"You WILL do as I say"

I was recently informed by a pupil that they were reduced to tears with their previous instructor.  This is a subject dear to my heart, and I am sorry to say, not uncommon to hear.  Customers do not pay people to reduce them to tears when learning. 

If you are attempting to learn something and all is not going well, then this is a measure of your trainers inability.  They might shout at dogs; as pups, they might rub their noses in their own mess to stop them messing in the house, they might continually repeat commands in a stern voice so that their dog learns, but with humans, you don’t NEED to condition them.  Humans simply need to WANT to learn.  If they have the motivation, then it will happen.

Last year, a trainer who apparently trains driving instructors asked me and a few others to give feedback on a typical training session he was giving a PDI.  I was soon to discover that in fact, I was the only one who had provided him with feedback – which is perhaps a message in itself!  I found his style of teaching dictatorial.  He was ‘forcing the issue’, commands given in a raised, very firm voice.  Many of the commands were repeated over and over again.  Questions were not welcomed, there were signs of exasperation, impatience in his commands.  It makes for a very restrictive learning environment.  The trainee must have felt very controlled and I imagine uncomfortable.  This particular person put up other video clips of his teaching methods, and they showed a similar approach.  The thrust of it is this:

“Do this.... just do it damn you.... and you will pass the test”

I found this kind of character kept cropping up in my 11 years in the Met.  In that kind of ‘disciplined organisation’, it runs on the basis that the workers/employees simply must do as they are told.  There is no room for ingenuity, voluntary actions, individual thought, spontaneity, originality, instead..... they say - and you do.  And if you come from such a background, and ESPECIALLY if you know of no other way – you have no other experience of working life, then I guess it is really no surprise that you consider that the norm.  This is how, in your eyes, the world revolves.

So if your trainer or instructor appears to have the approach of:

“Me God, you pleb”

.... then my advice to you is get out of that relationship.  Life is too short, you honestly do not NEED to be learning in that kind of environment.  If there is one positive thing that comes out of an economic depression that this country currently finds itself in, it is that it gets rid of dead wood, the strong survive.  There is plenty of choice of training providers out there, and you simply do not need to be humiliated, angered, frightened, intimidated when you are paying someone to teach you.

My heart bleeds when I hear of people being reduced to tears – don’t stand for it, get out!