On this episode, I speak with coaching advocate and guru Bob Morton. We discuss why we should be using nonjudgmental terms and avoid the use of words like mistakes, better, and wrong. 

We also spend time discussing what driving instructors can do to improve their personal and professional standards, how we compare to the school of Mum and Dad, and there's even a special mention to Alan Shearer! 

You can find Bob Morton:

Client centered learning website: https://clientcentredlearning.co.uk/

Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1118231874978314

For more information on The Instructor Podcast visit https://www.theinstructorpodcast.com/

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Foreign.

Welcome and thank you for joining us on the instructor podcast where every week we're joined by experts and innovators, leaders and game changers so we can hold a mirror up at the instructor industry and see where we can improve and raise our standards.

So if you're ready, we'll make a start.

So thanks for joining us today on this first ever instructor podcast episode.

If you've heard the trailer, you know what the podcast is about.

So I'm not going to waffle on too much.

But the essence of this is that we're looking for ways that we can raise standards within the driver trading industry, things we can do to improve.

Now, some of these topics we will be a little bit controversial because there's a lot of people that disagree with them.

However, what I'm looking to do is bring in experts and innovators, leaders and game changers, both from inside our industry and outside.

So offer opinions and thoughts on things we can do different.

Again, to raise standard up, to hold a mirror, look at ourselves and raise standards.

And we're going to cover a wide variety of topics.

Now, as I said, I'm not an expert in any of these areas.

However, I know some people that are and they're going to be joining us now.

We're joined today by Bob Martin.

Now, Bob's been in the industry for decades and he's a coaching specialist.

He's a very successful coach and he's coming in to share his wisdom on coaching.

Now, I know this is a controversial topic because I see it spoke about a lot.

You know, you'll get the coaching brigade who massive advocates, champion it and say there's nothing else.

You'll also get the other people that are completely against it who want to remain as instructors and dictate and tell people what to do.

I think what this episode is and it's more the people in the middle, the ones that are maybe looking to a change and looking to improve.

So let's make a start and let's listen to Bob and listen to his insights.

Okay?

So thank you for joining us today on the instructor talking about health, self and wealth.

And today we are joined by the fabulous Bob Martin.

How are you doing, Bob?

All okay?

No.

The fabulous Bob Martin.

What an intro that is.

Fabulous Bob Martin.

Well, speaking of it, speaking of introductions, I debated for a while as to whether to actually introduce my guests and talk a bit about that background or whether to let you guys introduce yourself.

And I opted to let you introduce you because I thought that's a good option.

For you to say what you think is relevant and for me to pick the bones on it.

What I've got you to talk about today is coaching primarily.

So if you just tell us a little bit about your background, your journey to where you are now and actually kind of what you're doing now.

Oh, okay, cool.

Well, good morning, good morning or good afternoon or whatever time it is in the world where you are.

Hello, my name is Bob morton.

Ended up as director of training.

So being with LDC for three 30 years in that time I became a qualified teacher, qualified assessor, internal verifier coaching at level three and level five.

And I've written and developed training programs and LDC.

Now we've had something that just 3,000 ABIs to our through our training package and I've launched.

I've done the induction training for all of those, just about all of those instructors that have come through.

So I've done just about every job in the company.

So I've been around a bit.

I'm due to retire this year from ldc, stepping down as director of training.

My replacement is already in harness, the wonderful Mr. Stuart Rickard.

Super talented, great guy.

So I know I'm handing things over to the safe hands.

I'm not going to retire, retire.

I'll still be doing my own thing which I'm doing know alongside all of that client centered learning.

So coaching is my big thing.

But at the minute I'm, I'm trying to, I'm trying to if you like spread the word to as many as I can through my, through my subscription service Shimmers Plug.

So that's me.

That is that cover everything.

I suppose like everybody else when coaching was first mooted, I rolled my eyes and thought another, another blooming fad from the bdsa.

They'll get bored of this.

Anyway, they didn't.

So I was sort of if you like designated representative to find out a bit more about this.

And the, the videos that you see of me on YouTube are really just, they were the early stages of it in my experimentation, you know, my journey into coaching.

You know I did like everybody else did, read a lot of books, attended some courses and came away from it really fired up and enthusiastic thinking hey.

And then got to the point yet and then found it too difficult.

Sounds good.

So there's a lot to pick up there.

But I think the first thing I want to ask you is, tell me about that training course that you're doing now.

What's.

What's that?

Well, I'm running.

It's, it's.

It's a subscription service.

It's evolving as we go along and basically the people who are running get different things out of it.

Some people just want to come to the workshops that we do every week where we do like lesson evaluation, failure analysis, that kind of stuff.

Or sometimes I'll do a presentation on something and we'll have a discussion.

Sometimes it's a general Q and A.

Other people just want the online content that sits behind it.

If you just want to have a refresher for standard check at 19.99amonth, think, well, why not?

I'll give it a punt.

If it's no good, I'll bail out.

If you don't like it, get your money back.

So some people want it just because it gives them extra access to me.

They can just ask questions and ask.

So I'm.

It's becoming lots of different things, which isn't what I thought it would, but it's, it's, as with everything, you know, it sort of builds a life of its own.

So it's.

You can either have it as or you can take all of those things.

So it doesn't matter whether you're a brand new pbi, whether you're a vastly experienced area, there is something in there for you from getting through part two and part three, right to the other end, gaining your audit qualifications.

So that the program is designed to be all things to all people.

Sounds good.

I think.

Before we move into the coaching side of though, there is one more question I want to ask you because you spoke about.

Can you remember when you passed your driving test, your actual driving test?

So a few years ago.

And is this something I'm interested in?

What, what was the difference between the driving test then and now?

Can you, you know, if you were to say that again now, what would the obvious differences be?

Well, obviously I sat my motorbike test at the same time.

The.

The main difference.

I'll start with.

I'll start with the motorbike test.

The.

I fell off during my test, but the guy just stood on a street corner with a clipboard and I was on the other side of the block.

So I just picked myself up, climbed back on and rode back around and I passed.

It was such a simple thing, such a basic examination.

And I think the car test was pretty much the same.

It was whether you could drive.

And I think part of that was because you don't have to drive.

I sat my test with Triumph Herald.

Keeping the damn thing in a straight line was a test.

There was hardly any traffic on the roads.

Rush hour then was the equivalent of 10 o' clock in the morning now.

So the test was.

It was a lot simpler.

They weren't looking for as high a standard.

And as long as I'm convinced, as long as you didn't kill anybody, you got through.

Because my driving was atrocious.

I came away from that with a full license in my hand and thought, you're a clown.

Well, I didn't then.

I thought I was bulletproof and I was the best driver ever to grace the planet.

But looking back, it's a miracle I survived it.

Absolute miracle.

So I love the test there.

It's a much, much more of a test of whether you can drive or not.

Good stuff.

All right, so moving on to coaching, the first thing I'm going to throw at you is actually a quote that I heard you say.

It's not an exact quote.

I kind of nod it down.

But yeah, you basically said that.

And it's something I hear a lot as well actually that you'll get instructors that say, well, I'm doing client centered learning.

