What Great Trainers Do

16

Demonstrating What You Teach

A picture is worth a thousand words.

——Fredrick Barnard

When you want to teach someone a new ability, it’s seldom enough to simply tell them what to do. Even the most specific wording can be misunderstood. Edward Thorndike, the noted educational psychologist, found that the five hundred most frequently used words in the English language have an average of twenty-four separate and distinct meanings. So, when you tell someone how to do something, there can be plenty of room for misunderstanding. This is especially the case when teaching someone how to do a complex skill or a familiar behavior in a more proficient way. Skills are concrete but words are abstract. A good demonstration—since it is concrete—tends to ...