From my instructing experience I found it always helped, being able to adjust my attitude to each student who you sit next to.
Excellent observation GA Driver. I think what you mean is that you have to pitch it at different levels sometimes...
When an instructor encounters problems with a trainee, it's easy to blame the student for whatever reason. If you take a couple of steps back and ask yourself "Is there's something I'm not quite doing right, or is there another way I could teach this guy/girl the sequence" you might find the answer.
Being flexible and adaptive as a trainer is a fantastic quality that is often lacking in this industry.
An example is a teacher who taught me Principles of Flight at TAFE. We got to a point where most of the class was stumped (he could read it). He launched off into another technique of explaining the same problem, and the penny dropped with most of the class.
Principles of Flight was one of the few subjects I did
really well in, and I put the blame squarely on this guy, because of his teaching style.
Years later, he is a Check Captain in my company (by coincidence), and still uses the same style to get his message across. It makes the whole process of checks a whole lot easier