I'm doing coaching because I asked my student what they wanted to do and they said, you tell me because you're the instructor and you kind of relay in that back.

And I think your response was, that's not coaching.

That's not client settling.

That's a cop out.

So can you expand on what you mean by that?

Because, and I'm going to play devil's advocate slightly, there will be people that think it's coaching because our client side learning, because the client has said, you tell me so that you know there's that side of it.

So what you know.

Can you expand on that a little bit?

I can, I can.

It's not going to be a short or a simple answer.

That's good.

So we have, I mean it cuts to the heart of what it's about.

The.

When it first came in, the DDSA talked all the time about coaching.

This was going to be the new thing, coaching.

And they got a group of ADIs together in Nottingham, give them a bit of training and let them loose.

Unsurprisingly, you know, these guys were.

Because coaching is really free form and generally performed by people who don't know what the subject is, but just asking questions to help the person they're dealing with come up with the answer.

It was a bit free form.

So lesson number two.

What do you want to do today?

Fast moving roundabouts.

Oh, right.

Well, let's have a go that.

Let's see what happens.

Well, it's no surprise that some dodgy stuff happens.

So it was in the hands of the wrong people.

Then, of course, the Hermes project announced their final report and there was a piece of video that was with it.

And I'm convinced this was the turning point for the bvsa.

And there's a bit in it there where the instructor says, right, listen, hey, we've got to get back the office.

Maybe I should drive.

No, no, no, I'll tell you what, you drive.

But hey, come on, crack on, hurry up, come on.

Spit spot, spit spot.

The pupil then goes to run through a stop line or a stop sign and the instructor has to hit the brake.

That then follows a lovely coaching conversation about what can be learned from that.

But the DDSA will have looked at that and gone, whoa, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You have willfully put somebody into a dodgy situation and everything that we do is about not putting people into dodgy situations.

And our job is to manage the risk.

So I think at that point we're not keen on this coaching Malaki.

What we need is something in between.

Hence the term client centered learning.

That's my theory.

I don't know how true that is.

I don't know, but I'm convinced.

So that's where we've got.

You have to identify the people's learning goals and needs.

But if you just let them do whatever they want, the examiner's going to crush you and go, you shouldn't have done that.

But in a pure coaching sense, you would say, well, okay, what's the advantages, what's the disadvantages, what's our options, what's the way forward?

Let's execute that and see what happens.

Because you're not the expert.

So the trouble comes when we enter a safety critical environment.

You cannot let people just do whatever they want.

Nor can you, on the other end of the scale, just let people.

I just want to carry on doing this.

Yeah, but you're not going to learn anything from it.

Yeah, but that's what I want to do.

So it's a bit of a cop out and it's something that we, we need to get ourselves over as an industry.

It isn't just about letting the learner do whatever they want to do.

We have an externally moderated test.

So as a, as a team, we have to decide how are we going to meet all this criteria, what order should we do this criteria in?

What level of help will you need from me?

How will we determine what level of help?

And if you look at the part three form, that's what it's about.

The first line says, did the trainer identify the people's level?

Now, if you've done 20 minutes, I had some big fail just, you know, not that long ago that did a 20 minute segment on independent driving which went unbelievably.

Well, pull over, have a little bit of a chat.

So what do you want to do now?

Or can we just do more of this here?

And of course the candidate said, yeah, all right.

Then at the end, they were massively criticized by the examiner, said, what did you do that for?

You were done with that.

Why didn't you move it on or at least set a bigger challenge?

He said, but that's what my people wanted to do.

So I'm being client centered.

No, you're not.

It's your job then, as the driver training professional to say, well, we've done that, now we need to be moving on.

So I either I need to give you less help, you need to set more of a challenge, or we've been in that and moving on to something else.

So it's, you know, I hear it and sometimes people are being clients.

So I don't want to diss people who say that, but we've got to really think about, well, who are we serving here?

Are they really being helped?

You know, oh, I just want you to tell me what to do.

We have to fight.

Why is that?

Why do they want that?

Is it a defense mechanism?

It's a barrier.

Because at school, coming up with ideas was a negative experience.

Their friends laughed at them, people pointed, the teacher berated them.

That's what's generally underpinning it.

So what do you want to do?

I don't know.

You're the instructor, you tell me.

That's a cop out.

They don't want to answer the question or they don't feel comfortable enough, and this is the general, they don't feel comfortable enough in that person's presence to bear their soul.

You know, it's really important.

The number one priority for A coach is to create the right environment, to create the rapport, to create the environment where the learner or the person you're trying to help doesn't fear judgment from you.

And of course they do fear judgment from us because we use ridiculously judgmental language.

That was good.

That was bad.

Bad.

That was better.

That was worse.

What should we work on?

What should we try and get better?

How are you going to do that better next time?

What we should be talking about if we really want to be coachy is what's the outcome we're expecting from this exercise we're about to undertake?

And then what's the outcome we got?

Let's compare what we got with what we wanted.

Is it different?

Yeah.

How different?

How can we turn what we got into what we wanted?

There's no judgment there.

So this is critical and because we don't understand it, we want to set fire to it.

So, yeah, I'm a good instructor, mate.

I hear that all the time from beer.

Nobody said you weren't a good instructor.

You're not very good at coaching.

Doesn't make you a bad instructor if you're not good at coaching.

Wow, that's a bit of a long winded answer, wasn't it?

No, I thought it was quite articulate.

But again, there are some key things to pick up there.

So I'll try and get these one at a time.

Because one thing, that interest in me, it's like, say you ask what the student wants and they tell you that doesn't always mean it's the best thing, you know, and often it's why they want that thing.

And I'm going to give an example of something that I did here when I made a mistake as an instructor, and this is admittedly going back a few years, but I had a student and they wanted to do.

I struggle with the word rural.

Rural.

So I'm going to say country roads.

Well, let's do country roads.

And we'd done like, we've done them and they were fine on them and I asked them why and they were.

The answer they gave me was because they were a bit stressed from home and they enjoyed doing country roads and they found them relaxing.

That was to me.

Oh yeah, let's do that then.

That was a cop out for me.

I'm just like that.

The next lesson want to do the same.

And I think it happened for two or three lessons and I was just like, yeah, let's do this.

This is easy for me.

And I was instructor.

It was only.

I Kind of gave myself a little bit of a kick up backside and digged into why.

And the reason why they wanted to keep doing these country roads was because in their head, the next thing they were going to do was roundabouts, and they were scared of roundabouts.

So it was nothing to do with.

I mean, there probably was an element of the stress there as well, at home and them enjoying country roads because it is a nice drive.

But it was the fear of the next thing.

And it was only by actually delving into that and asking why that you get that.

And, you know, I'm an instructor.

You are.

And I'm sure there's a lot of instructors listening that have had that where that, that student or that customer says, you tell me you're the instructor.

And I find, sorry, sorry.

There's lots of things that go with that.

You're the instructor, you tell me.

All right, so I want to just do country roads.

Why do you want to do that?

Straight away?

We're on the back foot.

