The use of feedback
So far I have looked at Rapport, Listening and Questioning skills in terms of delivering Client-Centred Learning as opposed to instructor-led teaching. In this article I am going to look at Feedback. Developing feedback skills in your customers is the key to safe driving. This is the most important skill; the whole point of building rapport, actively listening and asking effective questions is to develop the clients’ ability to feedback to themselves how they are getting on.
With Client-Centred Learning feedback is used to raise the clients’ self-awareness of their strengths, limitations and development needs; also of how their thoughts and feelings impact on their behaviour. For this to be effective the instructor needs to be able to develop the clients’ ability to set their own benchmark, against which they can measure their performance. This process takes more or less time depending on the level of independent thinking the client is capable of. For example, when someone asks you, ‘Would you like tea or coffee?’ what is your response? Some people will say, ‘Whatever is easiest for you’. This is often a conditioned and polite response but it betrays the fact that some people find it difficult to make choices. Being able to make choices, recognising consequences and understanding the impact that choice will have on you, as an individual, is the result of effective self-evaluation skills – the ability to give oneself feedback.
When you ask your client how something went, the response may well be, ‘I’m not sure.’ This is not necessarily the time to dive in and give your opinion on how it went. I cannot stress enough how important it is to develop self-evaluation skills through the process of feedback. In my opinion a newly-qualified driver’s inability to self-evaluate leads to crashes. Developing in your clients the ability to consider how their driving is coming along, and giving them the skills to do so once they have passed their driving test, will enable them to recognise a near-miss and reflect on this, in order to take steps to prevent it from happening again.
If someone blasts their horn at you how do you feel? Some people will feel a surge of rage, which will consume them for moments, and during those moments, they could make decisions that are fuelled by their anger. In extreme cases, these decisions result in examples of road rage. Other people feel immediately embarrassed and assume they have done something wrong. This embarrassment is also consuming and may lead to decisions that are less than safe, such as sudden braking or swerving without checking the mirrors. Still others may feel fear, again resulting in unsafe actions as a result. Do you know how you respond? Do your customers know how they will respond? Do they understand how their feelings affect their thought processes and therefore their actions? Understanding how our emotional state motivates our behaviour is the first step to anticipating the likely consequences of the choices and decisions we make. Knowing how to manage our emotions so that the choices we make are safe is the result of feedback and self-evaluation.
Making mistakes whilst learning to drive provides an ideal context to develop self-evaluation skills. With traditional, instructor-led driver training we focus on the core competencies of fault identification, fault analysis and fault remedy. By dealing with faults and through repetitive practice we bring people’s driving up to a satisfactory level so that they can take and pass the practical test. On a behavioural level this works very well but it doesn’t take into consideration the fact that our thoughts and feelings drive our behaviour. A learner driver behaves in a certain way because they will be rewarded by their driving instructor and allowed to go for their driving test. However, this behaviour will not necessarily remain in place and when put under different pressures - driving unsupervised - the now newly-qualified driver will drive in a certain way according to their beliefs and motivation – and not because their driving instructor told them to.
So how can we develop self-evaluation skills in our clients? I am going to take a brief look at Reflection and Scaling.
Reflection is arguably the most important process we can use because it reinforces learning and helps it to become long-lasting. It is through reflection that we can learn from our mistakes and move forwards. Some people reflect formally by writing everything down and keeping reflective diaries; others just spend a few moments thinking about what happened and breaking the whole thing down in their minds. An important part of reflection is to consider how you were feeling and what you were thinking because both feelings and thoughts play a part in the behaviour that is displayed. Developing these skills of reflection in your clients is about encouraging them to think about a piece of their driving and looking at what happened. They may need to draw a diagram or go back and look at the scene; they may need to drive the same route again or they might benefit if you drive. Ask them what they were thinking at that precise moment and then ask them what they were feeling. These questions help them analyse their actions and encourage them to take responsibility and put strategies in place to develop.
Great reflective questions for developing feedback skills are:
Scaling can be used very effectively on feelings.
In my next article I will be looking at the use of intuition in Coaching.
So far I have looked at Rapport, Listening and Questioning skills in terms of delivering Client-Centred Learning as opposed to instructor-led teaching. In this article I am going to look at Feedback. Developing feedback skills in your customers is the key to safe driving. This is the most important skill; the whole point of building rapport, actively listening and asking effective questions is to develop the clients’ ability to feedback to themselves how they are getting on.
