Preparing for an Instructor Assessment

Preparing for an Instructor Assessment

By Shaun Roberts, Principal, Glenmore Lodge

How do you make the process of training and assessment work for you? How do you ensure success, so that you can get out there and create a career?  Well I can’t promise any self help guide but I can share some thoughts based on the hundreds of candidates I have seen go through our mountaineering assessment process.  In general it is fair to say that aspiring instructors get their heads down and get on with the experience.  At every assessment course there is an atmosphere at the first meet and greet that is best described as ‘let’s get on with this’.  There is a psychology at work between each candidate and between the candidates and the assessment team; there is always a little tension in the air.

Any credible assessment team understands that its role is to deliver the stage on which the performance takes place, observe this performance and not add undue stress into the process. As an assessor I have always started every assessment with a default positive psychology i.e. I’m OK and your OK.  It is absolutely natural for anyone to have performance nerves before and during an assessment.  These nerves are not a measure of the candidate’s mountaineering ability, they are just a product of the process.  Quality preparation will help you suppress these nerves and help give you confidence in your performance and therefore the assessment outcome.

When do you start your quality preparation? That’s simple.  Your journey started at a very personal moment, do you remember it?  The moment that you settled that inner question – ‘do I want to be a mountaineering instructor’?  This is the beginning of preparation and this is when you get your game face on.

Context

Every experience from this moment on is set in a new context. You are no longer a recreational mountaineer and climber, you are on a journey.  Important now that the journey remains your own and that you remain in control of the timeline.  Don’t be tempted to attend training too early and don’t consider the training course to be the start of your journey – it’s not.  It is important that you realise that a training course is only part of your journey……  So what happens at training?  OK there’s a syllabus, there’s course content, but what really happens?  You are going to spend quality time and have quality conversations with quality professional instructors.  Anybody delivering at this level within one of our National Centres has had a significant journey to be in front of you.  These trainers have had hundreds of challenging conversations with many of their industry peers, they have had their ideas tried, tested and dragged through the highest community of practice which forms between staff who deliver our governing body awards. They will want to challenge your views, they will want to ensure you understand the context within which a mountain professional operates.

You will struggle to be part of this conversation if you haven’t been active in the mountains and on the crags before attending your training course. Get your skills up to speed and up to grade.  Get in touch with some willing and competent friends and take them scrambling and climbing.  Take your friends to the wall and crag and try a few ideas to improve their climbing.  Become an observer of others, look and listen, and ask what their needs are?  How would you help them improve?  Seek quality workshops through your professional association and get your understanding of foundation skills sorted.

Get busy and get ready for the conversation to ensure that your training course can define the context and focus on how you apply your knowledge as a professional.

Trust and Honesty

During your aspirant journey there are several stages when you need to trust both yourself and others. You need feedback to help shape your performance and you need to trust the people who are giving you feedback.  Find people who will be honest with you and find the ability to be honest with yourself.

The team delivering your training course will give you a lot of feedback about where you are in the journey to success. The power of this feedback is that it comes from those who have the most accurate context of the MTUK defined competency framework (syllabus) for a mountaineering instructor.  Trust me when I say your national centre staff live and breathe this stuff – sad I know.  This feedback is offered without bias.  Ensure it makes sense to you and be concerned if you find conflict with your own beliefs and what is being said i.e. are you being honest with yourself and are you understanding the context?

Finding a quality trusted mentor brings real value to the process and enables you to explore the context outside of a training course. Choose wisely though and look for somebody who has been active with their qualification across the full range of skills, understands todays context and has long years of experience.  Work out with your mentor how you are going to work together, how you will both contribute to ensure you have quality time together and what areas need most focus.  Anecdotally, we are finding that candidates who have engaged a quality mentor and continued the learning experience from training are having positive assessment experiences.

Find trusted people, ask them to be honest with you and ultimately be honest with yourself.

Responsibility

Within our process of pre-requirements, training, consolidation and assessment everyone has responsibility.  The governing body is responsible to ensure the award and syllabus are fit for purpose.  National Centres are responsible to ensure the training and assessment experience are high quality and sets the correct context across the correct range of subjects.  Associations are responsible to ensure that trainee workshops add value to the process.  Mentors are responsible to ensure they understand the boundaries of good practice before they influence a candidate’s belief.  The candidate is responsible to ensure they actively embrace the learning experience from the moment they make that very personal decision.  Every candidate must acknowledge any pre-requirements as a minimum request and take responsibility to ensure they personalise the training journey and fill in the log book experience gaps.  Aim for a log book which exceeds the pre-requirements – train hard and assess easys.

Being an aspiring or trainee instructor can feel a lonely experience but the reality is that you are not in this alone. We are all responsible for the process; we are all responsible for getting our game faces on.