Ch. Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

P.S. The Transcript – Why Earn a Black Belt?:

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Hey, everybody. Welcome to be at another one of our success training podcasts. We’re going to be talking about a really important subject, one of our favorite ones. It’s our second layer of our instructional training, which is motivation, and this is to get us from golds to real results. I’m welcoming, again, Senior Master Laura Sanborn. Thanks a lot for being here. You don’t have your senior master title on your screen there, so everybody knows what a high rank you are.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

I do that.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

You’re a seventh degree black belt, senior master instructor. Mr. Dwayne Flees, fourth degree black belt. Thanks for being here, both of you guys today. I appreciate you being-

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Hello, sir.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

We’re going to talk… Let me click through here quick. You guys know… Everybody knows me here with all this stuff. I’ll skip ahead. So, we’re talking about motivation, and one of the basics of motivation and how we want to talk about this is as I get configured a little bit as we go with our outline, and motivation is the reason for acting in a particular way, and why do we care? Why do we care about that definition? It’s so that we as leaders and as people that want to teach other people, that want to make a difference in other people’s lives, maybe that matters a little bit, because what we have to be good at is coming up with the reasons. For our parents, sometimes it’s hard to come up with, “What’s the reason?”

We want our kids to just do what we say when we say, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, they’re our kids, so we’re taking care of everything for them. So, they probably ought to do what we say when we say, but that doesn’t always work as most of us parents know. So, this is one thing that’s going to come up again and again, but what’s the reason that they act that way? So, if we get a little more fine on the definition, for karate belt, our goal is to create constant growth from when they start to black belt, but really not just black belt, but we want them to get not just a first degree, because that’s just when students start training.

I mean, for us, first degree black belt is only when they become a student. They’re training to be able to be at the point that they really start training then, but it’s to get second degree, third degree, and then beyond third degree to higher levels of training. That’s what our goal is. So, for us to be able to get students to that level, we have to be able to be good at motivating. The other part of it is helping parents motivate, and motivate their kids, because if a student… 80% of our students are kids, and if parents aren’t good at motivating their kids, and it’s not that parents aren’t good at motivating their kids to do a lot of things, but we don’t get any training to be parents. All three of us are parents, and the kids get born. You don’t get any training manual that comes with the kids.

A lot of times, it’s really hard to know what to do to help your kids. We also have an emotional attachment that’s different with our kids. So, I think we all know that all of our kids are different. Your two kids are different, Miss Laura and Mr. Flees.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Yes, sir. Yes.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

All your kids are pretty different, and how we motivate them is different. So, it’s kind of a puzzle putting that together. So, there’s two big things that I’d love for you guys to chip in. One of the things that we help parents with to help with motivation is the little… We learned this from a guy named Thomas Phelan who wrote the book 1-2-3 Magic is the little adult assumption. That means that we don’t make an assumption about kids, and we’ll talk about adult motivation too. But as far as kids go, we don’t make an assumption that kids are adults. This is a big mistake that we make when we are working with kids is parents or teachers or adults, when a kid makes a mistake, or a kid does something that we don’t want them to do, that will sit down and have a conversation with the kid.

We’ll say, “Well, you really shouldn’t have done that. If you paid attention more, you wouldn’t have slipped, and you wouldn’t have broken that lamp. If you didn’t hit your sister, then she won’t be upset, and that was a bad thing to do. It isn’t a good idea to do that.” There’s all these reasons why it’s a bad idea. That’s not really going to motivate your kid. They already know that it was a bad idea. So, telling them that they shouldn’t hit their sister isn’t going to be a really good consequence. So, kids need actual consequences. Maybe you guys can describe that a little bit differently than I did as far as the little adult assumption goes.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

A lot of it has to do with just not lecturing, not giving loads and loads and loads of information about the subject to think that they’re going to pick the one thing out of it that actually works for them, the more you dump on them for that kind of stuff. An adult, you can give them a lot of things. They may pick out the one in there that really works for them when you’re describing something, but a kid is just going to just shut down basically the more you start talking. So, the assumption’s you can’t treat them the same way with that type of expecting them to understand what you’re talking about, because half the time, they’re going to zone out when you get too much on them.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Yeah, a little bit like… The funny part is like Charlie Brown cartoons. For anybody that’s listening to that, and the adult sounds, that’s… Especially when something’s emotional or something’s difficult, and they know that they got in trouble, and you’re trying to explain why it’s a bad idea to do the thing that they do. It would really be better for them if they would clean up their room, and why they should clean their room. I mean, kids don’t want to clean up their room. I mean, why would I want to clean up their room? Why do I want my room clean? It doesn’t really make any sense to them. So, there needs to be a consequence and a reason.