If we say, what do you hope to gain from that?

What are we aiming to achieve?

What's the outcomes we're looking for?

It's very different to why, because if you say why to somebody, they instantly want to defend that position.

Well, that's because what I want to do.

So I'm stressed at warmer.

And it's just a whole lot of psycho babble comes out rather than just say, well, what do we hope to gain from that?

Is that useful to us in terms of our development?

Let's have a little look and we have a, you know, we have the LDC workbook Shameless plug here.

But at the start of it, we have a lesson matrix at the skill level.

There's all the lessons.

So if we want, you know, if we're at this skill level and we're wanting to do stuff up here, what are we hoping to gain from that?

What's the plan?

So out of these, do you not think it would be useful, or would it be useful to you to do one of these, do you think?

Oh, yeah.

Or I might say, okay, so we've got to.

Here, here's the rest of our program.

It's a little chat about what order are we going to do these things in?

What makes you place it in that order?

Is there something that made you prefer that over that?

If so, what?

So I'm never using why I'm never putting them on the rack.

It took me the longest time to learn this.

And like I said, when I look back at those early Videos now on the YouTube, stuff like oh my God, you know.

So what we did was we tried to force the thing by tying me hands, no instruction allowed.

And I was as clumsy as hell.

I was all over the place and I used to just throw back at the learner, what do you think?

What do you think?

And much to my amazement, the learning really started to happen very quickly.

And I was forced to admit not at the time because I wouldn't, because I'm a good instructor, me.

After that I was forced to realize that my instruction actually was getting in the way.

I was preventing learning happening by superimposing my way of doing it onto somebody else.

Because we learn because we create synapses in our brain.

It's our map of the world.

When we compare what we know with this new information, learning happens if somebody superimposes there.

So there's a myriad of connections in our brain, billions of these connections and every human being on the planet, that connection map is radically different.

So if I use my map and try and force on anyone, that's still not going to work, not as effectively as it would if they search for the thing.

So I always want my question to start conversations.

Why isn't a conversation starter, you know, a technique that I use if I'm stuck by something to say or if I can't find my way through it without judgment, I'll say, well, that's interesting.

What made you say that?

What made you do that?

What makes you think that?

I'm never saying why?

Or I'll go, oh, tell me more about that.

I've yet to meet somebody who goes, no, I'm not telling you anything because it's a real opener.

It's a rapport creating question.

But our questioning needs to be about trying to understand what they understand.

And there's a fantastic poem written by a guy called Soren Kierkegaard.

It's about 200, 300 year old now.

And it starts right before you can help someone, you've got to understand what they understand.

If you don't start from the wrong place and if you start from the wrong place, it's difficult to get to where you want to go.

Yes, it's interesting you say that because one thing that sticks out for me from, from when I trained to be an instructor, and this probably isn't true 100% of the time, but I think it's true a lot of the time is as an instructor, when the learner makes a mistake, really that's their mistake.

When they make the Same mistake a second time, that's my mistake.

If they're repeating the mistake, that's more on me than them.

And I think that largely as an industry, as you've just said, we're very defensive and we don't like holding that mirror up and looking at ourselves and what we could do differently.

So I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that.

Well, I think one of the easy ways to sort of describe is to look at my journey through it.

And there came a point where I tried to avoid judgmental language and it became difficult.

Let's start to try and analyze.

Why am I finding this difficult?

And it's because I was raised in the industry by the DVSA on that all part three test.

And the old test was based upon the examiner pretending to be a learner driver and making mistakes, or faults as they were called.

And if they were left uncorrected, they could possibly become dangerous.

Your job was to find it and fix it.

So you had to find the fault, you had to analyze the fault and then you had to put some remedial action in place.

So that's how we're trained.

We're trained in a fault based world and that everything's around that you've made a mistake there.

This is why that's a problem.

Here's how you're going to fix it.

I'm going to talk you through it, then I'm going to prompt you, then you're going to have a go on your own.

So it's the old educational way of doing things.

And it's very difficult when you're being in that world where it's all about finding the faults and fixing the faults.

I think, you know, when you start reading stuff about you've got to remove judgmental language.

You can't say fault, you can't say a mistake.

How the hell else am I supposed to help them to learn?

And you know so well the will.

No, no, how can they learn?

You know, it's impossible if I've not taught them how to do it.

That was another strand.

People can work it out for themselves because people are super smart.

So once we start getting into the newer way of doing things, which is about getting the learning out rather than putting the learning in.

If you've not been trained to do that or you've not practiced that, it becomes extraordinarily difficult.

So we start using things, oh, you made a mistake, there's a fault there.

I mean, find a fault.

So if we can switch to outcomes, it's a game changer.

What's the outcome we're expecting here?

Okay, let's look at the outcome we got.

Let's compare the two.

How are we going to turn that into that?

What level of help do you want from me?

So it can become really, really difficult.

But, you know, as soon as you start using words like fault and mistake, people climb up on you and they just sit back and wait to be educated.

The way to be instructed.

There's also that perception.

Of course, that's what driving lessons are.

You go along, you sit next to a driving instructor, you make some mistakes, they spot them and fix them where it's, you know, there's no need to work that way.

It happens quicker if you just stop talking about it.

And it's amazing the conversations you can have if you just structure them the right way and if you use the right kind of language.

And I'll give you an illustrator of that.

This is a scenario I normally use.

Find somebody that you disagree with on Brexit and we've all got a friend that we disagree with on Brexit.

And the next time a conversation starts where you're just about to raise your finger and, you know, dig it into their ribs, just stop yourself for a second and just say, that's interesting.

What made you say that?

Or what made you think that?

What makes you think that?

Or tell me more about that and you'll start to understand what they understand, which might just change your mind about their position.

Once you get an understanding of it.

It's not because they're a racist or they're an idiot.

It's because I've just given away my position on Brexit.

It's not because of that, it's because they believe this because of.

And that's because of, you've got a chance now of changing that person's way of thinking with a nice conversation about stuff.

Oh, that's interesting.

They're then probably going to say to you, well, why?

Why do you think what you think?

And it's, it's how the world's problems are solved.

It's a, it's a.

It's about setting expectations at the start, creating the right environment.

And then when I first met Christian Van Neuberg, we were searching around for expertise and he invited us down to London at the University of East London.

We spent a day with him.

It was phenomenal.

But he's opening gambit with me was coaching.

It's dead simple.

It's a relationship and it's a conversation and at the time I thought what's he on about?

That's nonsense man.

How I'm going to fix the faults for that.

But over a period of time and it did take a lot of time and I didn't buy into it to begin with.

I just thought this is just nonsense.

That's ridiculous.

Instruction is the best way to do it.

Well it's not, it isn't.

It never has been.

But our systems are built on the old educational system and that was born in the middle ages where education was done by monks who carried a book around, stuck it on a plinth and read to an assembled throng that was sat cross legged around them.

That was education.

You come in, sit down, shut up and listen.

And it works for some people but not for others.

So what do we do with the ones that it doesn't work with?

Well, they're obviously dummies, so let's get rid of them, that's where.

And we do the same things.

