The Fun Is in the Action: Lessons from Fairway Outreach

By Jeff Becraft

Back in the Fairway Outreach days, when we were reaching out to inner-city kids and kids from children’s homes (abused backgrounds), one of the things I did not want was I did not want a kid sitting there for 20 minutes listening to someone explain all the technicalities of a golf swing.

Now, I was a jungle golfer (to hit a house is still a badge of honor), so it certainly didn’t take me very long to pass on what I knew. But we broke it down into basically six different items and we would go over those six items in two minutes. So they were just watching for two minutes. That’s it.

Then we would get them up at the driving range and each of them was in their own spot and we got them hitting balls. We would then do what I called “work the line.” We would go up and down the line, reinforcing the six items that we had just gone over with them while they were hitting golf balls. It got the kids involved and they were in the action. They were learning by doing and we were reinforcing the information that they needed to get the job done.

They were engaged.

Another thing was, I knew if they didn’t hit the ball in the air… if they didn’t experience the thrill of hearing that pop on the club… they weren’t going to come back. And so to start off with, we had them tee the ball up. That made it easier to get a shot up in the air. There was always time to grow and progress into hitting the ball off the turf, but we wanted to generate the excitement right off the get go.

There was a doctoral student named Antonio (this is a different Antonio from the one I wrote about a couple of weeks ago in a Friday email) who was studying Youth Corps when I was with them and why it was effective. He said to me one time (and this is right in the middle of the action at Leadership Weekend), “It doesn’t matter if an alumni went through two years ago or went through 12 years ago, they can tell me exactly why you do what you do.”

I said to him back, “Well, how’s that? It’s not like we have classes on it or anything.”

And then he said to me, and this is one of the profound lessons I really picked up from him, “Things are reinforced over and over again.” We didn’t have any more time to talk about it because we were on the move. It was literally less than a 60-second conversation… but I have never forgotten it.

This goes into things much deeper than just what a Friday email can cover, but it’s the whole idea of getting people into the action and then reinforcing to them the important principles, rather than dumping on them a lot of information (that may be true) but they are not experiencing it. They are just listening… and that makes them a spectator.

So reflect on that as you go through this day and remember… the fun is in the action.

It’s a great day to have a great day!

Jeff Becraft is the Director of Our Place of Hope and the Director Emeritus for Youth Corps and has dedicated much of his life to helping shift the vision of people’s lives. Our Place of Hope is a paradigm shift for people living with mental illness that encourages them to regain meaning, purpose, and hope for their lives. You can connect with Jeff at  [email protected].