PSYCHOLOGY or SYSTEMS?

I happened across a link to John Brown's site, and his new book:

"DRIVING is more about PSYCHOLOGY than SYSTEMS"

Book

Reading through his web site pages, I found this quote:

"My clients tell me that my success is because I treat them as people, analyse their personal needs, address their specific needs, don't patronise or shout at them am enthusiastic, make driving interesting, have faith in them and do not try to fit them into the system that I have to teach, but try to analyse their problems and discover the way which is best for them to learn."

I train motorcyclists, at post-test level (although I did for many years teach learners). What I enjoy most is getting a rider with a 'problem' and finding the way they can work through it.

At some time soon I'll have to take DSA's RPMT instructional ability test.

Do I follow a rider, analyse & prioritise the 'faults' I see, then present 'fixes'?

No . . . I talk through the problems the rider is having, look for the root cause, [re-]build control skills, develop planning to give extra time to react, and plan a whole training session specifically to suit that rider.

An example was a recent trainee - a rider happy at high speeds, but nervous at low speeds. When I say 'happy', that's a euphamism, perhaps, for 'too quick'.

The nervousness due to a crash he'd had.

So the session was planned in a number of ways, to deal with low-speed control and confidence, then higher-speed planning and restraint.

Objectives achieved, rider happy.

But the most gratifying thing was one of his final comments, after we'd had a restrained ride along a winding road (where previously he'd have travelled much quicker) with me drawing his attention to likely problems in the distance via radios:

"The guy I trained with before said much the same things - but I took notice of you".

Reasons? Possibly my attitude to him, but also because - perhaps - I'd related both all the training directly back to the crash he'd had - even to 'predicting (if there's a past-tense version?) how he'd ridden in to trouble (and it wasn't what he'd assumed)!