All people take longer.

Women are better at this, blokes are better at that.

It's, you know, it's nonsense.

It's nonsense.

If we work in their terms that they learn at a very, very rapid pace.

So we're very good at pigeonholing things and we're very good at railing against it and saying, well that's just nonsense.

If we just relax for a second and just think, well I wonder what would happen if I tried that and give it a go and see what happens.

As long as you're managing the safety end of it, you know, then you're right, you can't take a lesson number two and go on a motorway.

You know, you just, you've got to think about it and have a proper conversation about, well, how are we structuring this?

That's what the risk management's about.

It's not about a three minute speech at the start.

Yeah.

And when we're talking there about mistakes, I could hear 35,000 ADI saying, but if they make a mistake and I can't tell them they made a mistake, how can we correct the mistake?

But then like you've gone on to say, you know, you talk about the feelings behind it, it's not saying you're not allowed to speak about the mistake.

No one's saying that it's just followed a mistake.

Yeah, it's the terminology and asking how people feel about and asking for their opinion on it.

You know, generally learners know when they've done something right or wrong, don't they?

They do.

And it's it's interesting what you say there, Tony.

It's something I want to, I want to up on a little bit.

It's.

We're going to find out what they feel, what they think.

Now, when I first came across that, I thought, all right, what?

So get the sofa out, lie on.

Just lie on there and tell me about your relationship with your father.

It's not that.

But as abis who are against coaching think, it is our behavior and that's what we're talking about here when we're driving.

It's.

It's behavior.

Our behavior is driven by what we think and what we feel.

So if we want to change the behavior, the only way you're going to do that is change the way people think or feel about it.

Now, that doesn't mean you've got to get all touchy feeling new world and all that sort of stuff.

It's just, let's look at the outcomes we were expecting.

So you've got an outcome that you're expecting, you can compare.

Is that the outcome we were expecting?

What was different about it?

The classic one.

It's the questions we ask as well.

So if you want a game changer, think about your questioning.

Make your questions more powerful, make your questions based upon gaining understanding.

So if I've got somebody and we've all been in this scenario where you're approaching a reasonably fast moving roundabout, you look across, there's that cold, icy stair to the front and the knuckles have gone white, you know what's coming next.

So if you didn't intervene, that had gone over that in a straight line without slowing down or without looking.

So we ask the question, how can we make that better?

You know the answer to that?

Well, you know, take a bit of observation.

Slowing down might help.

Maybe a lower gear, the clutch up, maybe some observation before we cross the giveaway line.

And a bit of steering wouldn't hurt either.

You learn nothing from your question.

But if I say what was going through your mind as you approach that roundabout, what were you feeling?

What were you thinking?

They're going to say something like bloody terrified.

Terrified of what?

Or from the other angle, if I want to use a question, I'll say stuff like how are you deciding whether to go or not?

Now I don't know the answer to that question.

And a conversation shown going to follow, which will probably help us as a pair.

Not me fixing it, but we're just discussing stuff.

Great.

What can we do about that?

So, you know, I've inputted that I'm Aware of the surroundings and the pupil's actions.

Because I brought it up after the event rather than before, potentially.

But if I was having to jump in before.

Come on, slow down, slow down, slow down.

We're still gonna have that conversation.

What's the.

Let's have a little look at our outcome there.

What was, you know, what was.

What was there about it?

That was what we were expecting.

So stuff about it that we weren't expecting.

Let's look at how we can turn what we weren't expecting into what we're expecting next day.

What's that going to look like?

What level of help you're going to want from me that now puts together a new plan.

Was the lesson plan adapted when appropriate?

Help the people work towards their learning goals.

Because the learning goals that we're working on are constant and they evolve in every minute of every lesson.

Always.

It's not about that speech at the start.

Which then means we've got to put together a new set of goals and a new plan and the cycle repeats itself.

That's how people learn.

We're hardwired to learn that way.

Kolb's experiential learning cycle.

David Kolb and Ronald Fry, look it up.

If you haven't seen it, it's fascinating.

That's how human beings are hardwired.

We experience something, we reflect upon it, we review, we think about what will we do next day and we execute that new plan.

If that works, great, we store it away.

If it doesn't, we look for something else.

We're wired to learn that way.

If we fit that pattern as ADIs, the learning happens at at least twice the speed.

Yeah.

Another long winded answer.

No, but they're all useful because I think what you've kind of touched on there almost inadvertently is, is the difference between attitude and skill, you know, and, and that's something I, I run a Facebook group for my, my learners and it's something I talk about a lot in there.

In.

I'll get people on their first lesson.

I'll.

I'll ask them, what have your friends told you?

What have your parents told you?

Or what are you worried about?

And the number of people that say hill starts and we'll do a hill start.

And generally the people that are worried about hill starts will struggle with hill starts.

The people that aren't worried about them, water struggle.

So I would say a lot of the time driving isn't even a skill issue.

The skill is at times, a lot of times it's relatively straightforward.

It's the attitude.

It's the attitude of the car behind you at a roundabout being too close or beeping so you're then trying to pull out into an unsafe space because you think you should go.

Or the attitude of Mum and Dad saying, you learn to drive when you pass your test.

Oh, God, yeah.

That old test, yeah.

But the problem is, it's actually true, because what we do is we get herded towards a test and we get through it and then we start learning different ways of doing things.

And that's what they're talking about.

You gain experience.

But what we need to do is to take them through a whole series of structured experiences and conversations following them that help them evaluate the outcomes of their efforts and hardwire their way of doing things into their map of the world inside their head.

Because it was their idea, they were involved in the conversation and they can see the merits of it.

They're not going to change the way they do it.

And I see people 20 years later, after passing their test, they come to me for part two training, and they haven't got mastery of the clutch.

And they'll tell you, I don't like junctions, I don't like this.

It's not junctions that learner drivers don't like.

For the ADIs out there that think it is that way, it's stopping and starting they don't like and they'll do anything but stop.

How many of you have got learner drivers that'll do anything but stop?

That's clutch control.

Because what we do is because we think that's the way we do it, we spend 10 minutes, 15 minutes, half an hour, whatever, on clutch control, and then we're out on the real roads, if we haven't got clutch mastery, you should not be on the main road, you should be nowhere near it.

That learner needs to understand how to control that car at varying speeds on different gradients.

And the only way they're going to do that is by a series of experimentation and working out what works for them.

And all we need to say is, okay, what's our.

What we're going to do this time?

If they said, oh, this will work.

Okay, here's some options.

And this is the way to get yourself into coaching.

What do you want to do?

I don't know.

Well, here's some options.

Choose one of those.

All right, I think I'd like to go that eventually, when you're staying, what do you want to do?

Changes from I don't know to what's me options, and then what's me options, changes to.

I've been thinking about this.

What I'd like to do is that's when you know you've got it.

What I'd really want from this session for most of my training now, and there's none of them recalling it, there will be once we're allowed back out, hopefully next week or the week after.

I'm going to record some more because all I do know is that when somebody gets in, just what's the plan of it?

