You're listening to the Driving Confidence podcast for drivers who want to be calm and confident on the road. We will be sharing tips, stories and advice to beat driving nerves and anxiety and build your driving confidence. Whether you are just starting out as a learner or have had your driving license for years, if you want to transform how you feel about driving, this podcast is for you. We've got some content here for you that's a little bit different. And the reason for that is because when we created it, we weren't thinking about the podcast. We were actually creating this as training materials for driving instructors. So yeah, so we want you to listen to this season from a different perspective. We want you to hear things Slightly differently, because we're talking to driving instructors, predominantly in this. you might hear the phrases slightly differently. So it will give you a different perspective of what we're trying to say as well. Now of course, because we were talking to driving instructors, we've used some of the lingo. So you might hear us say phrases like ADI or PDI, and that just means an approved driving instructor or a potential driving instructor. Yeah, other words that you will hear us say are part two, Part three and standards check. And here we're just talking about the tests or the assessments that people have to take to become a driving instructor or to stay a driving instructor. So really it's a bit like the equivalent of the driving test. We hope that you enjoy listening to things from a fresh perspective. And remember that while we are talking to driving instructors in these episodes, we are talking to them about how they could help you. We're going to talk about students and a lack of trust in their driving ability. So for one week, what I did is I experimented with changing the word confidence to trust, and with my students on that week, I did a scaling. And we did a scale of zero to 10, with 10 being you trust your driving fully, and zero is that there's no trust at all in your driving. What score would they give themselves? And it was really interesting that people started to think differently. When I changed the word confidence to trust, they actually thought differently. They, they was thinking more about their drive-ins and am I a safe driver? Am I doing this? Am I doing that? And that got them to think about, do they actually trust their driving? And I think this is, there are key differences. Mm-hmm. Aren't there between whether you trust your ability or your decision making. Mm-hmm. Compared to how confident do I feel? They are quite different things, so Yes. And I think that there's a lot more involved in thinking about whether you trust your driving, whether you trust. Your ability and whether you trust your decision making. And some of the answers that I got back, or thoughts that I got back were, I actually trust my driving in these situations, but I don't trust others. Yeah. And I'm, I'm thinking that actually. Thinking about whether they trust other people's driving. So before getting in the car, particularly that group of students who, some of their friends have passed, some of them haven't. So perhaps they're getting into those situations where maybe they're getting into the car. With somebody who's just passed their test. That's the sort of question that's the word that they're probably thinking to themselves internally. Do I trust this person? Do I trust their driving? So, and they probably have family members as well who. They prefer to get in the car with certain people driving than others because of how they trust their driving. So it's a really simple, effective question that they may be used to asking, but instead of asking it about other people that they're getting in the car with, they're turning it round and asking themselves. Yeah, and I think it's a, it's a great way to gather more information from the students that we have. You know, again, this is. For instructors, but if you are going for your standards check, how much do you trust your instructing or your teaching? You know, this is, again, a different version, but the same word. Yeah. You know, how confident are you at passing compared to how much do you trust that you would pass? Yeah. How much do you trust in your ability? Now, one of the other things here is the word confidence. If you are using that word in particular, and I recognize that not everybody does use that word probably in lessons, but confidence or variations of that can have some negative connotations. So you mentioned scaling a little bit earlier on if you were asking somebody a scaling question about how good they think they are. How confident they think they are. You may well have quite a lot of people who will never score themselves a nine or a 10. And the reason, there's several reasons for that. Um, but, and it might be to do with lack of self-confidence, but equally there is this, what's known as show off shame. Nobody likes a big head. Nobody likes to show off. We've been told this since we were toddlers by family members. Whenever we've sort of like done the ta-da type thing when we were really small and or if we came up with facts and knowledge and said, I know that, and answered questions. Other people around us have very likely turned round and said, never. You like bighead, don't be sure off. You won't have any friends. You are just showing off. You're just showing off now. Um, it's something that we do. We put people down and so what that means is in driving lessons, if we are trying to pull the positives out of people, if we are using those sort of positive, how well did you do, how confident are you, then very often people will push back on that and you won't. Be able to get that out of them because they've learned over the years that actually they're not