Elliot Washor's TGIF 06.05.2026

Are You With Me Now? A.J. Ryder

“If I could say it, I wouldn’t have to dance it.” — Isadora Duncan

This week, Larry Robertson’s book Great Question was published. A few months ago, Joe Youcha told me that Larry wanted to interview me for the book. I agreed, and when I read what he wrote, I was amazed. He not only captured our conversation but also somehow nailed my personality. The book features interviews with people from a wide range of occupations about the questions they ask. That diversity of questions is what makes it such a compelling book to read and reflect upon.

For the past two days—and really for the past thirty years—Frank Wilson and I have been engaged in an ongoing conversation that informs our practice. It includes all sorts of questions worth asking, young and old alike, about what their hands and bodies are telling them, if they listen, and why that matters so much to meaningful skill development and becoming the person you grow into.

So much coaching, technical and otherwise, misses what the body is trying to tell us about what we are doing. Why is that?

First, most coaches and teachers don’t really know how to observe or how to ask. Second, this kind of learning is not about efficiency. It takes time. It requires slowing down, even when the challenge seems to demand going faster. In this context, slowness is fundamental to quality.

In our conversations, walks and meals over the last two days up in Portland, Oregon where Frank lives, Andrea, Carrie, Frank, and I discussed how the body often functions as a biological governor. You can only learn so fast. You can only understand—and honestly make use of—a shortcut if you have first done the roadwork. AI enthusiasts, pay attention here.

The stories people tell as they struggle to get better at what they do are not simply stories about performance. They raise deeper questions:

What is gained, and what is lost, when everyone else thinks you are great at something, but you think you are terrible?

When is a performance objectively better, yet somehow no longer feels like you?

How do you feel when you are pushed into something you are not ready for?

What happens when you become disconnected from what you are doing? Are you an imposter?

As you can imagine, we spent a lot of time with a lot of questions.

What kind of feedback is most useful, and when? Self-assessment? Coaching feedback? Technical feedback? Peer feedback?

As a coach or teacher, when do you get out of the way?

When should a teacher or coach step in because the learner can’t yet manage on their own?

When is an assessment serving a system rather than a student? Can anyone say SAT?

And when everything comes down to a formal assessment, what does that actually mean, and how do you know?

These are great questions, and we do not have great answers to many of them. Why? Because they live in the domain of complexity, where the answer is always swirling in the dynamic nature of living a life—not in a mark, a score, or a dot on a graph.

I’m reminded of a beautiful observation from George Vaillant, the longtime keeper and analyst of the Harvard Longitudinal Study:

“Their lives were too human for science, too beautiful for numbers, too sad for diagnosis, and too immortal for bound journals.”

When assessment is reduced to a procedure, it becomes measurable. But it can never fully measure the complex experience of how your whole body feels when you do something.

I’ve always thought of athletes as nerds. They are constantly studying how to get better. The Knicks and the Spurs are about to come on, and all of these questions matter. At the end of every game, interviewers ask players: How did you do that? How did the team do that? And how do you feel?

I’m with Isadora Duncan and George Vaillant on this one.

“The score never interests me. Only the game.” Mae West

Go Knicks!

Next week, I’ll be in the New York area to feel the Knick magic firsthand and to spend time on the ground with Charlie and company, immersed in the new START Center work.

Be well.