So, motivation isn’t going to work to have a logical conversation with somebody. By the way, sometimes adults are that way too. Mr. Flees, you were going to say something?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Yeah, a lot of times is we find that asking the kids questions after the fact helps them see a different path they could have took. Instead of us telling them, we ask them, “Well, what do you think would’ve worked better?” If we’re in a group class, we can ask the other students, “What do you guys think? If this situation happened, what do you think we could do differently? What would be a better choice?” Make them think about it a little bit rather than us telling them all the time.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

That could be. That could work. I think when we’re teaching class, one thing that parents want us to do a lot of times, and a very common thing that people bring their kids to us for is discipline, right? That’s a common thing that people want, and what they really want isn’t discipline. They want self-discipline. They want kids to be self-discipline, and even more is our topic today is to be self-discipline, they got to be motivated. So, you’re not going to be self-disciplined to, let’s say, clean your room if you don’t really care about your room being clean. I mean, it’s hard for that to be a value for a kid to have the room all tidy and clean when…

Why? Why wouldn’t anybody care about that? So if you wanted your kid to be self-disciplined about that, and have the room clean, you could have lots of conversations about why that’s going to happen, or you could have either… On one side, you could have a reward for that to be the case, or you could have a consequence. Well, if they don’t clean the room, they wouldn’t get some privilege, or there wouldn’t be a benefit. It’s really the only way to do it, but having conversations, lots and lots of conversations is probably just going to irritate you, and upset the kid, and you’re going to have a bad emotional connection there.

So, this little adult assumption that happens all the time, if I just sit them down and they understand why it’s a good idea to have a clean room, the evil shouldn’t, shouldn’t they figure this out? Well, the answer is probably not, because they don’t really care if the room’s going to be clean. Why would they care? Because there’s going to be some external, again, motivation for them to do it. There’s a why. So, let’s talk about the second one. The second one goes along with that is having less talk and less emotion, and less talk would mean that if something goes wrong or even something going right, what ends up happening is it goes along with a rule that we’re going to talk about with instructors is kid does something that maybe isn’t the best thing or maybe isn’t keeping the room clean, and emotion escalates.

Usually, and I think most parents would probably agree with this, getting more upset, more upset, more upset usually doesn’t make their kid more motivated, motivated, motivated to clean their room, or if we pick another activity. Getting more upset, more upset, more upset doesn’t get them more likely to take the trash out on time. It usually doesn’t work that way, right? Telling them more and more and more doesn’t get them more likely, more likely, more likely to fix things. It’s a very hard habit to break, because of course if they don’t do what we want, then it’s likely for us to get more and more upset. Anything you guys want to add onto that?

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Well, you fall into the habit of, “I’ve told you a thousand times that you need to do this,” and it’s still not working, but you don’t change the motivation, because you’re still telling them another thousand times. They get into the loop.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Wouldn’t they think when you say… Who’s making the mistake? When you say, “I’ve told you this a thousand times,” aren’t you making the mistake, and realizing that because you’ve told them a thousand times, apparently, what you did didn’t work?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

If I’ve told you a thousand times, then I’m not doing it right. You’re the one that’s doing it wrong, not them. At least they’re doing it wrong for sure, because they’re not doing the thing they’re supposed to do. Believe me, we accept that the kid’s not doing the thing right, but if you’ve told them a thousand times, then your strategy is bad.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Exactly.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

So, we got to try to change the strategy, and it doesn’t help us to get more emotional about it. Usually, that ends up giving a message that we don’t like them, or they’re upset, and then that ends up… They react. That’s something we always have to be careful about with kids. Kids don’t interpret our emotion the way we intend. This may be a separate subject, but if we’re upset and mad, the kid may not interpret it as… This is something for all parents to understand. They may not interpret it as, “I’m mad because you didn’t take the trash out, or I’m mad because you didn’t clean the room.” They may be interpreted as you’re upset at them as a person, that you don’t care about them. I know that sounds a little harsh, but we got to be a little careful about it.

That doesn’t mean you can’t be upset. That’s a natural reaction. But if you use the less talk, less emotion strategy, you can be upset, but you want to get your action done, which is to get the room cleaned, and you want the kid to respond. You want to get the behavior you want. So if we’re focusing on getting the behavior you want, which is eventually going to make you less upset, then that may not be the best strategy. So, less talk and less emotion, that’s a strategy that we’re trying to use. Anything else to add, guys?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

No.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Well, the more they bring that up and get upset about it as a parent, the more the kid feels that the thing is the most important thing as opposed to the kid being the most important, “Oh, the clean room is more important than I am. The taking out the trash is more important, because you get more upset over that than you do over the fact that I skin my knee.” They can push that to where they put, or they’ll feel that the event, whatever it is that you’ve said a thousand times must be the most important thing in the world more than me.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

From our perspective, we’re a highly disciplined martial arts school, and we push everybody really hard for success. That’s why we’re talking about motivation. So, hopefully nobody gets the message that we’re telling everybody, “Don’t push your kids to do the things we’re trying to do.” What our goal is to get them to do all these things. Our goal is to get them to do the stuff, and be disciplined, and be self-disciplined, but if the message is confusing… So, that’s a great point, Senior master Sanborn. If the message is confusing, you as the parent are not going to get what you want. One of the things that’s always amazing, and both teachers and parents say this to us when we go to a school, and we’ve got a group of 30 kids that are problem behavior kids, we’ve all done this.

