Effective Presentation explores the building of relationships with your guests, using a variety of different styles to present information. We will also look at the more advanced presentation considerations such as body language, question-based learning and the matching principle.
Intention & Adapting Delivery Method
Becoming more aware of the intentions of both the trainer (yourself) and the trainees/athletes is a valuable process. It can give important insight and help the trainer in their decisions to adapt delivery methods to best suit potential learning outcomes.
Intention
What are intentions and why are they important? An intention is an idea that is planned or desired. Intentions can also be defined as a goal, objective, purpose or plan. Understanding what intentions are and where they come from, internal or external, is the first thing to consider. For example, is the intention a directive from a training manager to address a specific topic or is it something that the trainer has decided? Was it planned prior to the session, or has the intention just appeared? Is the intention more emotional or practical at its core? For example; helping someone to conquer their fear of a specific park feature, or the procedure they need to follow for a lost child.
Trainers and coaches also need to consider the intentions of the trainee/athlete. What are their plans and desires for a session or training programme? Are their intentions emotional, practical or both? Is there any anxiety within their intentions? Spending time exploring the trainees’ intentions can help guide the trainer in fine-tuning and adjusting their own intentions. Asking questions about their goals, why they are on a course or camp, how they see it benefiting them, or what they are hoping to learn or achieve, can give insight into their intentions.
Example
The trainers intention is to develop understanding of how to teach high performance carving, and the trainees intention is to get better at high performance carving. As you can see their intentions are a little different. The trainer starts the session with a warm up lap of carving, and can see that the trainees need to find and explore a high performance stance in their own riding to be able to progress. This presents the opportunity for the trainer to work through how to teach a high performance stance with different tasks and explanations. The trainer also talks about the benefits these tasks will have on developing the trainees own high performance riding.
It is important to be clear and transparent about your intentions, and assess if there are any underlying or hidden intentions that may affect your decisions. For example; blue-bird powder days or wet rainy days could change everyone’s mood, and the intentions may be biased to riding pow, or going inside to stay dry. A trainer should be able to adjust their intentions on the fly to take advantage of the changing environment and the needs of their trainees. Having a fixed intention or plan can lead to a breakdown in the progression of trainees/athletes.
While an intention can be defined as a goal, it is important to understand that there is a difference. It may help to think of a goal as the end point and the intention helps guide the plan to get there.
Adapting Delivery Method
Experienced instructors use a multitude of delivery methods to effectively communicate and inspire their students. Established SBINZ teaching methodology helps instructors to develop their communication skills throughout the system; from what-why-how and talk-show-feel, through to teaching styles and question-based learning.
When training instructors, these communication tools or “delivery methods” are still highly relevant, however, they may need to be adapted in a training environment. This is often because the learning outcome has shifted from teaching someone how to snowboard, to teaching someone to teach a student how to snowboard.
Example
A trainer adapting their delivery method for what-why-how and teaching styles: “We are going to work through the information needed to present the J-turn. There are six of you, so please form two groups. Group one, can you discuss and come up with an appropriate way to describe the WHAT and WHY for the J-turn. Group two can you talk about the movements needed for the toeside J-turn and HOW you could explain it.” As you can see the trainer used what-why-how and teaching styles (reciprocal, in this example), but the way that they utilised them was very different to instructing a beginner student to do a J-turn.
Some of the key elements in deciding the method to use include; being aware of intentions, is it a teaching or riding focus, terrain options, conditions, location, the trainee’s level of experience and knowledge.
The following is a selection of different delivery methods that can be explored as a trainer. This is by no means all of them, and experienced trainers are always seeking new and innovative delivery methods.
Positive or Negative
While it is often a good option to give a model answer or teach/ride demonstration, there can be very powerful learning opportunities when showing something less than ideal. For example; showing a poor stance and how it affects the ability to move efficiently for a demonstration, or missing important information when presenting an example lesson. For this method to be effective, it is essential to let the trainees know that you are doing this for the purpose of highlighting specific inefficiencies.
Story Tellers
Telling stories to create learning is one of the oldest methods within teaching. Stories often have, or evoke, an emotional component that allows for deeper connection and relatedness with the trainees. This connection will often transcend into meaningful conversation and collective learning. It is also a great way to show humility and vulnerability if the trainer is able to bring stories from their own experiences.
Lap Coaching
This can be an effective way to maximise ride time with constant ongoing feedback, when applied effectively. This method works well with group sizes of 5 or more. To make lap coaching effective it is important to give short, concise focuses for each run/lap, then continue to adjust the focus based on what is seen or analysed on the next run/lap.
Utilising a mix of question-based learning, specifying the HOW, with relevant analogies, is a good way to get started. Be wary of giving out too much information in one go and consider how long other trainees are waiting to get their turn. Limiting the feedback (“Nice, keep that the same” or “Would you just like to try that one again”) is also an option for trainees that are going well, or feeling frustrated.
Time to Teach
This method allows for a subtle switch of rolls and encourages the trainees to start leading and presenting information back to the group. It is useful for developmental and corrective teaching practice and rider development in pairs, where they give each other feedback on their performance. This gives the opportunity to experiment and develop confidence with delivering information. It is vital that the trainer provides reflective feedback, specific to the trainees presentation, allowing real learning to occur.
It can be helpful here to specify what to look out for and give feedback on. This can help raise awareness on a certain idea, develop the trainees analysis skills or avoid conflict between peers. For lower level trainees this can be especially important for building team dynamic as these trainees may not have much experience delivering feedback to peers.
Opportunity Seekers
Like all delivery methods, for some trainers this can take a lot of practice to master, while other trainers may naturally do it. There are two key elements here. Firstly, an ever expanding awareness of the surroundings is key; from the environment, the people, the conversations, and even words that are said. The second is having curiosity and a creative mindset. As opportunities appear, be curious, then utilise creativity to come up with and enable a learning opportunity.
Example
While running a children's teaching session, and more specifically working through tactics for behaviour management with children, a learning opportunity presents itself to the trainer in the form of their 12 year old son. The boy had searched them out at the top of the lift while the trainer (their Dad) was discussing this topic with some trainees. The son was frustrated that his mother would not let him ride the park and he had to hang out with his sisters. Being curious about this opportunity, the trainer engaged their son and asked if he could show the trainees some front side 180s off the side-hits below us, then he should probably go and catch up with his mum and sisters. He was stoked and said “yeah I can totally do that.” And off he went happy, showing them his 180s. The trainer then turned to his trainees and said “And that is the diversion tactic for managing negative behaviour in children!”