allowed to celebrate success or achieve without being put down again. So I think when you swap over to that word trust, you take all of that away, all of those negative connotations around being a she for a big head. I've gone because you're just talking about your internal feelings about whether you trust your driving decisions, your driving ability. Yeah. So it can change everything. And this is those two words you used there, your decisions and your ability. And I think when you word use the word trust, you have to actually think about what you would do in those situations. You know? Um, trust in your ability. You have to think about. Do I know this? Don't I know this? What do I know? So when you look at. Your trust in your ability. You have to think about your experiences and what you've done before. And when you combine the two, it is, you know, you're really getting the bigger, truer picture. Yeah. It just gets a little bit deeper. Yeah. And it's really interesting when you just ask someone, how much do you trust your driving? And just listen to what comes back. You know, you, you'll notice that that student will take longer to answer. They might give you a quick answer, but then that triggers a thought process and you might notice their eyes are moving and they're starting to think a little bit more about it. And you are getting that, that engagement in lessons. And I think that's what we're after here. You know, rather than how confident are you? Oh yeah, I'm not, or, yeah. Really Got you. Are getting that deeper level engagement, which is, is gotta be good, you know, for both of you. And when you were doing that, what went well, what didn't go so well? This is a word that you can use to, to help you out with that. Yeah. So that leads us nicely onto, yeah, because we've touched on this already slightly, haven't we? Being a detective, we are looking for those clues. We are looking for, you know, what people are actually saying. The way they say it and the situations that they might describe to you, and we use this a lot. It's one of our key messages alongside one, alongside one size doesn't fit all. The other message that we use consistently is that you need to be a detective. The reason we say that is because if you take everything at that surface level, then you don't really know what's going on. And if you don't really know what's going on, how can you help and support your student? Yeah, so in asking questions around trust, trust in decision-making, trusting ability and skills, then that's gonna help you get that deeper information, find out a little bit more about what's going on. So. Then you are able to support better to know what to do, which direction to take and how best to support your student, but also look for body language at this point as well. 'cause when people start to actually think and not just give you an answer. You will notice their body language will change. Like I mentioned previously, where the eye movements, you know, you can start to see people think a little bit more, but you know, you notice if, are they going a little bit into their shell? Are they coming out more? You notice that body language, they're breathing. Does it change? You know, these are little clues, minute clues that we are looking for. Um, which will really hone in your, your listening skills. Yeah. And being a detective involves being silent sometimes as well. Allowing time for all of those clues to come out. The hardest part, being silent, allowing time for your student to ask, um, ask, answer. So what are the reasons why someone doesn't trust their driving ability or their driving decisions? Now, obviously there could be loads, loads and loads, but mind gap. Understand gaps in knowledge and information. So one of the reasons somebody might not trust is because actually they haven't got all of the information. They don't feel that they know all the information, or they might know some of the information, but they might not underst understand it. So a gap in knowledge and understanding can definitely impact on trust. But that also gives you a clue, being that detective again, okay, there is a, a miss. You know, there's a miss something. So there is that gap. This is what I need to do to fill that gap. You know, I'll be able to give that information if the information is missing. Yeah. So yeah, that's exactly what we can do, isn't it? Yeah. To help build that trust up, build, fill that gap. So the other one on is experience. You know, people might well have an ability, but they haven't built on that experience yet. Yeah, and that's the key word here, isn't it yet? So they might not have the trust yet because they might not have the experience I. And that again, is another clue. Okay, great. So what we need to do is to build those experiences, give you more experiences, and that will build your trust. Yeah. And experience could be at different situations, different times of the day. I. Because again, we, we we're talking about driving here, but people will be driving different times of the day, different road conditions. So again, that might well play a part in that decision about how much they trust they're driving. Yeah, so it could be simple repetition. It might just be that they need to repeat something several times again and again and again in the same time, the same situation to nail and master that particular thing. Or it could be that when you ask in the trust question, what they say to you is, wow. I trust my decision making or my ability in this scenario, but I don't trust it in this scenario. And so, yeah, there's, you know, different types of experience. So when do they trust? When don't they trust? And that will help you work out what experiences you need. And we can't put people in situations, you know, so create scenarios for them. You