And they've got detailed plans because they know it is their processor and they're excited about making plans because they know they're going to develop quickly and they know that they don't need me.

I'm a facilitator of learning.

I'm there to ask questions, to pause different scenarios to them perhaps, and to help them evaluate the outcomes.

I am, of course, also I do have a different hat to wear, a safety hat where I will intervene if I need to.

If we're going to, you know, impact on somebody's safety.

If I do do that, and this is another key one, we'll have a conversation about what we learned from it.

That conversation is never about whose fault it is, which is what I observe in most ABIs that I sit in the back of.

We talk about who's to blame and we can blame the other road user.

All right, that's okay then.

So we have no part to play in it.

So if we start asking the kind of questions and open up conversations, we're in business.

Yeah.

And from my experience there, I think the reason a lot of learners say the things I do is because they don't always know the answer.

And I'm going to kind of give a slightly different example here as well.

And again, me and you're in Facebook groups.

We probably see people talk about this a lot.

It's the question that we ask as ADI is why is the first question a student always ask is how much are lessons?

What else are they going to ask?

They don't know what to ask, isn't it?

They don't know what else to ask.

Yeah.

So how much of that do you think is relevant?

The guys not actually knowing what to ask or what to do or what to answer.

Well, I think it's very relevant.

It cuts right from our very first interaction with the word the phone up.

How much is it?

What's your class rate?

So ADIs who get annoyed at that and say, well, okay, you know, find something that you don't know about and Ring somebody to talk about it.

What you going to say?

And I'll say, what?

What made me ask that question?

Well, because I don't know about it.

Right, okay, so now do you see where the alarm is at?

All right, so through that little interaction, get getting them to think, you know, look at it from a different angle.

All right, now I've got a bit of understanding about why the learner would ask that.

So whose responsibility is it to manage that conversation?

Who has the expertise?

Oh, it's me.

Right, okay.

So next time somebody says to you, how much is it?

Could you answer that a different way?

Now if they say to me, I don't know, the classic answer, I say, well, here's some options.

Go away and try some of those.

And then the next time we come back, which one of those options work best for you?

So I am going to do that all the time.

Have you thought of any other ways you could do that?

So I'm just through a conversation and this is what we need to do all the way through with the learners, most of them are 17.

They haven't got a lot of life experience.

They've got a lot of knowledge inside them.

They've got 17 years of experience and stuff.

But what else are you going to ask a driving instructor, you know, what grade are you?

They don't know about the grading system or you want a training license or you're on a green badge.

They don't know about that either.

How long you been doing the job?

That seems a little too forward.

Are you any good?

They're not gonna ask that, are they?

You know, I'm thinking of having driving lessons.

You're not shitting your way.

Nobody's gonna ask that, are they?

So they ask the one thing they can ask.

Well, how much is it?

So you know, I'm generally more expensive than the people around me.

So they'll say, how much is it?

Well, I can answer that question, but let me find out a little bit more about you first.

Are the lessons for you?

Do you have any experience?

Because that will have an impact on how many lessons it's going to take.

I could probably cobble a deal together based on your experience and the number of lessons you're going to need.

So let me try and find out a bit more about you.

And then the conversations about them already, they're starting to buy in.

I'm not just going, oh, God, not this question again.

And I'll never pick the phone up.

Hello?

The people who complain about their learners asking stupid questions.

Jimmy don't answer the phone.

Very well.

So where are we now?

It's five to 12.

So if I pick the phone up now, I go, good morning, get through to Bob, how can I help?

So they now know they're through to the right place.

So it's important, you know, how can I help you?

So we ask the right questions and people are saying to me, well, how much is it?

Well, what's the cheapest you found so far?

And around here it's generally 20 quid.

So if you want lessons with me, it's 35.

What?

So, well, okay, do you want cheap or do you want good value?

Because they're not looking for cheap, good value.

I say, well, my battling average to test is 22.

So if you want to multiply 35 by 22, okay, your average instructor takes 47 hours to test, so you want to multiply 47 by 20.

All right?

So, and then of course you say, well, what if I don't make it in 22?

I'll trade it for free.

What if this happens?

What if I'm not happy with it?

Give me your money back.

Everything I do, no cripple money back, guarantee you don't like what I've done, just shout out, I've never been shafted yet.

I'm not saying that I'm not going to be, but I haven't so far.

And if somebody does think that it wasn't worthwhile, I'll give them, give them that money back and look for a lesson for me to learn.

So it's all in the questioning we ask.

And that runs right through not just answering the phone, but during lessons, you know the classic scenarios, you know, too close to park cars.

Yeah, you're close to park cars again.

Oh, yep.

You know, close these cars again.

How much room should we leave between us and the park car?

Oh, it's, it's.

Oh, hang on, it's.

Oh, it's a meter, isn't it?

Yeah.

Come on, you did it on your theory.

Yeah, yeah, It's a meter.

Yeah.

Was that a meter?

I think so.

And then, Come on, a bit further, a bit further.

A bit.

That, that's it.

That's where you need to be.

See that windscreen wiper?

Line that up with the side of the car, use the edges of the cars as the curb and do all that.

And then inevitably they start drifting back towards it or they cut the right hand corner.

You've cut the corner again.

Oh, God.

Or the classic one, the one that I see instructors really struggle with.

You've got a really ridiculously nervous learner traveling at 39 miles an hour on a national speed limit.

And you say, well, why are you traveling this speed?

I feel safe.

I feel safe at this speed.

How many times have you heard that?

So we say, come on, go a bit faster, a bit faster.

Come on, we need to get up.

We need to get up to speed a bit faster.

And you go up in 1 mile an hour increments to about 49 and stick there for a long time.

So the change in the question we ask, why is that happening now?

If you sit them, why are you doing that?

Well, they're going to back off and defend themselves.

But if I say so, 39.

So tell me about the speed you've chosen it.

You think that's the right speed to travel at?

I do.

What are you basing that on?

Because I feel safe.

Okay, how many cars have overtaken us?

All of them.

Okay, look at the guy behind us now.

Tell me what's going on in his mind now.

He looks angry, looks impatient, doesn't he?

Is he going to get the overtake right now that he's impatient, or will that impact on his judgment?

Probably will.

Have we contributed to that?

And the little light bulb goes on.

Oh, crap.

Yeah.

So by traveling at this speed, you're actually contributing to being unsafe, aren't you?

All right.

Okay, so the jump goes from 39 to 60 then.

Or I might say, should we try 60?

I've got your back.

You can't come to any harm.

When I'm exit.

Should we try 60 and see how that feels?

And the tent to go bang, straight to it.

Somebody cut in the right hand corner.

I can bag on and on and on and on all day, putting my map of the world on top of theirs and hoping that they're going to align somehow.

But if I just say how you decide when to turn?

So it's, it's all about finding the why, you know, and even if we go right back to them prices, it's why do you think that's expensive?

You know, you don't have to ask that question, but there's a reason why they think that £35, whatever you charge now, there is a reason why they think that's expensive.

And part of the reason I raised that question was that was actually quite a telling moment for me a few years back when I changed the way I answered questions like that.