We take that class, and they’re 30 behavior problem kids. Maybe we don’t even know about that at the beginning. We run the class, and everybody behaves. Everybody’s managed, and then we leave and the teacher says, “I’ve never seen those kids behave that well before, and I never saw them have so much fun.” Why? Because we follow these rules. We’re very firm, and we’re clear, and we talk less with the right kind of emotion. We manage the way that we talk to them. That’s why we get these results. So, we’re trying to get everybody to get good discipline. So, what you said is very important to get the message, so we get the right kind of emotion to them, and get the results that we want. Really good. I think that’s important.

Motivation is all about… To get people motivated, a lot of times, we’re talking about goals. We talk about setting goals, and you hear this a lot, and then people don’t… We do goal setting seminars a lot. I’ve done them for both our schools here, and we do them all the time. We talk about goals, and we set a lot of goals, but goals don’t make any difference unless you have a big why, a big why you want to have a goal. So, there’s a reason. If somebody wants to lose weight, there ought to be a really good reason to lose the weight. If somebody needed to lose weight because their doctor told them, well, if they don’t lose 25 pounds, they’re going to die. That’s a good reason to lose weight. So, that’s a good why. But if they just wanted to lose weight because they thought they had to lose weight, most of the time, that’ll never happen.

So, there needs to be a why. What are some of the whys and reasons that people will want to get motivated? This is almost always because they want to have fun. There’s some external type of excitement for it, or they’re making progress. These two things are really built into martial arts, and that’s why we have a pretty easy time. It’s frankly a little easier for us than if I was teaching kids reading or math, because it’s a little harder and slower to see progress sometimes when you solve a math problem. I mean, you might feel that, but you got to solve lots and lots and lots and lots of math problems, whereas we get to have people learn stuff in a little faster way. They get to see results quicker.

So, we get to people that see this fun and progress in every single class that we do, and we pay really close attention to these two things. One of the things that we think about it’s important to understand is if you think about challenge versus ability, and part of our charter at Karate Built is that we don’t measure ourselves by who we exclude, but by our students’ constant growth towards black belt and beyond. That’s part of our fundamental beliefs. So, people can start at any ability level, but one thing to think about is if you’re challenged… This graph about high challenge, so very low challenge down here, and very high challenge up here, something’s really, really difficult.

Then your ability level, really low ability down here and really high ability, you’re really, really good at something up here. How does this relate to motivation? Well, if we draw a couple of lines here, and we think about in this area here, if you have high challenge but your ability is low, you’re going to have a lot of anxiety. Because your ability level is low, you might have a lot of difficulty doing something, but you’re going to get challenged a lot. This is a place where it’s very hard to be motivated because… Let me draw this graph a little bit better. You’re really hard to be motivated, because you’re getting challenged beyond what you can do. So for example, if you were learning, let’s say, French, and they were trying to get you to speak conversational French, and it was your first day, and you were put in a room, and nobody would ever speak any English, and it was really, really difficult, you might think, “Well, gee, I’ll learn really fast.”

Well, not really. If you can’t understand anybody, and they’re making you… They won’t give you any food, or let you go to the bathroom unless you said the words right in French. You might have some anxiety then if you imagine that. They won’t let you leave the room and unlock the door unless you said the words in French, and you couldn’t go home to your family unless you said the words in French. Now, I start raising the anxiety level, right? I mean, it could make the challenge really hard. That would be pretty scary. If you think about going to another country, and they only spoke that language, and nobody ever spoke English, and you couldn’t find your way around, and you couldn’t even get back to your room or your hotel, that’d be a lot of anxiety.

So if the challenge was high, your anxiety would be high if you didn’t have a certain level of ability. On the same token, if your ability level was high, so you’re really, really good at something, but the challenge was low. So, let’s say you were really good at checkers, or you’re really good at chess. You were playing somebody that was really not very good, or let’s say something a little bit easier. Let’s say you were really good at basketball. You were Michael Jordan at basketball, and you were playing a five-year-old. Well, Michael Jordan playing a five-year-old would probably be bored. It wouldn’t be very fun for Michael Jordan to play a five-year-old. He might have fun for a little bit, because he’s playing around with five-year-old, and having fun.

But if he was trying to be competitive, and he played for six hours with a five-year-old, he would be bored out of his mind, because it’d just be no fun at all. So, there would be no challenge. It’d be just boring. Same for you, if you’re driving your car, and you were just driving around in a circle, and there was nothing to look at, and you were just driving in a circle, be pretty boring. There’s no challenge to that. So, the motivational sweet spot is when something’s difficult, and it matches your ability level. So, you’re challenging. The more motivating something is, the higher the challenge level, and it matches your ability.

So when you’re pushing yourself hard enough so that it’s hard, but it’s not too hard, you’re getting challenged. There’s some progress. You’re seeing progress, and it’s on the edge of your ability level. That’s the sweet spot. So, we want to be right in this area here. There’s a guy named Mikhail Chiksetmahai. We won’t spell it for anybody, because you won’t be able to look it up. It’s a concept called flow, F-L-O-W, that this comes from. Anything to add, guys, before we move on since we’re going fast here?

