Engaging Your Audience in Meaningful Ways

/ Flipchart Notes
National Powerboat Training Center Meeting US Sailing
January 21, 2015

Purpose

To share information and engage in conversations which stimulate ideas for moving our Centers forward to the next level.

Our Agenda

·  Welcome, purpose, intros

o  Agenda

·  2013/14 Grant review

·  Roundtable discussion

·  Lunch

·  Engaging your audience in meaningful ways

·  Break

·  US Sailing/US Powerboating updates

·  Taking it forward activity

·  Closing

·  End

Introductions

·  The 12 second challenge

·  Share:

o  Your name

o  Where you are from

o  The first kind of powerboat you rode on

Round table discussion

Goal: To learn from each other through story and advice

Structure:

·  Determine number of stories

·  Share stories share advice

·  If time available, open floor for general Q&A

Timeshared agenda
Name Topic

Rob The gospel

Amy Grady

Ross Implementing programs and school systems

Mike Administration

ML Using PB/S to incentivize

Karen Instructors

Takeaways: Round table discussion

The following are the six themes that were identified from the stories and advice that we shared.

  1. Collaboration – get health work with other groups who have needs.
  2. Parent/child relationships need to be managed (separated).
  3. Different ways of chopping /dividing up the class.

o  The US powerboating curriculum design enables that to happen

o  Enables multiple use of instructors to teach the same class evening

  1. Setting the mindset/ expectations.
  2. Structure of the courses.

o  Preplanning/administration etc.

  1. It is easier to keep someone as a student then it is to find someone new.

Story content

The gospel – Rob

Need: promote college

·  Writing courses/delivering courses for competitors creating a difference/ large number of places running courses.

Lessons:

·  Align personal/organizational goals

·  Market to organizations (members we can’t reach)

·  Making someone else make the pitch worked

·  Patients – grow the opportunities

·  Promote early and often

·  Be a “dealer” - give it out and get them hooked

·  Can’t build customer base without customers

·  Seek group therapy – get help

Grady (Amy)

Grady is a young boy who has the skills, better than he does on tests – didn’t want to study.

He thought, “Why keep trying to pass the test.”

Suggestions:

·  Explain the questions to him

·  Engage in parent preparation with instructors to develop a plan

Question is how to pass a detail test?

·  Separate parent and child classes: Helps with disciplining child without having to do it in front of parents.

·  Give the kids a choice– incentive

·  Break classroom information up over multiple days

·  Reading kids the test questions

·  Find out what the kids preferences are for taking tests.

·  Use peer pressure if possible to pass tests

·  Give the test multiple times during the week.

·  Treat families as individuals rather than as a family unit during classes.

Incentives (ML)

·  Started with the staff to be instructors. Then, younger kids got training because older kids had it already.

·  Sequenced training to people - one group then the next. Sequence builds momentum and interest.

·  Use the power of modeling as an incentive.

·  Separate kids from adults.

·  Let it be the kid’s choice– promote independence and confidence (outside parents advice).

·  Create an expectation with the parents: Parents need to have their own experience – And Kids need to have their own experience.

·  Make sure the parents do not engage in coaching their own kids.

·  Separate the parents.

·  Build a prior experience to help build confidence in the kids.

·  Set up different kinds of courses based on the different combinations of family members.

Implementing programs in schools: REACH tied in (Ross).

·  Reinvent powerboating classes to teach inside the science class the knowledge portion. Then after school, teach the parts of the reach program on the water that requires it to happen in a boat using skills.

·  Broaden the concept to other schools and other subjects. For example, we are looking into other courses such as physical education courses where knowledge and skill come together.

Administration (Mike)

·  Make sure kids have what parents expect them to have
Build activity into the rank book

·  List of standards in the checklist for each student. Keep the checklist books until the next year if they have more to fill out.

·  Make the children are responsible for their own bluebook (Rank book).

·  Make goal-setting part of the use of the book and make sure we keep the records.

Sean

·  Remember that quality is better than quantity of courses offered.

·  Never discount class – just run the class with however many people you have. Use the feedback to further development of the class.

·  Be flexible with your program.

·  Have patience – clubs more slowly than we do.

·  We get a class called the Knotty girls class. They wanted to learn specific skills (unique skills). We provided them a menu of choices.

·  Focus on creating the mindset of safe boating.

Taking it forward Activity

In groups of three:

·  Create a list of what you found: interesting/intriguing, or insights/takeaways

·  Identify potential action you might take

·  (Record your own notes)

Anchorage/action items

1. Get feedback on instructors trained but who have not yet taught a class.

·  Find out why they have not yet talked
Figure out how to get them training

2. Type of the stories/advice along with the flipcharts, and distribute to the group.

3. Pulled a monthly numbers on website visits to see where the dive might have taken place.

4. Promote power voting over the next three days during the conference.

·  Dick’s slowest power boat
Banners
Networking– create context during race and build Network back home
Link racing (sailing) to powerboating (join)

·  The benefits of powerboating

Prepared for US Sailing by Think First Serve, Inc., 2015. Page 1