Kind of building on the boot camp post here:
7. It’s your world, own it. If you’ve got an hour then everyone needs to be involved in everything for an hour. If you’ve got three then they need to be occupied for three. It sounds obvious but everyone finds out the hard way. You’ve got people jerking around, talking, distracting, not having a good time. It’s not “THEIR” fault. You’ve gave them the opportunity to be a distraction\lose their focus.
Talk loudly\firmly. Go immediately to the point and give demonstrations while you’re explaining. Ask for questions and move immediately into doing it. You can initialize socialization while the group is doing their thing. You have them focused on doing what they came to do. You maintain the power in the situation. If you start off with the “how was your weekend” bit then they’re going to chatter for freaking ever and you have to interrupt them to do your job, screw that.
It’s the same principle during the session. There has to be a line that says “This is what everyone should be doing at this moment” and that line has to exist 99% of the time. It establishes discipline. If someone is fucking off then you can call them out for fucking off and they are wrong for doing it. If they’re in between activities for too or never laid the ground rules on what they were supposed to be doing in the first place then it’s you’re fault.
Example:
-”Hello, I’m Tony…I’m going to kill you” No waiting for a response. People came to be instructed by you, it doesn’t matter what they have to say.
-Instructions begin both verbal and visual. “I want this done, this many times\for this long. Do you understand?” Someone doesn’t understand, pull them up in front of everyone don’t discuss from a distance. If you’re talking from a distance then you’re supporting dialog, you want them to fucking do a push up, not to talk. Have them do the exercise “Got it? Everyone 3-2-1 go”
-People are doing their thing. You provide constant feedback. Good. Bad. You’ve got a nice ass. You have a good weekend? 2 people are talking during this period and you shout down anyone bucking the system.
-Johnny Top 25% finishes early…as he should. Fortunately you told him to do jumping jacks\go grab your gun from the car\random thing that’ll take 2-3 minutes until the middle 50% are done. What he does isn’t that important, he just has to be doing SOMETHING. Bottom 25% are still at it, call them up. “Time, get up”. Try to make sure that it’s not one guy…that’ll make him feel like a fag. If it’s one guy let him finish OR call up everyone when there’s 3-4 people left to go. It’s easier to maintain enthusiasm when you’re moving like a team. Any time people start getting singled out it starts being harder to hold people together. Makes sense right?
-Praise the group. Short and too the point. “Alright, that was good.”
-While people are recovering you’re beginning your next demo\explanation. Oddly enough it’ll take you just long enough to explain\show what you want to do for the middle 50% of your group to recover from what you’ve just had them doing. Funny how that works. You’ve got that 1-2 min to make your point for the next round. If the people recover while you’re jerking off then they lose focus. Can’t let that happen. Floooooooow.