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

No, not on this one, sir.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Okay. So, let’s talk now about instructor skills for motivation. So for instructor skills, our instructor pyramid starts with discipline, and then we work on motivation. Then we worry about knowledge, knowledge of martial arts or knowledge of leadership training, or knowledge of instructor training. So, we don’t worry about anything until we have discipline established first in our class. If there’s no discipline in class, we don’t worry about motivating anybody, so the topic today doesn’t even matter. If the classes… If kids are not listening, or the adult students are not listening, or people are not responding respectfully, you don’t hear us calling each other by our first name. If that wasn’t working, we wouldn’t do anything.

We just will fix that first. Then we’d worry about motivation. Motivation happens after discipline’s established first. So, that’s step one of what we’re talking about. The next part is instructor responsibility. The next part of motivation is our responsibility to our emotions, and that is our main concept is the emotion that we show is the emotion that the student needs, not we feel. Sometimes when I say that to people, they react like, “Well, shouldn’t we be able to express our own emotions? Isn’t that disingenuous or not being real or not being a real person?” But what it is is actually you being a leader, and a leader is going to be somebody who gives the person they’re leading what they need at the moment so that they can be motivated and guided to whatever purpose that they’re going to move to.

The example that I always use is if your child is… I’ll go back to a kid example. So, if my son, when he was two years old, was barely able to walk, and he fell down, and skinned his lip or skinned his face or something, and he immediately started crying, if I ran over and went, “Oh, are you okay? Is everything okay? You okay?” He’d start continuing to cry, and he’d go nuts, and everybody would be crying, but if he fell, and he skinned his lip, and he’s fine, but he just skinned his lip, and I said, “Hey, you all right? Get up.” Then he’d stand up, and he’d go… Maybe tear up a little bit, but he’d get up, and he’d be okay, and he would learn that if something like that happened, I’m going to manage it in a reasonable way, and it’s going to be okay.

I’m not trying to teach him to be tough through any kind of serious injury or his hand gets cut off, and he doesn’t go to the doctor. But if something like that happens, it wasn’t major. He doesn’t need to get extra… He doesn’t need to express emotion that’s not necessary for that. It’s a reasonable thing. We need to fix his lip, but we don’t need to inject emotion that’s not there. So, I’m able to manage the situation in a reasonable way. The same time, if he does something that makes me mad, he drops something and falls on the floor, I could get really mad, but it also was an accident, or if he does something that… Another example that might be better is in our classes, our instructors often see kids do something that’s funny. It’s funny because a kid falls down.

But if that point I laugh because the kid fell down, guess what’s going to happen? All the other kids are going to start falling, down because they get reinforced that when you fall down, that’s making the instructor happy. It’s making them giggle. That is going to cause chaos in the class. So if a kid falls down, we need to… Even though it is genuinely funny, I mean it was hilarious that the kid fell down, but it’s absolutely not something that is okay, so I need to control my emotion, and be firm and say, “We don’t fall down in martial arts. Stand up.” Other examples you guys have? I’m putting you on the spot here a little bit, because I keep talking. I feel like I’m talking too much, sorry.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Well, I was feeling like on the… All right, so the kid cuts his hand off. If you give every emotion that you have in that situation as well, it doesn’t help the situation. You’ve got to be the person who helps him get better, get fixed, gets him to the hospital, but if all you’re doing is reacting to it and freaking out over it, the situation just gets worse instead of getting better.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

You imagine a leader. You imagine somebody who’s a leader. You’re not imagining the freaked out person. You’re imagining the person that goes, “Oh, why? We better do something. Let’s get to it, right?” You’re imagining that, and that’s our modeling for our kids. We imagine somebody that’s going to take care of stuff. Anything else to add to that?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Sometimes if we don’t manage our emotions either as a parent or an instructor, it makes your kids feel unsafe, because you don’t look like you’re in control of yourself.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

That’s absolutely true. I mean… Look, nobody’s saying that if my kid does something, and I’m scared, I might be really scared, or our kids or our students might do something that may be funny or might be scary or might be something, but if we end up, our emotions may turn into the wrong message. So, the message that they get, we have to think about, “Is that the message that they need, or is it a different message they need?” Sometimes the message they need might be firm. It may be, “Hey, let’s get going. Let’s move. We need to move,” even though we might be laughing inside, or the message might be that they need us to laugh, or they need us to be silly.

That’s why if you see… When I’m teaching class, people might… They’ve seen me both as a disciplinarian. I’m really tough, but they see me also as the kids are laughing and it’s fun, but they’re also not goofing around. So, both of those things can happen if you manage your emotions the right way, and you manage giving them what they need. That’s very hard. It’s very hard for us as parents, but once you get in the habit of it, and it’s not as hard for us as instructors, but you have to be mindful of which emotion that they’re getting.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Okay, guys, well, let’s talk about for instructor training, we have our instructor grade sheet, and I’ll share that. Why don’t I share that with… So that everybody gets to see that, and if any parents are seeing… This is a grade sheet that we use when we train our instructors for class, and the instructors grade this. They market by marking… When they watch each other take class, they’ll mark how many times the instructor does these things. We might even give this to one of you parents, and ask you to mark different things. There’s different categories for structure, instruction, rapport and motivation, and then there’s some other grade sheets.