And I can't remember what made me change the way, but people would ask for prices.

I'll tell them My prices.

And then that moan about it, I'd say, right, we'll go somewhere else.

And, you know, and then I changed the way that I actually answered that question and told them why it's that price and explained, right, well, this is what you'd have to pay overall, you know, kind of went through it and I started getting, I wouldn't say more customers, but more of the customers that would have said no, because they were buying into me.

They weren't just seeing a price, they were seeing me.

And then the second thing that I found as a big benefit to that was when they came to lessons, because I've been conversing with them, they felt like a trust already, almost like they knew me a little bit.

Yeah, the point of call for an ADI generally is to go onto Facebook and bitch about them.

These bloody pupils calling me and ringing me up.

Hang on a minute, let's.

Let's have a little look at what's happening here.

So this is happening here.

So is it them?

Is it you?

Let's have a look at what's going on.

Other ADIs aren't having that problem.

Why do you think that is?

Well, in a different area, you got better people say, so if we can turn the finger of blame.

Because if the finger of blame is pointing at the learner, there's nothing to learn.

If the finger of blame instantly points backwards at yourself, that's a game changer, big style.

So you're going to think, well, did I contribute to that?

Could I have done that a different way?

How else could I have done that?

What other options are available to me?

And then trying one or two of them and as you say, you get that more of a bond from the word go.

And they see that you're interested in them.

So I ask people, did you sound interested in the people?

What do you mean?

Well, tell me, show me how you answer the phone.

Well, hello.

So straight off they're thinking, is this the driving school?

Another.

Another classic one, you know.

Hello, is that the driving school?

Yes, it is.

Do you do lessons?

That's a classic 1.

And Adis get annoyed about it.

Well, they don't know what to say, so they're just blurting stuff out.

So if I say it's afternoon, good afternoon, it threw it to Bob Adi at clients that they're learning.

How can I help you today?

Now, we know now, ADIs don't like that because I think it's in American cheesy.

And I always finish every call with thanks for the call, even if they're not going to buy from us.

Thanks for your customer or thanks for your inquiry.

And I make a list of how many inquiries I get and my aim is to have 100% conversion rate.

I want all of my inquiries to become customers.

If they don't, that's my fault, because that person on the other end of the phone is looking to spend that money on driving lessons.

If they don't buy them with me, that is my fault, pure and simple.

Once we learn that lesson, it's a game changer, but it's not easy to go on Facebook and complain about them.

Yeah, I think what you've mentioned a couple of times throughout here, it's talking about a learn for us as instructors and I think that's massive.

I think that.

And again, this is me being honest.

When I first started, I'd often put the blinkers down.

You know, the.

It's their fault.

They're not picking up quickly because they're just a slow learner.

Well, there may be an element of that we can't hide from the fact that some people do pick up quicker than others, this human nature.

However, I'm the one largely in charge of that and every lesson.

Now, when I.

Slight tangent, when I first started, I would make my lessons as close together as I possibly could.

I wanted to get my day over with, day done, get home, tea on whatever.

Yeah, I soon changed that and started making the gap between lessons a little bit longer because I wanted a little bit of time to reflect on that lesson and then prepare for the next lesson.

So rather than having 10 or 15 minutes and I will put to 45 to an hour, and that's not suitable for everyone, but for me, it gives me time to think, what could I have done different on that lesson to make that improve it?

And, you know, sometimes it's nothing, sometimes there's a lot.

But I do think that we have to hold a mirror up to his own teaching, his own instructing, his own coaching at times and think, what could we have done different?

I think it's a very, very broad subject and one that we need to start paying attention to.

You know, the facts and figures came out recently.

You know, there's a whole argument to be had here, but the school of Mum and Dad, actually, their pass rate was a teeny bit higher than ours was.

As professional abis, there's a million, million and one different reasons why that might be.

And, you know, I've heard all the reasons and I don't think as an industry we're Serious enough about our own development now.

I got interested in my own development once I saw that coaching worked.

And there was a better way of doing it than judgment, wasn't it?

But there was a more efficient and effective way of doing it.

I started to look at my own development.

And when we look at cpd, we think, we instantly think about, I'll go on a course, I'll read a book, I'll listen to a podcast, sorry.

But it's not just that.

We need to start looking at the fundamentals.

What's our dairy management like?

We should experiment with different working patterns and see which gives us the ability to be the most effective, the most up, the most vibrant, the most coachy.

We've got to look at our sleeping patterns, our eating pattern.

What sort of food are we eating?

Driving instructors are notorious for eating Mars bars and pasties because you need a pasty in between lessons.

It's the worst food in the world.

So start thinking about having porridge in the morning and if you're going to have some extra foods, you know, have oaty type stuff, have stuff that's slow release, don't eat Marsma, you're going to energy hit from that but it's gone in 20 minutes.

So start thinking about, do you wind down in between lessons?

What's your relaxation techniques like?

Look at your breathing, look at your hydration level.

Traditionally we're not hydrated enough because we don't want to be over hydrated because you need the toilet all the time and that's a bit of a pain, isn't it?

But we're made up of about 82 to 85% water, so if you're even slightly dehydrated, you don't function properly.

I do a conquering anxiety and stress cough and it's a big thing is hydration and sleeping patterns.

You've got to set yourself up to be able to do that, then look to get some extra qualifications.

But look at what you've got already.

How can you make the best of what you've got?

And it can make a radical difference being the right level of hydration on board and the right level of sleep.

So start looking at your working patterns.

I know an awful lot of ADIs who get home at the end of the lesson, a day full of lessons for themselves, a beer or a glass of wine and they're asleep before they've finished it because they're knackered.

They've done all the thinking, all the planning.

Start getting your illness through that kind of stuff.

Start looking at your working pattern.

Are you hurting yourself with this?

You should absolutely and utterly thrive and enjoy this job.

If you're not, you're not doing it right.

And I don't mean the technical instructions, though.

Your working patterns are not suitable.

You've really got to look at that.

That's the first protocol for CPD is to look at your working patterns and can you get more energy from yourself through the day?

Can you start to enjoy it a bit more?

I talk to professional drivers as well as ADIs and I'll say, do you enjoy doing instruction or do you enjoy driving?

I used to.

I hear that a lot.

I used to.

What's changed?

Well, it's.

And it's always somebody else's fault, it's never them.

Okay, let's have a little look at how you're doing the job.

Is that how you started doing the job?

I know what's different about it now.

All I've crammed extra less than me working.

What's that bringing you?

What's the benefits?

What's the disadvantages?

So it's.

It's really thinking a bit broader and a bit wider and I think that's.

Sorry.

I think that's more important than ever at the moment.

With lessons about to resume again with the backlog of tests and the.

I mean, we're all feeling it now, we're all getting those messages.

Can you start me?

Can you start?

My instructor can't take me to test.

Can you take me?

You know, we're all getting those now.

Is it's so tempting to.

To make.

What does it make here while the sunshine.

So I'll get all of these lessons in, but, you know, it's going to have an impact and I think it's.

It's important as an industry that we are not saying don't do an extra few hours.

