The Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast

Welcome to the Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast. I'm your host, Maia. No matter who, what, or when you teach, I'm here to share all my best tips and tools along with real and practical conversations with fellow dance educators to help you be the very best dance teacher you can be.

Let's talk about it.

Hello, hello. Thank you for joining me today.

We have kind of a, I think it's like maybe a goofy topic, but also one that I think could be really helpful. So I'm excited to get into it. What I'm drawing on today is actually more my history outside of being a dance teacher where for many years I worked in the field of sales, not related to dance in any way, but I learned a lot of things that really just come down to psychology.

The psychology of like how to interact with people in order to be persuasive, but not in like a grimy way, right? So because these days I'm thinking so much more about dance education, it occurred to me that a lot of these quote unquote sales techniques that you're taught as a salesperson can apply so well to actually managing the dance classroom, managing your students and interacting with them in a way that they totally still have autonomy and everything. Again, I'm not talking about this in like a slimy way, but little things that you can do that you might not be thinking about to actually help your students get more out of their dance class experience out of the corrections that you're giving, etc. So let's get into it.

First and foremost, if you're studying sales, one of the first things that you're going to be taught is that you need to get to know your customer. And again, this isn't on like a surface level, like try to pretend that they're your buddy. It's like you actually need to know who it is that you're working with and what motivates them because if you don't know what motivates them and what it is that they actually want, you're never going to be able to sell something to them because you don't know what they actually want.

This 100% applies to your students as well. So it is important, in my opinion, to get to know your students as people and what motivates them because if you're giving the exact same corrections in the exact same way to every student in your class, because that's just what your teachers did for you. And that's what's worked for X number of years.

That's just how it's done that type of mindset, you might be missing the opportunity to actually motivate them to move through things a lot faster. So same situation with customers that are buying something and dance students that are studying a dance style. Some of them might really want to have as much autonomy and even power as possible.

So if you demean them in some way, and I'm not trying to come at anybody here because I think the field has shifted a lot, but I'm sure that many of us listening can immediately picture a teacher in their mind from their childhood who was demanding and demeaning and really through their power as the teacher around and nobody could say anything, the students had zero input. I'm not saying that that can't work. But if you have a student that is extremely highly motivated by their own autonomy, it's not going to be as effective.

So you may have to give that student more autonomy and come at them with a gentler approach and give them more choices and options in order to get the most out of that student. Other students might feel really overwhelmed if they are asked to assert themselves too much, and they actually are really motivated by having extremely explicit instructions of what they are to do and just carry them out. And those two students can be in the same class.

So you might change the style of how you're motivating those students within the same class. And that can help each of those students get the most out of it. Now when I'm talking about the student that really desires their autonomy, really desires their own power and does not want the teacher to be totally dominant over them.

There are so many ways to offer these students choice in what they're doing and opportunities to give you feedback and assert themselves without changing anything that you're actually covering as far as class material. So no dance teacher wants to just hand over the class to the students and say, well, these students, they really value their autonomy. So therefore they get to say how the class goes.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. But just like in sales, there's a way to offer the students choice while still maintaining some amount of control over the parameters of that choice. So a couple of points related to this from a sales perspective, in general, anything more than three choices is going to be too overwhelming.

And more often than not, just two choices is fine. So if a student is really seeking autonomy, you don't need to just offer them like, what do you want to do next? That type of thing. But you could say, okay, you have a choice.

Do you want to do this exercise or this exercise next? If you are allowing your students to have some say in their costumes for the recital, let's say, or their music for a routine. I know many teachers do that. I personally am not one of them.

I'm sorry. I take complete creative control. But again, if you have one of those classes that you're like, oh my gosh, we're in such a power struggle.

And the way to overcome that is not to just like, slam the hammer down and say, I'm in charge here. If there's a power struggle, that means that they want to be given some power, they feel like they're lacking the power that they need and deserve. And so taking it away from them completely is not generally the way to fix that problem.

It's giving them power within the parameters that you set. So not saying, hey, what song do we want to use? Or, hey, what costume do you want to use? Or, hey, what vibe do you want for your recital dance? Those are too broad. They can be overwhelming and they take all of your authority away, leaving the student with too much of an imbalance of power in that dynamic.

Instead, you can create a very small, narrow playlist or a very small, narrow couple of options of costumes for them to choose from. Let them take a vote, something of that nature. And they will have that same feeling of they had their say in it without robbing you of the power to still be the leader of the room.

And finally, this also applies to corrections. More than three choices is too overwhelming. The brain cannot take that information and like, settle in on what's most important, what it really wants.

So I would not give more than three corrections to one student within a class period. And even better, if you have a class that's like on somewhat comparable terms as far as technique across the class, if you give that whole class three corrections for that class period, and you keep coming back to them, using different imagery to reinforce it, pointing out areas where students are improving or still need to apply that correction throughout different combinations, that would be great. Some classes are a little bit more mixed level.

And then you do have to tailor it to each individual student more. But if you're coming up to a student and saying, you need to fix this. And then the next combination they're doing, you say, you need to fix this other thing and this other thing.

