impact
Knowledge mastery	Forces deeper conceptual organization and understanding	You identify gaps in your expertise when preparing a training and teaching
Communication	Requires simplifying complex ideas	Clearer proposals, fewer misunderstandings
Confidence	Builds belief in your skill to guide others	Stronger leadership presence
Reflection	Invites you to critique and adapt your approach	Better decisions in future scenarios
Collaboration	Encourages shared learning with peers	Richer team knowledge culture
Innovation	Tests ideas in real situations with diverse learners groups	New approaches grounded in practice

What happens when you integrate teaching into your professional habits?

If you want to master something, teach it. The more you teach, the better you learn. Teaching is a powerful tool to learning.

Richard Feynman ⁴

• You see faster skill acquisition because you continually test and refine your knowledge,
• You become more adaptable as you confront questions and arguments outside your core perspective,
• You gain resilience, because teaching exposes you to ambiguity and forces you to navigate it,
• Your voice becomes clearer because you practice framing complex ideas for different audiences.

These outcomes resonate with the 70-20-10 model of professional development, which places experience and social learning (like mentoring and teaching) at the very center of effective growth. 

If you want to build a growth habit around teaching, start small. Share something you’ve learned during a meeting. Mentor a new colleague. Write about a problem you solved. These acts are teaching moments. They invite you to consider your assumptions and refine your perspective. Teaching becomes a tool not just for others, but for your own evolution.

When you teach, you grow. It’s not a metaphor – it’s a practical way you can integrate into your routine. Teaching tests your knowledge, expands your confidence, deepens your reflections and accelerates your development.

If you embrace teaching as a habit, you transform interactions into learning opportunities – for yourself and those around you. That’s the real power of teaching as a growth tool.

Sources

1. Wikipedia, “Learning by teaching” ↩︎
2. Wikipedia, “Reflective practice” ↩︎
3. OECD, “How can professional development enhance teachers’ classroom practices?” ↩︎
4. Physicsmentoring, “From the Mentor’s Mouth: Could you be the next Richard Feynman?” ↩︎