These may not all make sense to you as you see this. For our instructors that are watching, you would know exactly what these are for, and we have 10 different categories of motivation that we work on. I’m going to go through these, and we’ll talk about real briefly what each of these are, because we only got about 10 minutes left here. One of them that we grade on is fun and progress, but I’m going to skip this one, and we’ll come back to this because a lot of the ones that we’re going to be talking about are part of this fun and progress component. So, another one that we use that we grade on is using name. One of the things that we always want to do as instructors is use your name.

You’ll notice… We’ll go really quick through the simple ones. We use Mr. or Miss. We don’t use the gender appropriate name, pronoun and honorific for people’s names. We don’t call anybody Billy or Johnny or Sally or Sue or any kind of first names. We use that for instructors, but we also use that if you’re a white belt, and you come in, so that way, you know that you’re being treated differently in martial arts, and we treat each other with an extra level of respect. Guys, stop me for adding some additional stuff in here. We also use touch because touch is a way to connect with other people. It’s also a way that we help adjust people for their physical skills that they’re using. We have to touch a little bit, but we’re careful about this.

We use… For touch as a motivational tool, we restrict it to hand, elbow and shoulders so that we use this part of our body. We make sure that we use it. At least every time that we do a class, we’re trying to give everybody five. We use it to adjust people as they’re doing techniques, but those are the areas of the body that we touch. Another motivational thing we use is we make sure we practice eye contact. So believe it or not, this is something that instructors have to pay attention to, and using eye contact with all of our students. That helps us confirm that we’re going to be walking all the way around the room. If we use eye contact, then we’ll pay attention to every student, and for us even on video, using eye contact to the video screen for our Zoom students that are maybe on Zoom, because they’re on vacation or out somewhere.

Another thing that seems like we shouldn’t have to say it is using smiles, making sure we smile to our students. This is something to train, because we don’t know if we have a bad day or if we’re just focused on the training that we’re doing, or focused on the physical contact or the physical activity that we’re doing that we may not be smiling. We may be so focused on doing the class plan that we’re training on that we forget to smile. So, this is something to remind us. Some of us build this into a habit. So, all these things so far are ones that… Using name and touch and eye contact and smiles, these are habits that we can form that’ll help keep the class motivating.

But if we don’t think about this, and we don’t grade each other as instructors on these skills, we’ll often lose one or two of these, and not do them on a regular basis. Anything to add on these, guys? I went through five of them or four of them. We didn’t [inaudible 00:34:33] in progress yet.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Yes, sir. These are also building rapport, because if you don’t recognize people, or they don’t feel like they’re included or recognized ever, they won’t be motivated. You can make a really fun class, but if they don’t feel like they’re part of it, because you ignored that person by not looking at them, not using their name, not walking by them and smiling at them, they won’t feel part of it. You can have all the fun in the world, and it’s just not part of what you get out of it.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Absolutely. If they don’t get touched, they don’t get out five. A lot of times, we’ll have large classes, and we can manage a class of 50 people. It all can all work if we’re doing this, but the guy in the back, the kid in the back needs to get high five. The kid in the back needs to get talked to and know that they’re being paid attention to, and there’s no reason they shouldn’t be.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Especially the people on Zoom too, because we can’t use some of these things personal contact or touch their shoulder or something and get their attention. So, we have to say their name more times, and make sure they can see our face in the screen so they know who we’re talking to.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

That’s a great point. If they don’t get touched, they get their name used more. They get eye contact more, and they get smile more, so they get the extra bonus stuff that we don’t get. We don’t get to… We’re going to come up with rewards in a little bit of giving them a sticker, getting something. We do have some ways to give them stickers if they’re on Zoom, but we have to make up for that, and use some extra bonus things, and pay a little bit more attention to them, or pay equivalent attention to them. Equivalent.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Equivalent, yeah.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Let’s talk about praising. So, there’s a couple ways to praise people. One is individually, and this is you’re walking around the class, and you talk to people individually. You tell somebody that they did really well. We might think that isn’t it better to talk to them in front of the group, and tell them what they did well? But I don’t know about you, guys, but when my instructor used to walk around, and he’d just say to me really quietly, “Hey, your fist looks really good. Your punch was really strong.” It was personal. It was meaningful because he said that.