know, you're probably not gonna give a lesson at two o'clock in the morning or, you know, Saturday morning. Coming back from a nightclub or something with them, the designated driver, you know, that's where they might not trust their ability because they've never experienced it, but what you could do is just ask further questions. So what's the problem? What might happen? You know, those sort of questions can really target that. I suppose it's a gap in knowledge as well. There's a link, isn't there? Yeah, absolutely. With that experience, because they've never experienced it, they don't know. And that actually also brings us on in fear of the unknown or oh, uncertainty or overwhelm or confidence or any of the other things. So there's a whole lot of things that may impact somebody's trust. But yeah, fear of the unknown. Feeling overwhelmed. Lack of self-confidence from past experiences. Maybe not even relating to driving, but the whole point of this is that detective work, it's finding out. Going deeper, finding out that information because for each of these things, you may do something different. You may have a different strategy. One size doesn't fit all. And so it's trying to find out what is the core of the problem so that you can choose a suitable strategy, just help support them to start building up their trust. Yeah, and this is again, you know, overwhelm, fear of the unknown. Well, what is causing the overwhelm? What is the fear of the unknown? What are they feared of that hasn't happened yet, you know, or they haven't experienced yet. So that is a couple of questions you can ask just to delve a little bit deeper. Um, be that detective just to get those answers. Yeah. And they might not know themselves, you know, again, but that's great because it's like, oh, okay. What if you did know what might have happened? What would build that trust in your driving? So we love this because when we do, when I did that for the week, you know, I started off the lesson with how much you trust your driving. You know, could we drive from here to here? You know, most people that I had at the time were, I say fairly confident drivers, you know, they weren't beginners. And you know, I gave them the task of could you drive from here to here or pick somewhere where you can drive to. So they had the option. If they didn't come up with something, I gave them the option to do. And what they had to do was drive independently trust in their driving, making those driving decisions. And this is. A fantastic learning point for them as well because they would also learn when they start to make those independent driving decisions, they learn more about themselves and they may never have thought about, do I trust my driving? That until you'd asked them. The chances are they may never have thought about it in that way, but as soon as they say, yes, I trust my driving, it's like, great. Off you go. Yeah, let's start driving independently. You trust your driving. You trust your ability. You trust your decisions in these situations. So let's get you driving independently, trusting and making your own decisions in those situations. And one of the most interesting four people at the same destination because they couldn't choose. They're all roughly the same sort of, uh, level, and four of them had exactly the same destination to get to, and all four of them chose different ways to get to that same destination. And for me as an instructor, it's like I. Why didn't you go this way? What none of the routes that I would've taken to get to that destination. So for me, it was really eyeopening and opened up a whole new set of questions. Why did you go this way? What happened? What was going on? And yeah, it's, it's something for us all to learn from. Yeah. And you had to trust in their ability Yes. To, to do that. And we had a, we had an agreement before we started where if something was gonna happen, I'd step in. But for them it was, they felt that they were gonna be driving independently, making those decisions. Do I turn left? Do I turn right? Which way do I go Now I know this way. I know that way, so I'll go this way. And is it safe to go? Isn't it safe to go? They had to make those decisions what to do. Yeah, so of course we come full circle because if we've got somebody who trusts their ability, who trusts their decision making, they're driving independently, making their own decisions, they start to become more confident. And so we can come back to that word confidence. So we could scale again at the end of a lesson or two lessons whenever you want to do it. But on a scale of zero to 10, with 10 being very confident and zero being not very confident at all, where would you score yourself now and ask the reasons, and I can almost guarantee they will be more confident because they've had to learn. They've had to learn about what they do trust and what they don't trust, but they've had the chance to drive independently and experience situations. And I think the most important feeling for the driving test is not confidence. It is trust. It's trust in their own ability to drive and their own ability to make driving decisions. Because if they have that, then. They aren't gonna be so nervous going into a driving test because they know they can drive. And if they know they can drive, then that's gonna reduce the nerves. So all they do is go and drive. And this is what's important for post-test, because actually the test isn't the most important thing. What we want to see is people being able to pass their test, but then being able to trust in their driving ability and their driving decisions afterwards. Yes. Thank you for listening. Find out about the different ways that you can work with us on our website www. confidentdrivers. co. uk and begin to transform the way you feel about driving.