How Do You Teach Confidence?
This is an exercise from my Rapid Confidence Course. These are great for retention.
Every school advertises that they teach confidence. The question for you is, “How do you teach confidence?”
I’ve asked that question to a gazillion instructors and most fall back on how "earning rank helps build confidence."
While I don’t disagree, it’s the same thing your competitors say.
What if your answer was, “We take teaching confidence to a new level. Our Rapid Confidence Course is a segment of nearly every class that is devoted to:
- Social Skill Lessons
- Verbal Defense Tactics
- Strategic Decision Making
We teach students how to introduce themselves, how to ask smart questions, how to communicate effectively one-on-one or to groups and how to de-escalate potential confrontations.
For instance, one of our activities is called My One Minute Life.
Here students are paired off. One student tells the other about their life story for one minute, or just 30-seconds, depending on the age. It doesn’t have to be revealing. It could just be about their favorite activities.
For beginners, the other person listens without interruption. At the end of the story the listener repeats back as much as they remember. It doesn’t have to be verbatim, just enough to show that they were listening.
As students get more experience with this type of activity, the goals increase for the student telling the story to try to avoid saying filler words like, “Um. And um. Uh. Like.”
You can also add that they have to maintain eye contact for the entire story.
As they advance, you can also have the listener silently count the filler words and breaking eye contact.
This takes the entire class about five minutes. You can gauge how long to make the stories (maximum one minute) and what requirements are included based on the age and experience of the students.
What do you think the parents of your kids are going to think when they see this drill?
What if you suggested to the families to do that activity with each other for different topics?
Maybe that would bring their kids’ eyes off their phone.
This simple exercise will have a massive impact on students and parents understanding how you really teach confidence rather than using it as a sound bite like everyone else.