It was great when it’d be in front of the class too, but it’s meaningful when you individually praise somebody. So, that’s an important skill to use, and to be telling people. It’s really easy to do that as long as you’re walking around the room saying, “Hey, Mr. Jones, you’re in great listening position.” Now, other people might hear that as you’re walking around as well, but now it seems like a personal message with you and them. So, individual praise is really important.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

It also keeps it from being favorites in the class. If you’re always just up at the front looking at who’s doing the best, and praising the person doing the best, it might be the same person every time. But if you’re walking around individually telling people things, you’re going to catch what that particular person did well, and it keeps it from feeling like, “Oh, well, this class is all about so-and-so who can kick up to the sky, and jump 360, and do everything right the first time they see it.” So, it prevents that when you go around, and you talk to every single person, every single class.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

That’s a great point. It makes that more… It’s an easier habit as an instructor for you to be able to do that. I think that’s an awesome point. So, another praising style we implied is group praise. So, group praise is the whole group. Tell the whole group they’re doing really well. Sometimes I think this gets missed that all of you guys… You guys were all really fast. You guys were all answering it up great. You guys are all helping each other. This is one of the skills, and we cover this when we talk about discipline, but very frequently, the entire group is doing really well. Everybody says yes sir, or everybody says yes ma’am, or everybody always says Chief Master Moody.

They don’t say… Obviously, they’re not going to say my first name. That never happens, but I mean they always say, “Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am.” They always get in the listening position well. They always do… I mean, some of the stuff, they always do really, really well, and we don’t reinforce the stuff that they consistently do well. That’s such a common thing to forget about the stuff that we do really well. But whether or not that’s the consistent stuff they do, or whether they happen to do something uniquely well one time showing that they do self-control, or they’re all sparring well, or they all went really fast. Group praises also helps develop teamwork. Anything else with group praise to add, guys?

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

It just makes the class more fun if you’re recognizing that they’re everybody did it. Great. We can move on to the next thing. That was fabulous. Everybody got it. Now, we’re going to do this. They’re not feeling like they’re not keeping up.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Perfect, and thinking about this almost like a checklist. I’m doing individual praise. Awesome. Am I doing any group praise today? Oh, I missed that. I didn’t do it. That might be a way to remember that you’re doing more of it. A hybrid version of group praise which is fun is, “Hey, this side of the room sounded louder. Oh, this side of the room sounded louder.” Then you’re group praising half the room, and group praising half the room, and it makes it a little bit competitive in a fun positive way. Hey, oh, everybody now sounded great. Now, it’s a group praise for everybody. Everybody gets to win that way. Then it can be… In that case, for the most part, people are going to feel like even the ones that were louder, one group was louder. The other people don’t feel bad, because they know you’re being silly with them.

So, that’s another way. Now, highlight praise is something that should be used liberally too. That means you’re showing a person could be brought up in front of class, or they could just be pointed out in front of class, and you’re telling them that they’re doing a really good job in front of everybody. So, it’s like individual praise, but now they’re being shown to the whole rest of class. This is a great tool to use in a bunch of different ways, but now, they look like the superstar in class. As Master Sam Ward said, “This is great if we’re focused on for all of our instructors not doing the same person every time.”

It could be the person that’s the worst person in class, but you find one thing that they did really well. It could be the worst talent wise, but they have a good attitude, or it could be the person that maybe didn’t have a good attitude, but you got the one thing they did really well that time, and they got to be highlighted. Then they often will start getting a lot better. Anything to add, guys?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

No, I think that pretty much says it though. When we highlight the person that isn’t the most athletic in the group, it really boosts them up, so they start doing better athletically.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Yeah, absolutely, and they feel good about… We don’t need them to be… The other piece is, as we said in our charter, we don’t need them to be the most athletic. It’s not comparing them against somebody else. It’s comparing them to themselves, so they do better themselves. The other way… This is really useful for instructors. Sometimes we’re not the ones that can kick as high as some of these other guys, or maybe we have an injury ourselves, so now we can let them do it. I’ve had times where I’ve had an injury, or maybe I had a surgery, and I couldn’t do something, but I said, “Hey, show me how to do that.”

They did it good, and I fixed them enough so they did it exactly the way I wanted, and I said, “Look at that.” Now, they can do it the right way, and they get to be the one that’s demonstrating. There’s no reason you can’t teach anything even if you can’t physically do it as well as that person. We’re all getting older. So, some of us that maybe that day weren’t able to do it the same way as we’d like to demonstrate it, now we can show somebody else demonstrate it, and they get to be the superstar.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Sure.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Another one. I know we got to rush here a little bit. Examples, so examples is another thing, and examples and talks and stories about what we’re doing. There’s a couple of ways that this is important. One way this is really important is putting context behind everything we do. So, if we’re teaching somebody a self-defense move, we need to be able to explain why we’re using it. So putting context, this is in this situation or that situation. That’s an example. Another way is I use this in a tournament, and I scored a point with it, or I won a tournament, I did this. That’s putting it in context, or saying, “This is my favorite move.”