And then the next combination they're doing, you say, you need to fix this other thing and this other thing, their brains are not going to be able to hone in and just focus on what's really important there. Give one to three corrections within a class period, sometimes even within a unit or an extended period of time, just focus in on those things that are most important for them to take care of. And they will take care of them because they'll be focusing on them.

And they'll have that constant reinforcement. And then you can move on to the next. Okay, I'm going back now to a little bit more classroom management.

Just a really quick tip that a sales coach at one point gave me was if you want to build rapport with your customer, you don't always want to talk to them the way I'm talking to you now I have like my quote unquote customer service voice on right now while I'm doing the podcast. I'm speaking in a very informative and assertive way, which is fine. And as a dance teacher, this is also kind of how I talk my voice is elevated sometimes even to like a loud yell, but often just to this louder, more assertive voice.

And I don't know if you all experienced this, but I certainly have experienced classes where you feel like you're talking and you are just like, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, and the class is not hearing. So change the inflection of your voice and specifically the way that was taught to me in the sales context was lower your voice, lean into them and speak to them like you're telling them a really, really important, juicy piece of gossip that you don't want anyone else to hear, especially with teen dancers. I feel like this can be so effective.

So you're yelling at them and you're like, let's do this, guys, point your feet. And then all of a sudden, they're like not listening. Maybe someone's gabbing in the back, not paying attention, or they're just seem like they're glazed over, not actually processing what you're saying.

All of a sudden, stop the music, lean in, lower your voice. Guys, we need to focus on pointing our feet throughout this next combination, particularly on this move and this move. Got it? It changes the whole dynamic and it brings that power right back to you.

Another point related to not overwhelming with too many choices, too many corrections, anything like that, if you know anything about sales, you probably heard this, which is like the ABC philosophy, always be closing, which is so goofy and ridiculous. But the idea from a sales perspective is that you always need to have the end goal in mind. So whatever product you're trying to sell or like whatever it is that you're trying to do to close a sale, you need to be working towards that goal throughout the process from the very beginning.

From a dance teacher perspective, this comes back to those corrections before the class even starts, have in your head, what are the main things that we are working on today? It might be one thing where it might be two to three, but throughout the class, always be closing, always be honing in on the main theme of the class. You know, if the main theme of the unit that you happen to be working on on that time is core strength and stability, then maybe you're going to have to let some sickled feet go in the interest of really focusing in on the theme and just making that your main point. Be aware of what the primary goals and the primary themes of each class are, and then make sure that you're not going off on too many tangents as far as like giving corrections on little nitpicky stuff that's out in the stratosphere when you need to be focusing on the really core important stuff.

And finally, if there were times that you heard this and you're like, wow, salespeople really are skeevy. That's so weird that that's how she learned to do sales. Yes, probably all of these techniques can be used in like a manipulative, icky way.

But one of the biggest lessons that I learned when I was working in that industry is that nothing is more important than sincerity. Some people in the sales industry might tell you differently, but if you are sincere and you are honest in a kind way and in an appropriate way, you're always going to feel like you did your best work and you're still going to get really good results. So the primary way that I see this applying to the dance world is that I hate to say this, but I think especially in the more recreational dance setting, the more casual dance setting, so to speak, you might see a lot of false flattery.

You might see students with a very, very minimal technical skill being pushed up through levels because it makes them feel good, being given steps, tricks, material, whatever you want to call it, that's really not appropriate for their level and where they are as dancers, because it's what they've seen other dancers, maybe their age doing, and that's flattering to them to be able to do that same stuff. What they don't realize is that they dance one hour a week and the students they're seeing dance 20 hours a week, right? And I know so many stories of dancers that grew up in a more rural often and more recreational and casual setting and were told they were so great and they were just always praised. And then they were like, well, I'm such a good dancer.

I'm going to go audition. I'm going to audition for college programs, for companies, for summer programs. And they got nothing but terrible feedback because they weren't actually that great.

They just had very flattering teachers. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't praise every single one of your students. There's always strengths.

There's always things that students excel at in some way. It's so important to find those and pinpoint them and acknowledge them. And it's just as important because we're educators to point out the areas where they require growth.

So be sincere, find common ground, get to know your students, get to know what's important to them, and be genuine about wanting to get to know them. Always offer criticism in a very constructive way, in a very appropriate, kind, loving way. But be sincere about where the students can grow, what they need to work on, and how you can help them.

All right, so that's all I've got for you. I hope you enjoyed this little peek into kind of another dimension of my own experience in the professional world and how I've brought it into my dance teaching. Let me know what you think in the Casual Dance Teachers Network on Facebook.

You can also join us on Instagram at the Casual Dance Teachers Podcast. As always, big thanks to GB Mystical for the theme music. And of course, to close today's show, I had to pick a quote that was related to sales.

I liked this one from Bo Bennett. I like to think of sales as the ability to gracefully persuade, not manipulate, a person into a win-win situation.