Communication Drill. 
The coach instructs 
   the student. She makes   
up realistic situations 
for him to handle.

When you do drilling using the Study Technology  you work two and two. Drills are used to perfect practical skills. We are ultimately interested in the education of auditors with this manual. When training auditors, coaching is used to drill the student in how to use the Meter and in doing the Communication Drills, the so-called TRs. There are other types of drills in Standard Clearing Technology as well but the same data apply. The data are actually widely applicable. You can train salesmen, waiters, public speakers, athletes, performers, computer operators, etc., etc. using the basic principles and system. Any practical skill can be drilled. The principles for how to do that most effectively are covered in this chapter.

Meter Drill. The student (in red)  learns to use a Meter.  The coach opposite him  does the instructing. Here  the supervisor is ensuring  they do it right by looking    over the student's shoulder.

The one twin is called the student. In our example it's a man. He is the one, that receives the training. He learns step-by-step to do and behave as a practitioner should in a real situation. So the student is the one, that receives the training.

The other twin is called the coach. In our example it is a woman. She is the one, that directs the student. She is the instructor of the drill, the one that calls the shots. The term 'coach' is best known from sports; he instructs the players and shows them what to do. He gives the players practical advice from the sideline.

In coaching you take turns, however. First twin A is the coach, twin B the student. After a while they switch around, so twin B is the coach and twin A the student.

In drilling you  always work     with your twin.  By taking turns  the twins get  each other    through the drills.

To be a good coach it is important that you follow the written materials closely. You are there to point out when the student doesn't do it right. You find the paragraph in the written materials that he is violating and point out what he did wrong. You can ask him to read it again (when needed). There is no need for heated discussions. You simply follow the written materials and point out what he did wrong. The supervisor is not directly involved in the drills. But if a problem should arise, that you can't solve on the spot with the use of the written materials, you should call the supervisor over and have him help clear it up. As a coach you are there to step-by-step help the student through the steps of becoming a better and better practitioner.

The drills may at first seem designed to be a contest between coach and student. But that is the wrong idea. You are on the same team. The coach is the sparring partner. She will invent situations that are realistic and she trains the student to handle them correctly so he becomes well prepared for a live pc in a real session.

Coaching
Here are some important points of coaching:

1. Coach with a purpose.Set as a goal for yourself and the student that he is going to do the drill correctly. Work and coach with this goal in mind all the time. When you correct the student you do it for a reason. You want him to gain a better understanding of the drill and become better in executing it. Step by little step you get him to the best of his ability.

2. Coach with reality.Be realistic in your coaching. When you make up a situation, make sure it is a situation the student could actually run into in a real situation.

In the communication course there is a drill called TR-4, handling of originations. In this drill you train with situations, where the pc comes with out-of-context statements, such as "My leg suddenly hurts" or whatever. The coach will usually have a sheet of such statements to read from. She should make such statements sound real as a pc would say them. She does not have to 'feel the pain' of course. It's a game of play-acting. You should just be able to state it in a natural way. You shouldn't take anything from your own past experience. That could develop into a too emotional situation and you would lose control. Stay with inventing things in present time and at any time be able to step back and correct the student, when needed.

3. Coach with intention.Behind all your coaching should be the intention that by the end of the coaching session the student will be better at the drill than when he started out. His being aware of the goals and his improvement and validating it is also part of the training activity. The student must have the feeling that he accomplished something in the training step, no matter how little. As a coach you should create a positive atmosphere of "You can do it!" It is your intention at all times in drilling that you will bring about a greater understanding and ability on the part of the student of the subject matter being coached.

4. Only take up one thing at the time.For example: When you are coaching TR-4, you are trying to put it all together. But when you first start out coaching TR-4 you would look at one little aspect at the time.

A good way to go is to look for elements from each of the earlier drills. Is the student confronting you? (TR-0); if not, correct only that.
Does he state the question each time as his own, and does he really intend you to receive it? (TR-1); if not, take up this thing only as the next step.
Does his acknowledgments really end the communication cycle for you? (TR-2). Coach only this point next.

Never do two or more points at the same time. Make sure he does one point correctly before you go onto the next point or next drill. You should set a high standard of ability so as to stretch him a little further. It doesn't mean that you should never be satisfied. It does mean that you work from the viewpoint that your student can always get better. Once you have reached one level of ability, you should validate that and then right away work towards a higher level of ability.

As a coach you should always be a sharp observer and do precise coaching. Never allow yourself to be sloppy about it. When you later become the student you would want your coach to be sharp and precise too.
If you should doubt that you are doing the correct thing, you should call the supervisor and get it cleared up. He will know what to show you from the materials.

