FEEDBACK:
This article is about giving positive feedback. Watch out for another article on eliciting feedback from the client.
FEEDBACK is a “POWERFUL TOOL” Feedback is being observant about what your client is doing, and how you communicate back to them.
Often instrucotrs get caught being unsure of what to say, or how to say it. This leads to either being silent for long periods of time, or engaging in ineffective ‘coaching babble’ (e.g., Good!, Good!, well done!, great!).
Although you may feel this is motivational, this kind of feedback makes client ’switch off’ to the instructors’ words.
Another common instructor behaviour is to jump in with feedback only when clients are doing things wrong, and the training, then becomes fault focused.
By understanding different styles and the purpose of feedback, an instructor can prepare better and have a healthier framework to know what to say.
Two key factors that can improve an instructors feedback are:
1. Feedback must always have a purpose
2. Positive feedback works positively.
Feedback should have a purpose: The reason you are giving feedback as an instructor is to improve and develop your client. If you have a reason for giving feedback, the feedback becomes more effective.
There are two main reasons an instructor will give feedback, and that is to raise awareness of the client’s behaviour for motivational purposes or to help them develop their skills.
Motivational feedback: This is when you help your client focus and maintain good effort and attitude in the lesson. For example, when a client needs to be reminded to concentrate to keep their newfound skills embedded. Clients can often switch off once they think the skill has become unconsciously competent.
Instructional feedback: This is when you help a client change their current behaviour.
It could be on a routine (e.g., correcting a client when they are not using a routine effectively). Instructional feedback helps keep things on track.
You are looking to create repetition that is smooth and can be transferred from task to task. Learning anything new is often not an easy process. The skill is for a coach to know why they are giving feedback. This will help them place the feedback in the right place, at the best time possible, for the greatest effect.
Positive Feedback works positively: It is a common belief that driver training revolves around simply telling people what they do wrong. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Fault detection and correction is only a small part of the feedback process. If an instructor has this as their primary feedback, they are letting down their clients!
Driving instruction is an interactive communication process that requires building trust and rapport with the client. I am sure you have noticed, telling people what they are doing wrong does not usually win any rapport points with people, even if the advice is technically correct. You see this on many driving instructor Facebook groups.
How one says something is every bit as important as what is said, this is true in any relationship whether a friend, spouse, or tennis student. It is important that instructors become “success seekers” rather than “fault finders”. This is critical because positive feedback (as opposed to negative), builds up a better long-term psychology. Negative feedback often builds a “fear of failure” mentality.
This can lead to clients making mistakes on tests and the instructor blaming nerves for the failure.
How well do your clients react when the words “Don’t cut the corner!” are running through their minds? Positive feedback builds a goal focused mentality.
Imagine using positive thinking to create the outcome your clients are looking for. Helping your clients visualise positive outcomes negates the worry, stress, and anxiety in test situations. Going for a goal creates more confidence.
Positive feedback is powerful, and yet we still have a very strong focus on faults, why don’t more instructors embrace it? The answer is that positive feedback is very misunderstood. What positive feedback does not mean, is calling poor performance good.
Telling your client that was good when they have emerged from a junction and yet you know they have not observed effectively but it was safe, doesn’t help and reinforces poor performance.
This kind of feedback will often even have a negative effect as your client starts to expect emotional rewards no matter how poor his performance. Positive feedback is a communication tool, to change specific behaviours. It is reflecting the performance back to the client. No matter what the performance (good or bad), an instructor can remember the key words “Praise” and “Encourage”.
Praising is what a coach would do when a client performs correctly. Instructors should constantly try to catch their clients doing things right!
By reinforcing good performance, the client will repeat it over and over and start to develop confidence. Encouraging is what an instructor should do when the client performs incorrectly.
Telling them they are constantly making faults is of no use to a client since they don’t have any idea of the right thing to do.
Always link the correction to the result that can be expected. For example, “your preparation was fine, you will need to reduce your speed to give you more time to make the gear change”.
Here the instructor praises any good performance and encourages any bad performance. In this way good performance gets highlighted making it easier to remember and repeat. Poor performances are corrected without the emotional impact of negative feedback and, most importantly, clients learn how to be problem solvers, rather than learning that they don’t have to think because the instructor has all the answers.
By maintaining purposeful, positive feedback, an instructor can help clients love driving, enjoy their lessons and improve their personal experience of learning.
Positive feedback will make you the instructor who grows their business and increases client satisfaction.