Maybe it’s a move you really like. So, putting something in context, it helps people remember. If they’re just doing a move, and they’re doing a punch, or they’re doing a block or a strange block, and they don’t know why they’re using it, then it becomes really hard to remember. So, examples become really important. Anything else to add on examples?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

I think sometimes that helps your students realize that we’re human too if we did that before. I know how you guys feel. When I first learned this block, I didn’t know what the heck we were doing until six, eight months later, and then we did it in self-defense, and we’re like, “Oh, that’s how you’re supposed to make it look.” Well, that makes more sense. Then you could do it better in your form or at other times than it-

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Yeah, that’s a good example of the story. So, when I first started this, I wasn’t very good at it, but then I figured out this move, or that would be a great example, or I did this with… You could say you did this with Grandmaster Lee, or you could say you did this with Master Sanborn. You could say you did this with Chief Master Moody, and he showed me how to do this, or you could use each other or different instructors for that. So, that’s another way to value this. Okay, rewards. We’ve got three different places to do rewards. One is in class. In-class rewards needs to be consistent and frequent. So in-class rewards could be physical rewards, high five, verbal praise.

We already talked about that though, but other rewards are stickers for the little kids, for the tiny tigers, karate kid papers. If we don’t have those in our uniform, in the uniform, and carrying them around all the time, we’re not doing it enough. So, there’s got to be in our uniform all the time. They need to be pulled out and used liberally, liberally, liberally in class all the time. The next kind of awards are going to be end of class awards. We have a whole handout on how to do end of class awards exactly the right way. So, the kids run up, get their awards, and run back, and that would include their stripes, which moves towards the next one, which is belts and stripes, which stripes move towards belts. Stripes are for attendance, but also, they represent a step closer to black belt.

So, the belts are another set of rewards that need to be getting every two months, not because they didn’t earn it, but our job is to get them to the point where they have earned it every two months to get them prepared for testing so that they’re consistently moving forward to get more rewards, very important part of their reward system. Otherwise, they haven’t gotten short-term goals. That’s part of their why, the why for motivation so they can get these rewards. Then the bigger why for motivation is black belt needs to mean something bigger to both the kid and to the parent or to the adult student. So, those are some of the rewards. Stop me if I missed anything.

Another type of motivation is spotlighting. Spotlighting is different from highlighting. Spotlight for motivation means sometime for basic students, basic students need to be able to be spotlighted so that they are being told that they’re ready for black belt. This is very critical for our basic students that they need to have a time when they’ve done enough in class, they’ve made some progress that we talk to them, and they get their green stripe and RBN. It’s clear to us as instructors that we let them know, and that we let the parents know that we’ve watched them in class, that we feel like they’re ready to make a commitment to becoming black belts.

This isn’t on day one. This isn’t on day two when they start with us, but it’s after that when we’ve seen them make some progress. So, spotlighting is to get them to be at the point where they set goals to become black belts. The next one and the last one on our instructor planner is leadership role. Leadership role is when we put them up in front of class, and then they get to lead the class. This should be done a lot as well. So, this gives them an idea of what they’re going to be able to be and do when they’re in our leadership training. Now, in our leadership class, they do this all the time. That’s part of the training, but any student can do this, and they need to be able to functionally be able to do it, but they can stand up in front of class and lead whatever drill.

We’re still leading the drill, but they’d be up in front of class, and they demonstrate the move. This is another example of like a highlight, except we’re counting the drill off, and they’re going to be the one physically doing it so that they show it off. Anything to add on those last couple? I went fast through those.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

No, sir.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Well, the leadership role can be something as simple as letting one of the students be the counter when you’re doing an exercise. As you’re walking through the class, they’re just doing the counting. They’re not even leaving their spot, but they’re the one that has to be loud enough to lead the class by counting. That works really well with some of the ones that are a little bit more shy about the whole idea of getting in front of everybody, but they get to be a leader and a helper by just being the voice.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

That’s perfect. That’s a great example too. Well, let’s cover our last couple of things. Last couple of things that we need to cover, that’s all of our instructor grade sheet that we cover. The next big things that we have are setting goals to be a black belt. We think about that just as the basic foundation. The next level is setting goals to be a leader, and that’s when students are in a leadership training, but setting goals to be a black belt is fundamentally training through the maximum of third degree black belt. Setting goal is to be a leader and be training all the way up to you could be a grand master. You could be a master. This isn’t just about training at a higher rank. This is to learn to be able to present in front of people, to be able to perform and learn more physical skills.

So, this is about being able to stand up in front of people, and be able to take what you know not just in martial arts but in other things, and be able to give that back to other people. Why is that important? Because most jobs, most occupations, most vocations, most things you do in life, you have to be able to do that if you’re going to do them at the highest level. You can’t just learn a skill. You learn a skill, but then you perform that skill in front of other people if you are a professional athlete, but most people aren’t going to be professional athletes. If you’re going to be a CEO, if you’re going to be a manager, you’re going to be a boss. You’re going to be the highest type level of an entrepreneur. Whatever that kind of level of skill is for development, that’s what leaders are.

So, that’s one goal that students can set the next type of goal. So, this is important for motivation, because these give us a why. Why would you do all this stuff? Well, one would be to become a black belt, and that’s going to help you with the fundamentals of discipline and confidence. It says all kinds of other benefits, but we’ll start with those. Then this has these kinds of benefits. Then from there, we have people that want to be instructors, which is somebody who is going to give these other things back to people. They’re going to train other people to be these leaders and black belts. Then even from there, there’s people that are going to be like you guys, managers and school owners that are going to create the instructors that then give the skills back to the leaders and the black belts.

