How Do You Like to Learn & Teach
I’m reading Homer Kelly’s Golfing Machine by Scott Gummer. It’s a good tale particularly for people like me who think about golf a lot. It’s the story of how Homer Kelly constructed a golf instruction system that reflected his way of doing things. He was an engineer who was pretty good with the intricacies of things. He found that all other golf instruction and books lacked the absolute specificity he desired. Many found his system overly complicated. That provides the drama in the book.
From my perspective as a coach one aspect of Homer’s way is to be very directive. “Do this first, then this, now this, etc. . .” An alternative way to coach, and roughly the opposite of Homer’s way, is to be Socratic. That is, to ask lots of questions helping the coachee to deduce the right way to get to their goal. Some other ways to coach are a] being a helping hand, b] helping the coachee create a vision of success, and c] being a detective to find out what impediments exist, combined with gardening to seed and cultivate solutions. And there are many more.
Take a minute to think about how you like to teach and coach others and how you like to learn. With this knowledge you’ll be better prepared to do both. Of course it might be situational. Your teaching style might be very different than your preferred learning style. And there may be variations based on the age, gender and status of others.