In being a good coach you never state your opinion as such. You don't say, "I think" or, "maybe it is better this way". You use positive direct statements. As a coach you have a prime responsibility for the results obtained by the student in the coaching session. You have a responsibility for the student and the session. Make sure you always run good positive control and give him clear and correct directions.

Once in a while, the student will get into long explanations and reasons why he is doing what he is doing. Letting him talk about it at great length does not accomplish anything. You want to keep talking about the drills to an absolute minimum. Actually doing the drills will accomplish the goal for the training session, and faster.

When coaching the drills you should all the time keep in mind the paragraphs "Purpose" and "Theory" usually stated for each drill.

Doing drills can occasionally fly into the teeth of all kinds bad old habits and bad experiences in the student's past. In training you should pay a minimum of attention to that. It is possible that during a drill the student can become angry, misemotional or even extremely upset. Your correct response as a coach is not to back off.

The maxim is: Get the student through it! You should realize the student has to overcome this in order to become a good practitioner. You should simply continue the drill until the student can do it without stress, duress and feels good about it. So don't back off. Push the student firmly but gently through whatever difficulty he ran into.

There is one thing, you shouldn't forget as a coach: That is to tell the student, when he is doing something exactly right. The way to get your student better is not only to correct wrongnesses. An important part is to compliment rightnesses.

With regard to pushing the student through his difficulties, and to complimenting rightnesses, always consider as you push your student, the possibility that he could become over-stressed because you might give him a steeper gradient to confront than he can handle. If this is the case, and the supervisor can help you determine if it is so, then you would simply return to the subject on which the student started to fail, and begin again, but with a tiny piece of the subject that he can immediately have a win at. When you have both validated this win, you as coach can give him the next gradient up in terms of difficulty, and so on, win by win, until your student can win by handling all that you were throwing at him before, and more. As a bonus, by taking this care with your student, you will train yourself to be an excellent coach who produces excellent student wins.

Self-coaching. Do not allow self-coaching. Self-coaching means that the student points out to himself, what he did wrong. If he does that a lot, you are doing a sloppy job as a coach. He should have his attention on you and any materials he is using; not himself as a student. If the student starts to self-coach he is introverting. He is looking too much at himself and what he is doing and how he is doing it instead of just doing it. Drills are simple. Almost painfully simple. But they have to be kept that way to be most effective. You as a coach should prevent the student from self-coaching by being on the ball and flunking the student for doing it if he begins to self-coach.

As a coach your first duty is to keep an eye on your student and how he is doing. Part of many of these drills is play-acting. You make up situations and act it as you think would be a realistic situation. You can be carried away as an actress and get into entertaining your student and make him laugh and make him like you rather than being a sharp coach.

You have fallen into being "interesting" rather than "interested". There is nothing wrong in having a lot of fun while doing these drills. They are a lot of fun. But never forget that your first duty as a coach is to have your attention on your student's performance and to see how good he can get on each training drill.

To a large degree the progress of the student depends on the standard of coaching. Good coaching produces good practitioners that in turn will produce good results in real life. Good results produce better people. Good coaches are the more likely to become the best practitioners.

Morale and Coaching
A student who has gone through a tough coaching session and has passed it feels very good. He has really accomplished something. He knows that he knows the data and the drill. On the other hand: a student who has received poor or non-standard coaching feels cheated.

If his coach is just trying to "be nice" the student doesn't really learn anything - and he won't appreciate the coaching either. This comes down to some basic laws:

Morale isn't built by being "nice"
It is built by taking pride in what you are doing and by knowing and demonstrating that you are doing it right. These laws are at work in coaching sessions in other ways.

You can have a situation where the coach and student are in a "games condition". That means they are not working on the same goal but are in some kind of opposition to each other. This gives a problem situation or "no progress" situation. No progress, no wins, no production. There is no demonstration of competence permitted and morale is low. Coaches and students must not allow such a situation to happen. The supervisor should keep an open eye for something like that developing.

Keep your student's morale and production high. Give him tough but standard coaching sessions so he becomes competent. Then, when he passes, he knows he has demonstrated his competence in applying the materials.

Toughness and ARC
"Being nice" and ARC are two different things. "Being nice" is of course affinity. But as we know from the ARC triangle, it does not exist alone.

Toughness (in the meaning) is the Reality part. It is insisting upon "You can do it" until the student actually does it right. That's what we mean by toughness and tough coaching. It is insisting upon it being done right and not being satisfied until that standard has been met.

This is best done with ARC. You validate any progress you observe in your student. You grant him beingness by letting him know he is on the right track, that he will do it right, that he is capable of all you ask for and a lot more!

Toughness in coaching is also insisting upon doing the drills and not spending a whole lot of time talking about them. Toughness in coaching is getting the student through any problems or misemotions that may be stirred up in the process.

None of the above excludes high ARC. But ARC without the needed reality is something else. Such ARC does not belong in drilling and training.