Leverage the Positive
by Terry McLeod, NW Technical Team Member

Hopefully by now there are at least a few of you who have heard about a new tool the NW Technical Team developed called the Feedback Model. Presentations were given on it at the Fall Seminars and TD Fall Training and there were even some pocket guides (aka beverage coasters) made with a handy visual aid printed on them. The motivation behind putting this model together was to create an organizational tool to assist in doing movement analysis and then subsequently delivering feedback in a clear and understandable format.

 There are four primary pieces to the model: ski-snow interaction, movements, desired outcomes, and communication. Although we tend to focus our attention on the “hard skills” of the diagram, I would argue an equal if not greater importance lies within the communication portion.

Movement analysis and our feedback delivery are critical to the tone of our classes. Yes, we need to work on the weak points that are preventing higher levels of success in our clients, but the feeling/vibe/atmosphere/attitude/culture/environment that we do it in has a huge affect on how successful we’ll be. When people come to a class or clinic most of them expect some amount of “tearing down” before they start “building back up” again. Certainly we’ve all heard, “tell me what I’m doing wrong”. However, that doesn’t mean they enjoy it, in fact many may dread it, and I suspect one of the principal reasons people choose not to take lessons is they aren’t willing to endure this humbling process. Take a look at the visual aid we put together to illustrate the Feedback Model. You’ll noticed the center circle is in contact with all of the other three circles. Its title is “Communication” and the explanation reads, “Student centered approach that leverages the positive to encourage and support skiing and riding improvement.” At one point in its evolution this circle was around the outside of the other three so all of our references to the particular parts were encompassed with this student centered and positive approach. Either way you draw it, the point is, our approach to communication affects how well the student will receive our feedback on any, or all of the specific details.

“Student centered” has been a buzz phrase in PSIA/AASI for many years and probably doesn’t need a whole lot of explanation. But, what does it mean to “leverage the positive”? When the Technical Team started talking about leveraging the positive, there were nods of agreement about positive feedback and sandwiching critical comments with compliments. After a lot of discussion and clarification, the point finally came across that we didn’t mean throwing fluff bombs like, “good job, now we need to…” or, “nice turns, you ski really well but if you would just…”. What is meant is to find something the person is doing well and then relate how they can use that positive trait to raise the level of their weaker traits. Or, if you can’t find something they’re doing well, at least find what they’re doing best (or least bad) and apply that to improve their overall performance. 

This poses some interesting challenges in terms of changing how our eyes and minds work together, particularly for those who have spent a lot of time training to pass a 20 minute exam teaching scenario. Now, instead of looking for the biggest flaw that is closest to the root of the negative symptom, we have to look for things that are working well, or at least relatively well, and then figure out how to adapt or apply that to a different area so it replaces a weaker pattern. This is where the obvious benefit starts to come into play. With all of our internal efforts focused on finding the good things in students, the external things we do and comments we make will more naturally convey our positive outlook. Depending on the timeframe of the class, you may spend one or two complete runs focusing the classes attention on honing into their best traits. By spending this amount of time and effort focusing on strengths, the atmosphere will be much better as you explain how those strengths can be used to overcome inefficiencies in their skiing/riding. People will still hear that they have weaknesses to overcome, but they will have a much better view of how to focus on the proper movements they already have as a means to advance to the next level.

I’ll give a couple of examples of strengths you may see and how to apply the strengths for greater overall ski/snowboard success. Bear in mind this article is a very short snap-shot and in a real life situation you would have much more time to develop the conversation and processes. Our first skier we’ll call Nick. By all accounts he’s a great skier and your first impression is you’d love to have him in your school as a fellow staff member. Since you’re starting out looking for positive traits, you’ve eliminated the need to instantly “find something wrong”, which is good because Nick rips. You head straight to some tough terrain and you notice he’s super stable in the moguls; his solid upper body balancing well over a somewhat compact lower body with the legs working very actively to accommodate whatever the uneven terrain throws at him. His feet move all over, up/down, side to side, twisting back and forth, but these movements never disturb the composed upper torso. As you ski with him more, you notice on the groomed runouts that although he carves very well, his track could be a little cleaner immediately after the edge change as he begins a new turn. One way to leverage Nick’s strengths would be to coach him toward a “cross-under” type of edge change when carving, where his legs more actively retract, allowing them to come up towards his hips while his body lowers and moves across into the new turn. You may need to coach him to also minimize some rotary impulse at this phase of the turn, but by focusing on the good skills and patterns he’s developed in his dynamic legs and feet, he’s more comfortable and less resistant to applying these movements to improved carving.

Let’s call our next skier Dave. He’s a spastic intermediate and you’re not sure how he manages to stay upright at all. You decide he must be very brave indeed, because he goes everywhere very fast with his arms and body waving all over and the worst stance imaginable. Now your challenge is to find anything he’s doing well, but after a bit you realize he actually displays an amazing range of motion and that motion never seems to cease. The only exception is in Dave’s lower legs where his ankle seems made of concrete and his calf is permanently sealed in watertight contact with the back of his boot. Your comments to Dave would probably encourage him to transfer some of his amazing movement right on down into the joint closest to his skis, explaining that when ALL the joints work together his balancing act will become so much easier. Letting Dave know the constant movement he displays is an early form of one of the most challenging things for upper level skiers to accomplish will help him feel like he’s on the right path and will provide motivation for him to transfer some movement into his ankles while controlling some of the wildness of other limbs.

Is this just another form of putting words in a different order so people feel good about themselves? Maybe. But I think many of us have become way too conditioned to try and hone in on the source of the problem. In the process, we have become masters of error detection while missing the more important part of connecting with people and creating learning situations that are motivating and enjoyable. In reality, I’m not sure we can ever make a poor movement go away. What we really do is replace it with a positive one. The sooner we can get ourselves and our students focusing on the preferred solution, the closer we’ll be to creating the desired change.

So, when you look at that circle titled “Communication” in the feedback model, remember it doesn’t mean increase the number of warm fuzzies in your speech patterns, but rather find something good in a student that you can leverage in such a way that it overcomes or replaces a negative trait and elevates their overall skiing/riding ability.

Terry is the Schweitzer Snowsports School Director. He splits his summer time between Race and Freestyle coaching for Mt. Hood Summer Ski Camp, as a Challenge Course instructor for Camp Mivoden a Summer Camp and Retreat Center and as a personal trainer/coach for bicycle racers.