Excerpted from 1001 Ways to Motivate Yourself and Others by Sang H. Kim
The teacher, like the team leader, is a role that often comes in disguise. You may not teach in school, but certainly you occasionally have the opportunity to pass along your knowledge of something to others. Perhaps you train new employees at your job or teach others a favorite hobby or sport. We all find ourselves sharing our knowledge with others from time to time, whether in a formal classroom setting or a more informal exchange of ideas.
Teaching can be one of the most frustrating tasks you can undertake. Although you can easily perform a skill yourself, you may find yourself perplexed when you try to get someone else to do it correctly. No matter how you explain it, they just cannot see it your way and you begin to wonder if it wouldn’t just be easier to do it yourself. This is a critical juncture in motivating your student to succeed. If you give up and berate the student (colleague, employee, . . . ) you will alienate him and block any further progress.
However, if you draw on your motivational skills to provide a good role model and plenty of encouragement interspersed with meaningful guidance, you may be surprised at the sudden turnaround in your student’s learning.
12 Tips for Motivating Your Students
- Make learning progressive and point out progress as it occurs.
- In the early stages of learning, recognize effort above results.
- If your students easily accomplish everything you teach them, your standards are too low.
- Make it hard for students to blend into the background. Require everyone to make quality contributions regularly.
- Criticize the behavior, not the behave-er.
- Motivate students to think and participate by asking open-ended questions. Example: Instead of asking “Any questions?”, ask “What questions do you have?”
- Praise progress as well as results.
- Select goals and rewards that are tied directly to student needs. Example: A woman signs up for a shooting course to learn self-protection. Setting goals related to basic proficiency and safety are more important to her than proper breathing techniques or learning to handle an exotic variety of weapons.
- Whenever possible use "hands on" methods to teach new concepts and skills.
- Make every effort to reduce the potential for failure or fear of failure associated with learning.
- Give students clear criteria that identify when they have reached their goal.
- Call attention to things done right rather than errors. Build successful habits around these positive things.