Instructorship and connection.

[SouthNarc]

ShivWorks Instructorship Hack Number One:

Establishing Connection.

Part of being a successful teacher is establishing connection with not only the class, but every single person in it. This can be difficult, and one tends to be on a constant bungee cord from the entire group at 10,000 feet, to the individual at ground zero.

Years ago I started playing what I think of as the “Name Game”.

I begin every class by asking each person to introduce themselves to me and the group, tell me a bit about their training pedigree, and then I ask what they want from the weekend. After they do that, I thank them for investing in me and the coursework for the weekend and I tell them that I will do my best to make sure their time and money will be well spent. This is when I start working on names. I begin recording names with faces. Sometimes the names are unusual and easy to remember. Other times the names are common and the person is average featured so it takes a while. In an ECQC class this begins on Friday night, and I have until the class ends on Sunday evening to have on average, twenty names. The reason for this is that I end every class by again going to each person, now calling them by their name, and asking them what they thought of the weekend.

Usually this practice is mentioned by someone in their de-brief and they are stunned that I can remember twenty names and faces accurately.

No one taught me how to do this. I didn’t learn it in an instructor development class. I figured it out.

I do it for two reasons.

First, it forces engagement from me even when I want to disconnect. Travelling 40 weeks a year, and teaching the same content weekly gets tedious. I get tired of saying the same things so frequently. As long as I’ve been doing this, and as frequently as I do this, it would be very easy for me to disengage, go on auto-pilot, and let the words that are so practiced and rehearsed just roll out of my mouth, while my mind goes somewhere else.

The Name Game keeps me from doing that. I can’t disengage when I have twenty names to get in such a short period of time. Throughout the weekend I sit above the group and start working through pairs of people, as they drill in things like pummeling for under-hooks. My internal monologue is usually something like this: “Dan…Bill…Jeremy…Mark...fuck what’s that guy’s name?” I descend from my perch on a bungee and drop to ground zero with my unknown. There’s usually some correction that needs to be made. “Hey buddy what’s your name one more time”? “Darren”. “Ah that’s right, Darren. Hey man drive your under-hook a little higher and get more on the shoulder and not around his waist okay?” “Ah okay, gotcha”. I then pop the bungee, go back to my perch at 10,000 feet, survey the group as a whole and start going around the training area again. “Dan…Bill…Jeremy…Mark…Darren…and so on.

The Name Game is my personal exercise in attention, mindfulness, and engagement. It’s a huge part of my instructorship.

The second reason I do it is because it forces an individual connection with every person. Think of any time, in any group where someone just kind of gets unnoticed. This happens in firearms classes all the time. Some people just fade out and are hard to see. The Name Game prevents that from happening because it FORCES connection with every SINGLE person in the group, not just the group at large. You have to connect with the GROUP….and every PERSON in it. It’s certainly fatiguing and not easy to do. I make myself do it and now after years of practice I want to do it. I know in my soul when I haven’t connected with someone in a class.

So that’s your ShivWorks Instructorship Hack for the day. Try and develop your own techniques for creating connection.

[RevolverRob]

Names are so important, one of Dale Carnegie's points for winning friends, and ultimately influencing people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to...andling_People

Remember that a person's name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language. "The average person is more interested in their own name than in all the other names in the world put together."[6]:73 People love their names so much that they will often donate large amounts of money just to have a building named after themselves. We can make people feel extremely valued and important by remembering their name.

Can't take credit for this one, it's all @Les Pepperoni - just sharing it with the non-IG world. (Start at 0:55).

[UNM1136]

Excellent post, Craig...

pat

[RJ]

Slow clap. I wish I could like this thread more than once. Like, a hundred times. Connection. I love it.

Every single time I've ever delivered a course of instruction, and every single time I've assisted in Train the Trainer events for curriculum rollout, I've always been a proponent of steering the Instructor cadre to, time permitting, ask this simple question, of each student, in turn at the start of class: "What are you trying to achieve?"

You learn so much about the students mindset at the start of class by doing this simple two-way exercise in connection. Subtle changes in lesson plan can be adjusted, students with a lack of confidence identified and marked for later remediation by qualified AIs; heck I even had to basically stop the delivery and re-think an entire class once, as they needed to go back to square one on what a Requirement was, in Systems Engineering terms.

[NoTacTravis]

Good on you!

This was a big part of the instructor development program at the original Gracie academy back in the day as well. Rorion was known among that first batch of instructors for pretty much requiring them to know the names of every student every class.

(As told to me by one of my bjj coaches who was part of that initial instructor development classes.)

Ironically I’ve trained at places where the instructor stopped knowing everyone’s names quite as well over time as his program grew and it showed as the program and coaching level dropped.

[Totem Polar]

Hardly the only reason I like your teaching, Craig, but it is A reason.

[Doc_Glock]

I begin every class by asking each person to introduce themselves to me and the group, tell me a bit about their training pedigree, and then I ask what they want from the weekend. After they do that, I thank them for investing in me and the coursework for the weekend and I tell them that I will do my best to make sure their time and money will be well spent. This is when I start working on names. I begin recording names with faces. Sometimes the names are unusual and easy to remember. Other times the names are common and the person is average featured so it takes a while. In an ECQC class this begins on Friday night, and I have until the class ends on Sunday evening to have on average, twenty names. The reason for this is that I end every class by again going to each person, now calling them by their name, and asking them what they thought of the weekend.

This is such a great example of commitment to the craft and leadership.

I admit I probably encounter 20-30 employees throughout a day in surgery and it can be really difficult to remember the names. But it is important. Sometimes I actually ask new people to spell their names for me when I encounter them as that helps solidify them in my head.

[Rex G]

Well-thought-out, and well-written/said, Craig.

Thanks!

[Wendell]

Sometimes I actually ask new people to spell their names for me when I encounter them as that helps solidify them in my head.

Careful!

In 2021, with the wrong person, simply asking them about their name could trigger a harassment complaint.

[Chuck Whitlock]

I can attest to this.

At TacCon 2013, just BSing between sessions, I opened up to Craig in away that I rarely do with people I've just met, because he made me feel like he was truly interested in me and my story. I try to emulate this, partly because I DO care, and partly because I want my training to be relevent to them.