The Real & Ideal of People Skills

By Noah Hopkins

Do the words real and ideal conjure up in your mind an image of a beginner student set next to a graceful and stylish professional athlete? Many years ago, while working my way through Level 2 certification, I placed the concepts of real body movements and ideal body movements in opposition to each other, or versus.  Real versus ideal is what I heard.

I interpreted this to mean that I should be encouraging all my students to ride like PSIA-AASI National Team Members.  In lessons, I consistently encouraged students to ride a specific way.  “Keep your knees bent while steering with the front foot.”  For some, this approach worked.  For others, it did not.

As I grew to understand the concept more deeply, the versus was replaced with the word and.  Thinking of real and ideal existing alongside each other helped me to reframe the relationship between those two images as a journey, rather than a destination.  Optimal performance of a student in the present moment now had a dignified place along a spectrum of ideal movements.

The core benefit of comparing real-time student performance to efficient, effective movements is really to help us chart a progressive path and define relevant prescriptions for change.  But why restrict the use of this tactic to just movements?  The hallmark of our American Teaching System is, after all, centered around students, as a whole.  So, let’s explore the real and ideal of People Skills Fundamentals.

Develop Relationships Based on Trust

There are many ways we cultivate relationships healthy enough to compel students towards success, even if it scares them.  Some of us even become a chairlift therapist and break down mental and emotional barriers.  But, even the most charismatic and accommodating Instructor is sometimes unable to earn the trust of a cautious student.  The reality is that gaining the trust of another human requires both party’s willingness to build the relationship, and that’s not always present or easy to find in our students.

Engage in Meaningful Two-Way Communication

As the old saying goes, “message sent does not always equal message received.”  Even when we initiate communication with the most relatable blend of non-verbal language, tone, inflection, there sometimes isn’t always a reciprocal response on the other end of the line.  The reality is that meaningful communication for a 4-year-old looks and feels (and tastes?) much different than how we communicate with grown adults.  Sometimes the complexity of a collaborative process, like two-way communication, makes the ideal harder to attain.

Identify, Understand, & Manage Your Emotions & Actions

In my opinion, this is the People Skills Fundamental with the broadest range from real to ideal.  Managing our actions is one thing.  However, many people, including the author, will spend a lifetime discovering their true emotional self and learning how to manage emotions.  This is not a skill that comes easily.  And what’s the ideal here?  The Buddhist, completely shed of their ego?  In reality, it is sometimes the wild authenticity of our emotional self that fosters a real connection with other humans who feel the same way.

Recognize & Influence the Behaviors, Motivations, & Emotions of Others

An ideal application of this fundamental would allow us to precisely shape learning moments through a deep and comprehensive understanding of the human psyche.  While this can sometimes feel easy to do with young children, influencing the behavior of adults is a far more complex endeavor.  What, with all the baggage, and coping, and anxiety from decades of staying upright, it can be hard to pierce the armor of existential “maturity” in a short half-day lesson.  The reality is that the human mind is complex, sophisticated, and infinitely variable.

The Journey

The point of these comparisons is not to discourage you from learning more about how we apply People Skills Fundamentals.  It’s merely meant to serve as a cheerful reminder that knowing how to navigate the path can be more useful than trying to know the entire path.

So much of our profession, as educators, is problem solving.  We start with a clear idea of how a teaching progression or learning experience is meant to seamlessly unfold and, inevitably, there’s a hiccup.  Something doesn’t work and our students aren’t learning, or at least as quickly as we would like for them to.

In these moments, step back and take a deeper look at yourself and the student, and select a different tool for the job.  Maybe even a tool you’ve never used before.  For some, there may not seem to be many tools in the bag.  But, our remarkable human minds are vastly capable of discovering, borrowing, and creating tools along the way.

Noah Hopkins serves as Manager of Training & Quality for the Breckenridge Ski & Snowboard School and is also a member of the Children’s & Snowboard Ed Staff, Rocky Mountain Region, PSIA-AASI.