I’m not suggesting that you might need to shoot your trainees. While that might be an effective training method, I’m not a proponent of firearms in the workplace.
Last week I went on a retreat with my CEO, Vistage Group. We had a great time; and our last activity together was skeet shooting. Now I’m not a gun person at all. I admit that I was a little frightened of the whole process well as being pretty nervous that I would not be good at it. Of course the competitor in me was ready to take bets on who could hit most clay targets.
What I found most interesting is that training new employees kept coming up for me during this entire experience. Here I am, new to skeet shooting, just like a first time new employee is to your facility. There were rules listed on the wall. In my own anxiousness to not look stupid and to try and be good at this “new job”, I started to read the rules. I had problems right away. Rule # 5 said something about leaving the chamber open when not shooting and the safety on as well. Guess what, I had NO clue as to what the chamber and the safety were.
Good news, in addition to the written rules, a trainer-facilitator-fun guy, was there to help. He was great. He qualified that there were some newbies in our group; and we (I) received some remedial training right away. You’ll be glad to know, I understand how to keep the chamber open as well as click the safety on and off!
We got great info on how to hold the gun close (my shoulder still hurts by the way), the proper stance, the houses that the clay targets would come out of, how to load and unload the gun and the most important tip to look down the barrel of the shotgun and line up the bee bee with the target (I think that’s what he said). House 1 and 5 shot the clay targets out low and fast which meant you had to stay in front of the clay thing. That sounded, and was way too hard for me so I didn’t even try those two targets. My strategy was to get really good at the easy ones first before I moved on. Interesting correlation to job skills don’t you think?
So I’m up first and am pretty nervous. I pick house 2 for the clay target to originate from. Our trainer even let me see what was going to happen first. House 2 and 3 were the easiest for me because the target floated up and toward me. I found it really hard to get things lined up along the barrel of the gun. It seemed to me like there were a lot of things to remember. Putting it all together was a bit complicated. Lean in so it won’t kick so hard. Hold the gun tight into your shoulder. Right before I got ready to shoot for the first time, someone shared info that they had gotten a black eye one time because they didn’t hold the gun in tight enough. So here I am, just like a new employee, overwhelmed with a bunch of things to remember at one time, a bit fearful because I’ve never done this before and here’s the kicker (pun intended!)… I missed, and I missed.. I missed again and again.
So I have a couple of choices. I can quit, bu this really just isn’t my thing. Or I can ask more questions. Or I can try to figure it out on my own so I don’t ask any stupid questions. Or I can put in my time, shoot my 25 rounds and just blow it off that I suck at this job.
I’m not much of a quitter. I like to figure stuff out. So I started messing around with the gun. I knew things weren’t lining up for me. So I got to thinking about my eye dominance. I’ve had lots a great bowling coaching; and I think that I remember that I’m left eye dominant. I start to wonder if I would be better off shooting left handed. Now I’m not left handed so the coordination of making the gun feel okay in my hands was a bit of a test but sure enough when I did that, boom-boom (I was 2 for 2). I did that for 2 rounds (and my left and right shoulder still hurt today!).
Then I get to thinking, maybe I was looking down the barrel of that gun with my left eye when I was shooting right handed. That’s why things weren’t lining up. I switched back to my less awkward right hand, forced my left eye closed and could then line up correctly with the right eye.
Amazing. Now that I have some experience under my belt, and have the all-important (eye) piece of training that I either missed or that our trainer may have thought I would just know. The facilitator then said, “Okay, I’m going to release the targets one right after the other.” This was genius for me. Bam-Bam, I got them both. I thought maybe they were teasing me and could somehow blow those targets up in the air. But sure enough, it was me. Woo Hoo. When he put those clay targets up one right after the other I didn’t have time to think about it. I simply took the little bit of experience that I had and executed! It was awesome. I felt good. I wanted to do it again.
I couldn’t quit thinking about what a cool training lesson this was. Actually, I think there are a bunch of lessons. I could recap here but would really like your input:
- What comparisons do you see between training, job performance, first-job jitters and skeet shooting?
Hope you are having a great week! I’ll see you on the range (as soon as my shoulders heal up).