So, there’s whys. The motivation is going to be why be a black belt? Because you want this. Why be a leader? Because you want this. Oops. Why be an instructor? Because you want to be the kind of person that gives this back to people. Why be a school owner or running a school? Why run a school is because you want to be the kind of person that develops instructors that can do this. You can do it on a bigger scale. You can help other people in a bigger way. So, these are all different levels of why, and all this leads in our Karate Built charter. It says that Karate Built instructors or Karate Built black belts take responsibility to act with integrity. All this stuff ends up… All of these things matter, because these matter not in the school, not just because you get a black belt, because they matter outside, outside the school, outside what we do. We represent ourselves outside the school.

So, what else do you guys have to add on terms of motivation? All the things that we do end up leading up to black belt and leadership and being a leader, and then all the people that create that. That’s you, guys. Creating instructors and running a school create the black belts and leaders. That’s the motivation for doing what we’re doing here today. That should lead to, or our goal is that that leads to developing things outside of the school, developing integrity outside of the school. Anything else to add to what we did?

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

I feel like a lot of our job is helping people discover why they have a why or what their why is. They might say, “Well, I just came in for physical fitness,” but if we don’t dig deeper, then it doesn’t lead to success, because they never were able to verbalize it past that. They knew a little bit about what they wanted. But if we don’t have conversations with people, and help them really discover the why, why do you want your kid to be more confident? Why do you want your kid to be more disciplined? Then the motivation isn’t really defined for them, and can’t be communicated to anybody else.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

So, if they wanted to be physically fit, what’s the reason for physical fitness? Then maybe that has to do with their concern about their health in the future, or maybe they want to look better, because they’re going to be more confident because they look better, or they’ve always been out of shape. If they finally in shape, they’re going to feel better about themselves because they’re in shape, and if they think better about themselves, it’s going to change other things in their life. I mean, that actually makes a difference when we have the conversation. Maybe that’s something that they are having a self-esteem issue with, and it’s more about their self-esteem than it is about their fitness.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

I think that’s really important. So, these why’s or these lead, these are the little tactical things, how we do this to then what it’s going to mean for them in the future. Well, thanks a lot, guys. I really appreciate the time you guys spend. This was a longer podcast today, but this will, I hope, be valuable for both our parents and our instructors to watch about how we are teaching motivation in class, how we’re helping parents with motivation, and how we’re helping the students be motivated so that they can get to all these levels that we just talked about today.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Yes, sir.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Yes, sir.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Thank you very much

P.P.S. Get Dr. Moody’s Book on Bullying – Click Here

KarateBuilt.com and KarateBuilt Martial Arts have been selected as the nation’s #1 martial arts schools for EIGHT YEARS IN A ROW!

KarateBuilt L.L.C. was founded in 1995 by Dr. Greg Moody, an 8th-degree Black Belt and Chief Master Instructor, KarateBuilt Martial Arts and Karate for Kids offer lessons for pre-school children ages 3-6 and elementary age kids ages 7 and up are designed to develop critical building blocks kids need – specialized for their age group – for school excellence and later success in life.

KarateBuilt Martial Arts Adult Karate training is a complete adult fitness and conditioning program for adults who want to lose weight, get (and stay in shape), or learn self-defense in a supportive environment.

Instructors can answer questions or be contacted 24 hours of the day, 7 days a week at 866-311-1032 for one of our nationwide locations. You can also visit our website at KarateBuilt.com.

About Dr. Greg Moody:  Dr. Moody is an eighth-degree black belt and chief master instructor.  He has a Ph.D. in Special Education from Arizona State University (along with a Master’s Degree in Counseling and a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering – he actually is a rocket scientist). He has been teaching martial arts for over 25 years and has owned eight martial arts schools in Arizona and California. Chief Master Moody is a motivational speaker and educator and teaches seminars in bullying, business, and martial arts training, around the world. See more at DrGregMoody.com.

The KarateBuilt Martial Arts Headquarters at KarateBuilt LLC is in Cave Creek, Arizona at 29850 N. Tatum Blvd., Suite 105, Cave Creek AZ 85331. You can locate the Chief Instructor, Master Laura Sanborn there directly at ‭(480) 575-8171‬. KarateBuilt Martial Arts serves Cave Creek, Carefree, Scottsdale, and Paradise Valley Arizona as well as Grand Rapids, MI.

Also, check us out on Today in Business and Educators Observer!

Here is Dr. Moody’s Amazon Author Page with over 16 of his Amazon Bestselling books: Click HERE

P.P.P.S. From a parent:

“If you want the Premier Martial Arts School in Arizona, KarateBuilt Martial Arts is it! My son started at 4 years old and is now a Black Belt and (I think) the best student in his high school (ok I am a proud parent – what can I say) :). Make sure you go here! The instructors are amazing and as he goes on to college this will leave a legacy with him mentally and physically!” – Salvador Herman Francisco