The power of… helplessness

I’ve been thinking about this quite much recently: a mentor I had in teaching told me something wise years ago: “There are no bad students, there are bad and inappropriate methods of working with people.” Quite often, when things don’t work out the way we have planned, we are quick to reject the person and say: “This guy isn’t serious”, “It’s impossible to work with him”, “He’s good for nothing”, “He doesn’t really know what he wants”, “Things don’t work well between us”, “He isn’t motivated enough”, “No way”… Is it not a glossy cover for helplessness and unwillingness to look for the real reason in inappropriate methods of working…