With Client-Centred Learning feedback is used to raise the clients’ self-awareness of their strengths, limitations and development needs; also of how their thoughts and feelings impact on their behaviour. For this to be effective the instructor needs to be able to develop the clients’ ability to set their own benchmark, against which they can measure their performance. This process takes more or less time depending on the level of independent thinking the client is capable of. For example, when someone asks you, ‘Would you like tea or coffee?’ what is your response? Some people will say, ‘Whatever is easiest for you’. This is often a conditioned and polite response but it betrays the fact that some people find it difficult to make choices. Being able to make choices, recognising consequences and understanding the impact that choice will have on you, as an individual, is the result of effective self-evaluation skills – the ability to give oneself feedback.
When you ask your client how something went, the response may well be, ‘I’m not sure.’ This is not necessarily the time to dive in and give your opinion on how it went. I cannot stress enough how important it is to develop self-evaluation skills through the process of feedback. In my opinion a newly-qualified driver’s inability to self-evaluate leads to crashes. Developing in your clients the ability to consider how their driving is coming along, and giving them the skills to do so once they have passed their driving test, will enable them to recognise a near-miss and reflect on this, in order to take steps to prevent it from happening again.
If someone blasts their horn at you how do you feel? Some people will feel a surge of rage, which will consume them for moments, and during those moments, they could make decisions that are fuelled by their anger. In extreme cases, these decisions result in examples of road rage. Other people feel immediately embarrassed and assume they have done something wrong. This embarrassment is also consuming and may lead to decisions that are less than safe, such as sudden braking or swerving without checking the mirrors. Still others may feel fear, again resulting in unsafe actions as a result. Do you know how you respond? Do your customers know how they will respond? Do they understand how their feelings affect their thought processes and therefore their actions? Understanding how our emotional state motivates our behaviour is the first step to anticipating the likely consequences of the choices and decisions we make. Knowing how to manage our emotions so that the choices we make are safe is the result of feedback and self-evaluation.
Making mistakes whilst learning to drive provides an ideal context to develop self-evaluation skills. With traditional, instructor-led driver training we focus on the core competencies of fault identification, fault analysis and fault remedy. By dealing with faults and through repetitive practice we bring people’s driving up to a satisfactory level so that they can take and pass the practical test. On a behavioural level this works very well but it doesn’t take into consideration the fact that our thoughts and feelings drive our behaviour. A learner driver behaves in a certain way because they will be rewarded by their driving instructor and allowed to go for their driving test. However, this behaviour will not necessarily remain in place and when put under different pressures - driving unsupervised - the now newly-qualified driver will drive in a certain way according to their beliefs and motivation – and not because their driving instructor told them to.
So how can we develop self-evaluation skills in our clients? I am going to take a brief look at Reflection and Scaling.
Reflection is arguably the most important process we can use because it reinforces learning and helps it to become long-lasting. It is through reflection that we can learn from our mistakes and move forwards. Some people reflect formally by writing everything down and keeping reflective diaries; others just spend a few moments thinking about what happened and breaking the whole thing down in their minds. An important part of reflection is to consider how you were feeling and what you were thinking because both feelings and thoughts play a part in the behaviour that is displayed. Developing these skills of reflection in your clients is about encouraging them to think about a piece of their driving and looking at what happened. They may need to draw a diagram or go back and look at the scene; they may need to drive the same route again or they might benefit if you drive. Ask them what they were thinking at that precise moment and then ask them what they were feeling. These questions help them analyse their actions and encourage them to take responsibility and put strategies in place to develop.
Great reflective questions for developing feedback skills are:
- What just happened?
- What were you thinking?
- How were you feeling?
- What do you need to do next time to develop?
- What help do you need from me?
- How will you know when you have succeeded?
- ‘On a scale of 0 to 10, where 10 is very good and 0 is rubbish, where would you put yourself regarding the bay parking you just did?’
- ‘What was good enough to make you give yourself a 1?’
- ‘So where would you like to be?’
- ‘How will you get there?’
- ‘Do you need any support from me?’
- ‘How will you feel when you have got there?’
Scaling can be used very effectively on feelings.
- How tired / confident / stressed / focused are you on a scale of 0 to 10?’
- ‘Describe a situation where you are at a much better point on the scale’
- ‘What do you need to do to get there?’
- ‘How can I help you?’
- ‘On a scale of 0 to 10 where 10 is amazingly smooth and 0 is horrendous where would you put yourself with the last gear change?’
- ‘Okay, so you say you are a 3, next time aim for a 4.’
In my next article I will be looking at the use of intuition in Coaching.
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