[NCNCA] EB#1 Mentor Feedback

[Ron Castia]

After serving as a mentor for several years I now have for the first time an experience of having some feedback on the mentoring sessions from someone in my household.
It was my wife's first time ever at a EB mentoring session. She is a new rider but she has been through a racing clinic with Nicole Freedman and she watches everything I do when we ride our tandem on group rides. Not mention listening to me blab on about racing for ten years now. She is very trainable and practices everything I give her to work on, she is a great listener. As such here is some feedback she gave me to pass along to the mentors.

Speak up, you are the teacher and everyone is there to listen to you and to learn from your experience. Good listeners only require one thing...someone to listen to.
Don't be afraid to be wrong, if you have been racing for as long as most of you, odds are you are not wrong. So say something, mean it, and be assertive, don't back pedal after you give an instruction or piece of advise.
The new riders coming there for mentoring are not going to think you are a Know It All, actually they are hoping you do know it all and will share what you know with them. 

In these past few year of mentoring I have yet to see new mistakes among the riders, only the same mistakes made by a new batch of riders who are all very eager to learn. What we share with them now may very well save them some skin in the future. If you see a rider that needs some help, give it to them. They might challenge your knowledge or ask questions, that's fine, it makes you re-evaluate the information and maybe find a better way to present it or explain in more detail what you are trying to impart. After all, we are learning too and honing your skills on public speaking and being in front of an audience will help you in other parts of your life.

Use Andrew, Larry, Shawn, and Warren as examples, they are all very good at giving instructions and presenting information to the new riders. 

All that said I think today was a huge success, we watched riders improve by huge margins. GREAT job to all the Mentors!

Ron


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