I know this sounds crazy, but I’ve started trying to go to a spinning class once a week. If you’ve never been to one of these classes, here’s how it works. For an hour, you try to ride fancy stationary bikes while an instructor prods, pleads, motivates, and instructs you to either pedal faster, slower, harder, or easier. Sometimes you stand up on the pedals – I’m working towards this – or sit down to pedal. Personally, I’ve been enjoying the mid-morning sessions where I’m the youngest person in the room by 20 years and the most out-of-shape. The serious spinners all show up at 6 am, but I digress.
I realize that when sucking wind for an hour while listening to music, your brain comes up with all sorts of parallels and analogies to apply to the classroom. During my first few weeks of class, I started formulating a dissertation’s worth of content outlining the parallels. Seeing as no one has read any of it, you can tell how successful I was at actually transcribing my brain into this blog. During the “cool-down ride” yesterday, I realized that I should just do short, easy to crank out posts. So, here it is, Spinning Series Post #1!
The Power of the Fist Bump
Whether you are a teacher, or a manager, or just a human being, when was the last time that you stopped what you were doing, walked up to every person around you, looked them in the eye, said “awesome job,” and gave them a fist bump? Not a handshake or a pat on the back, but a real fist bump.
I realized yesterday that our instructor gets off of her bike during the cool-down pedal, walks over to each of us, and gives us a fist bump. Usually, at this point in the class, I am begging the seconds to go faster so that I can haul myself off of said bike. However, I get the fist bump from Laura and I smile – and so does every one else in the room. We all pick our heads up from our personal bubbles of pain and flash big toothy grins.
That said, the next time you are working with a group, see if you can walk up to each person before the end of the activity, lesson, meeting, whatever, and give them a fist bump. Look for the smiles. I bet they’ll work even harder next time. I know that I will.