I'm saying it's important as industry to manage that diary correctly now and not to think, let's do 60 hours just to try.

Try and get the money back up.

Well, I think what we need to do is we need to practice what we preach.

And, yes, there's going to be a huge glut of work, but we need to look at the Part 3 form and draw some parallels with what's going to be different when we go back to work.

Are you going to just do the same as you did before, but do more hours in a day, end up burnt out and then feeling a little bit bleh about the job again a little while?

Are you going to set yourself some goals.

I want to try and enjoy the job more.

Right, how are we going to do that?

Let's have a little look at your working pattern.

Okay, there's going to be extra demand.

How are you going to deal with that demand?

People just think, when you've got to take those lessons.

No, there's not enough instructors to go around.

There's not going to be.

So what you need to do is to start creating a waiting list.

Now, not all of them will wait on a waiting list, but some of them will.

And once you've got demand outstripping supply, then you can look to get your prices a bit higher, but still building.

You've got to look at the whole picture.

What do you want from the job?

Make a list.

Now, as we wait for the announcement from good old Boris tomorrow as to whether we can go back a week tomorrow.

What do you want from the job?

What hours do you want to work?

What sort of money do you want to earn?

How do you want to feel when you get home?

Knackered, burnt out or still full of enthusiasm?

So you can not kick the dog and be nice to your Mrs. And kids?

Yeah, look at the whole thing.

Look for.

Look for change.

If you could change anything about the job and what it brought you, what would that be?

Right, there's your first goal.

How are you going to do it if you don't know how to do that?

Seek some help from people who can help you with that kind of thing, you know, and.

And look to build more fun from the job going forward and more money and more enjoyment.

Yeah, I'd agree wholeheartedly with that.

I do want to go back to something you mentioned earlier about sort of the school of Mum and Dad in comparison to the US ADIs and PDIs.

And you did say something quite interesting there as well, and that you said you then heard all the reasons as to why that that pass rate was higher.

And I thought that was really telling, because I saw.

I forget I saw on Facebook, I think somewhere straight away, people were saying why.

No one was saying, all right, what can we do different?

It was like 90 of people were saying, oh, well, it's because of this, it's because of this.

And, yeah, there are going to be mitigating factors.

No one's saying that every ADI is a bit bad idea and the school of Mum and Dad is perfect.

And.

And from my opinion, I know I've said this to you before, from my opinion, I do think a large part of that is the number of Hours you do with mum and dad as opposed to number of hours due just on lessons.

However that's still an excuse from me.

That's still my go to excuse.

Well, let's have a little look at what's happening during those hours with mum and dad.

I would venture the opinion that for the most part they're left to work stuff out for themselves when they're with ADIs, for the most part they're being told what to do and told what to think.

We learn when we make connections, we experience things, we reflect, we do school of mum and dad generally.

Not always.

I'm, you know, I'm not saying I don't want, I don't want anybody to think that I think ABIs are idiots.

They're far from it, you know, but we've got to look at what is it we're doing.

I would expect the pass rate for ADIs to be a minimum of 20% higher.

A minimum of 20% higher.

Somebody asked the question when I was doing the thing with Howard which I really enjoyed on it.

If you haven't seen it, get yourself to the driving instructor surgery and watch it.

Fascinating.

An hour, hour and a bit.

I think with Howard somebody asked the question, why is the pass rate so low?

I don't know what's your pass rate?

Why is, why is yours?

If we all work on getting our pass rate high but we don't because it's somebody else's fault.

Well, they took the test on a Thursday.

That's that examiner.

That examiner doesn't like me.

I hear this all the time.

Nobody ever stops and thinks, well I've got a minute, what can I do about that?

What's my options?

What could I try to see if I can make a difference?

But we point the finger blame somewhere else because it's convenient because then we don't have to think about it.

And it's tied in with the whole approach.

We have where instructor knows best and it's just a case of a one way lecture and then gradually passing the responsibility to them.

We're the last bastion of telling people what to do.

The rest of education and training has moved on and we need to catch it up quick because that's so old hat it's frightening.

And if you don't know how to do it because you're not coaching doesn't make you a bad person or just maybe a little bit scared to dip our toes in a while we go to a course, we read a book, we try it and it doesn't really Work very well for you.

You've got to persist.

It's hard but it's worth it.

Yeah.

And I think from my perspective the role of an ADI has changed.

I think it has.

It used to be an instructor, we still called instructors but I don't believe it's an instructor anymore.

I mean I might lose some people here but just to use a football analogy, Alan Shearer, brilliant striker in this day they don't get in Liverpool team today you don't get a man city team today it's a different role and I think that the role of the ADI has changed in a similar way.

It has become a coach and you're someone that works with a lot of ADIs.

PDI is connect that has done over the years.

The like I say, you've got your training courses, you've got your group, you connect with different ADIs and PDIs every day.

How do you think the uptake to coaching is met?

How much resistance is there?

How much welcoming is there from sort of.

I know you can't speak for everyone but from what, from what you see.

Well, first I'm going to take exception with Alan Shearer.

I'll be a naughty anywhere in the world for the next thousand years away.

It will not.

Nothing said against the Lord God Alish however ship manager but.

So it's.

It's back to what we're talking about earlier, isn't it really?

It's.

It's the unknown.

We're not familiar with it.

Where I was going to say we're scared of it.

I suppose we are a little bit and it seems a little foreign and it just seems to jar against everything that we should be doing and it hurts us because you're not going to use all that knowledge and skill that you developed most of the time.

So we feel a bit devalued.

I remember feeling this when I was in the early stages, when I was getting into it, getting to the end of lessons and thinking I don't really feel like I've done anything there and thinking that oh, that wasn't really right.

How do I. I couldn't justify charging the money then it's.

There are a million and one different reasons and I've heard them all.

I've had something like three and a half thousand people through my standard check workshops over the years and it's the same thing all the time.

Well, you can't do that with my peoples.

And I used to say, yeah, you're probably right, yeah, I don't say that now.

I throw down the challenge.

I say, well, I'll tell you what, I'll bet you the next pound you make against the next £10,000 that I do, if you give me 15 to 20 minutes with that person, I can open them up for you.

Because people don't want, people want to be coached, they don't realize it, but we're hardwired to work this way.

If we ask the right question, if we create the right environment and we ask the right questions now I'm sure I'm going to get burned one of these times where I'm going to meet somebody who's so conditioned by life that it doesn't work.

I'll come back, guy called George, interesting experience.

I'll come back to remind me if I forget.

So I see resistance and it's mostly fear based.

We don't understand it so we want to set fire.

But what I can promise you is if you just allow yourself to get into it, you will have the most wonderful time.

Because the effects of it go way beyond the environment in the car.

For a lot of these people, it's the first time somebody has genuinely, genuinely been interested in what they have to say and wrapped everything about them.

It gives them a feeling of being special, that their opinion matters.

And they start to see that, well, hang on a minute, I've seen this so many times now, I'm worth more than the world thinks I am.

And then the reality I'm worth more than I thought I was.

I am actually, actually quite smart.

