I was hungry to learn. This was my seventh or eighth trip to Haiti, and if I was going to continue taking trips, I needed to learn the language. As languages go, it didn’t seem that hard. Creole isn’t as complicated as many languages. There are no conjugations and many of the words are defined by context rather than definition. I believed I could learn it quickly.

At church that morning, the pastor had talked about good fish and bad fish. Even with only my high school French, I picked up bon poisson and mal poisson. To learn the language, memorizing words only goes so far. It was time to start talking to someone. At lunch, I engaged the pastor with my excitement for his sermon. I told him I wanted to know more about good fish and bad fish.

I started by saying, “Bon poisson. Good fish.”

“No. Bon poisson,” he repronounced.

My first lesson. Excellent.

“Bon poisson,” I repeated back.

“No,” he reiterated. “Bon. Bon.”

There is a nasal quality to creole as it has a lot of French. I’m from a rural midwestern county that leans toward an American southern accent. And yet, as I heard my pronunciation of the word, it felt close. I was determined.

“Bon,” I emphasized the nasal.

“No,” he said. “Bon.”

The conversation devolved.

“Bon.”

“No. Bon.”

“Bon.”

“No. Bon.”

“Bon.”

“No. Bon.”

I had hoped that this lunch would be my breakthrough into conversational Creole. Instead, it was a confirmation that I couldn’t say the simplest word. And yet, that was only part of the problem. My teacher had set up a road block.

When a trainer asks a question that can only have one possible answer, then the learning begins to suck all the excitement out of the student. It is a test question. And in my case, I knew the answer. I just couldn’t say it correctly.

Repetition is an overused method. As a trainer taking a Coach Approach, it is much better to state the answer and then draw out from the students how they might apply the knowledge. Move from a test question to a discovery question.

For example, if you’re teaching a lesson about the Good Samaritan, a test question would be, “Where was the man traveling to?” Most people aren’t going to know the answer to the question. They could guess.

“Galilee.”

“No.”

“Corinth.”

“No.”

“Bethlehem.”

“No.”

You are training them not to answer. Of course they don’t know. It is an obscure fact. After a while, the students will realize that you are the expert and that they are not. They will tire of the guessing game. Their excitement will wane.

Instead, the trainer should give them the fact up front. “The man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. It was a dangerous road.” Then you can ask a discovery question, “When have you been on a dangerous road? What does your experience tell us about this situation?”

Let me recap the coaching elements in this Coach Approach to training.

• The trainer uses concise messages – In coaching, you can always tell the truth. You just don’t want to do the work for the client. In training, it is the same. You can always say the truth but be brief with it. Then let the student start thinking about how to use this truth.
• The trainer is an encourager – If you say “no” more than once, you are asking the wrong questions. You can start by encouraging the effort of thinking. The student was already excited to learn. It isn’t hard to stoke that fire.
• The student is the expert – She may not know all the facts, but we assume she can handle the material and even innovate how it can be used.
• The student should talk more than the teacher – Learning is done by processing the material. This can be done through homework, and in many situations, it is best done by discussion. If the teacher is talking more than the student, the teacher needs to ask himself why.

I never learned Creole, and my trips have come near to a stop. It wasn’t all because of that one interchange. But it is a reminder that we can lower the barrier to learning. We need to give our students a tool and then quickly put it into their hands.

In what other ways can you use a Coach Approach to training?