I can do Bobby Jo Turner, the first girl I was doing this with, I made such a mess.

Those videos, I look back now, those videos made me cringe.

But it was a journey into learning about it.

On the journey back from test, I was wasting 20, 25 minutes at the start of every lesson just trying to get going.

She's had 22 hours and 40 minutes, most of which I've wasted, and she's done it on her own.

She says to me, I'm not as stupid as people, people think I am.

That's what makes you say that.

This is on the Journey Hotel up there on YouTube.

She said, well, I've done this myself.

You've done it yourself, have you?

She went, yeah, I asked you a question.

You just say, what do you think?

So, yeah, I've worked it out on my own.

Said, in fact, I've got a friend who's learned to be a driver and I've told him it's dead easy, just don't answer people's questions now from the mouths of babes and innocents.

Now she learned all that mostly on her own because my hands were tied, because no instructions.

So it's.

I look back on it now and so she realizes from this that I had a conversation with her.

So you want to come back and do passports?

No, I don't need it.

That's what I mean.

Because I've downloaded the curriculum off the Internet and I've taught myself to do it like I did when I was learning to drive.

You know, it's.

The insurance is going to be any cheaper, so there's no point.

Thanks though, Bob.

That's something.

What.

So she said something absolutely fascinating to me.

I says, well, how have you been then?

Sure, it's two.

Changed my life.

That's what I mean.

So you know what I said to you?

That I wasn't as stupid as people thought I was, you know, she said, well, I realized something.

I wasn't as stupid as I had come to believe I was.

Yeah, if you tell somebody often enough that they're shit, they'll start believing it.

So she realized that that was not the case for her and she was worth a bit more.

And her life has changed dramatically.

As a young kid, you see me teaching on the YouTube channel called.

Dean comes to me with a real attitude.

Five lessons later, his attitude is radically different.

Just because I've engaged with him in a way that nobody else has up to that point for many reasons.

But he's a story that I use.

So it's.

There is another way of doing it, and it takes time and it takes persistence, that.

It takes effort.

But the rewards are huge because not only will they start feeling good about themselves, you'll start feeling good about yourself too.

And you, your version of self, your self worth will grow as a consequence.

It's a fascinating thing.

I'm gonna play devil's advocate again because again, I can hear 10.

No, I can hear 10,000 ADIs in back of my adults wanting to ask a similar question.

I suppose, like you mentioned there about the.

The student that was saying she's taught herself everything from my.

I think that when you say that you're going to divide people into.

There'll be a section of ADIs and PDIs that are like, well, that's good.

And then there'll be the other section, which are like, here.

They don't quite hear it the same way.

What they hear is you're not allowed to say anything.

You're not allowed to ever instruct, you're not allowed to ever give an answer, you've always got to make them find it yourself.

There is that, that difficulty and I have seen that from people who have engaged with and then they go away and think, well, you can't give an answer, you can't instruct.

I've never at any point say that because sometimes you need to, especially as you're building your skills.

It's.

I can't remember the last time I had to give instruction, but that's because I've got better at coaching.

But if you need to instruct, instruct.

And there's nothing wrong with instruction because that can form part of a wider coaching process.

Okay, I've talked you through that.

Now let's have a little look at what we've learned from it.

Nothing wrong with that at all.

So I'm not saying you can't do that.

And there are people who think that coaching is just leaving people alone and letting them get on with it.

No, we have an active role because we're in a safety critical environment and the level of instruction you use would be commensurate with the level of risk that you're in.

Or if you can't create a scenario where I'm just instruct, that's fine, just work on doing more coaching next time.

That's nothing wrong with that at all.

And I'm not saying that, you know, instruction is the work of the Antichrist, because it's not.

But you've got to get from being an instructor to being a coach.

And there's not a circuit breaker to pop in your head to turn the instruction off.

So it's a long process, but it's worth the journey.

It's all finding a balance.

So I suppose the last big question I want to ask you, and I'm going to ask everyone this that comes on the show, if you were to give one tip, just one, one piece of advice to ADIs across the UK now, something they could change, something they could improve on.

What one tip or piece of advice would you offer?

Learn to use silence, ask a question and shut up.

Do not under any circumstances, as long as it's not safety critical.

So you ask a question and the only person who's allowed to break the silence is the learner.

If they're being quiet, they're just thinking.

But what we do is we think, oh, they're struggling there.

So we ask a supplementary question to try and give a bit more clarity.

If you've asked a bad question, just accept it, just let the silence do its work.

But we then see that there's still nothing coming.

So we ask a few third question to give a bit of a hint and then a fourth question to lead them to the answer that you're looking for.

Ask a question and remain silent.

The learner breaks the silence.

You will learn more by being quiet.

You'll learn more using your ears than you will using your mouth.

So get into that habit and if you're not getting much from it, turn the finger of blame upon yourself and think, well, that was clearly a bad question.

I like it.

You'll reap the rewards, I promise you.

I like it.

So as we bring this to a close, I will be putting all your links for Facebook and your course and whatnot in the show notes.

But is there anything that you want to promote?

Where can people find you?

Decent?

Have you all been?

People can find me at clientcentered learning.co.uk if you look on the store there, there are links to all the stuff that I do.

If you're not sure about it, drop me an email Bob at ClientCentered Learning.

I'll answer any questions that you want.

If you try it and you don't like it, money back.

I'm gagging to get out in the car to do some training.

I've been office bound for a year now.

So if you're going for your part two or your part three and you want some help, be happy to do so.

Look me up.

Drop me some questions.

Client centered learning on Facebook is my group or the driving instructor surgery.

That's all the shameless plugs out the way, isn't it?

I think so.

I know you're on YouTube as well.

That's where I first discovered.

Yeah, yeah, of course.

No.

So thank you for your time today.

It's been brilliant having you on, picking your brains and hearing your thoughts.

Good stuff.

Yeah.

And we might get you back on for season two to dive into something else in a bit more depth as well.

That's if somebody hasn't assassinated me in the meantime.

Right, well, thanks for today, Bob, and best of luck for when lessons come back.

Cheers, Tony.

Thank you.

To Bob Martin.

I'm sure you all agree that was fascinating.

It's really beneficial for me to be able to pick the brain of someone with the expertise that Bob has and if I can find that interesting, I'm sure there'll be a lot of people out there that do.

Now you probably guessed by listening to that, but my opinion on coaching is it is the way forward.

And I do think that those of you that are resistant I hope there's some of you that have got like a fresh impetus, a fresh idea around it from this.

If you haven't, contact me, contact Bob.

You know our details are in the show notes.

You can find us easy enough and it might just be that you're telling us that you're not happy, you're not going to change, or maybe you want a bit more information.

Either way, I do genuinely believe that coaching is the way forward for our industry.

It's what we need to help try and raise our standards, which in turn will raise the standards of driving on the road.

So thank you for listening today.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, make sure you click subscribe wherever you're listening so that the next one will drop straight into to your podcast feed.

If you want to get in touch with a show, head over at TCDrive Co UK and get in touch with me by any method over there.

And remember, let's just keep raising standards and stay safe.