Episode 667 - Importance of Culture in a Martial Arts School
In this episode, listen or watch as Jeremy and Andrew talk about the importance of Culture in a Martial Arts school.
Importance of Culture in a Martial Arts School - Episode 667
What constitutes Martial Arts culture? Does it manifest only inside the school, gym, or dojo or should it resonate even outside the school? In this episode, you can choose to listen or watch Andrew and Jeremy talk about the importance of Culture in a Martial Arts school.
Listen to this episode and join the conversation! We would appreciate you sharing your thoughts in the comments section below.
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hello, everyone and welcome back to another episode of whistlekick Martial Arts Radio. Today, Andrew and I are talking about culture and the importance of culture in a martial arts school. Stick around. If you're new to the show, you may not know me or my voice or maybe you're watching on YouTube or somewhere else and you can actually see us. I'm Jeremy Lesniak founder here at whistlekick joined by my often co host, Andrew Adams, Andrew how are you?
Andrew Adams:
I'm well, I'm doing well. I'm getting a little bit of a cough. A little bit of a cold situation going on. But otherwise, I'm well.
Jeremy Lesniak:
As I say often if this is your first time listening to the show, you picked a weird one to come in on, but maybe I should stop saying that because it seems like all of them are weird now. At least the openings. And I'm gonna blame you for that. Because they weren't. They weren't really weird until you joined. But that's not a bad thing. We have a lot of fun here. And why do we have fun? Well, we have fun because we love traditional martial arts is why we do everything we do. At whistle kick, what do we do at whistlekick? Well go to whistlekick.com, see all the stuff that we do at whistlekick. We've got products, projects, services, tons of stuff going on over there. One of the ways that we monetize the show and our overall mission is through the store whistlekick.com if you find something in there that you like, which is it's changing all the time, you can use the code PODCAST15 to get yourself 15% off. And if you want to check out more about this show, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com is the place to be. We drop a new page for every single episode that we do. Transcripts and links and images and all kinds of good stuff. And why do we do it? Well, it's to connect and educate and entertain traditional martial artists throughout the world. If that mission means something to you, if you're on board with us, if you're part of the family. Well, you can support us in a number of ways, everything from sharing episodes and leaving reviews to supporting our Patreon, PATREON.com/whistlekick. What do we do a Patreon, well we post additional exclusive content, stuff you're not going to find anywhere else. We do behind the scenes stuff. Andrews got it up on the screen, patreon.com/whistlekick. For as little as two bucks a month, you can find out who's coming on the show. At higher tiers, you get bonus audio, video, book drafts, exclusive access to me, you want me to teach you some stuff. I'll teach you some stuff. We got all kinds going on over there. Go check it out some more that we could talk about. Oh, and you can get free merch, free stickers. Okay. I don't know if I can call it free because you did pay for it. But it's stuff that we didn't used to do. And now we do it. We didn't raise prices.
Andrew Adams:
And it might not even be stickers depending on what tier you're in.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah it goes up from there. It starts with the stickers even in a $2 month. Show me anywhere else where somebody where you give somebody $2 a month, they actually get something back. Nowhere but martial arts radio. Andrew, culture. Culture, both been part of a number of martial arts schools. So whether we think we have a culture in a school or not. You might say, somebody might say, well, you know, there's really no culture here, we just train. That's a culture. Anytime you have a group of people doing things in a place for a period of time, there's a culture that comes to be. Do we need to define culture? Does anybody know cultures?
Andrew Adams:
I mean, it's just how the school... Okay, I think it would be better to define by saying what it isn't. We're not talking about how the school is run and how classes are taught necessarily, like we're talking about the overall philosophy of the dojo, or dojang, or your training hall or whatever. And I think for me, the culture has a lot more to do with what happens off the floor than it does on the floor. Not always the case. But..
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's probably the best way for someone who's struggling with understanding, you know, what do you mean by a culture to martial arts school? What happens outside of training is probably the best way to understand it. Do people socialize? Does the instructor kick everybody out right after class and people just go on their own way? Do people show up 30-45 minutes an hour early to work on their own stuff and hang out with people? are people who train friends outside of their training? These are all elements of the culture.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, I mean, I would say that not all of the culture of a school has to deal with stuff that happens off the mat but I would say a good portion of it would be.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I think it's the easier window into what that culture is. Because there are a lot of things that happen on the floor, so to speak, during training that different people are going to see in different ways. And depending on your time in, you might find some of them to be part of that school's culture. They may also just be part of the way martial arts is taught in a particular lineage or system, etcetera.
Andrew Adams:
Exactly.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So the premise of this episode is not what is it? Or Why is it? Or should it exist? Because I don't think you could have a group that doesn't have a culture, it's going to happen.
Andrew Adams:
Yep, agreed.
Jeremy Lesniak:
The question is, why is it important? And I guess by extension, if it's important, we're assuming it's important that you and I agree, it is important. How do you leverage it?
Andrew Adams:
How do you help bring new students in the school? How do you help get them indoctrinated into the culture that you want at your school? Right?
Jeremy Lesniak:
So I think first, let's go a little bit deeper on how culture is created, is I think that's the first step whether or not you as a school, try to create a culture, you will have a culture, the way the people show up. That's going to be there. There's a culture at your professional job, there's a culture in your home culture exists. Anytime there's a group of people, I can't underscore that enough. And in my experience, most martial arts schools ignore the culture of their school, they may pay attention to cultural aspects of what they train, but they don't think about the school's culture, and how it can benefit them.
Andrew Adams:
Absolutely, I would wholeheartedly agree, I think it's an often overlooked aspect of your school that can really hurt your school if you don't pay attention to it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. Here's a great example of where it can be negative. If you have a small school, and someone joins, and they join for, let's say, the wrong reasons, or they have a bad attitude, or they come in from another martial arts style, but they don't want to change what and how they do you know, they used to do style a and now they're doing style, Y? And they're like, but this is how I've always done it. And if the instructor or instructors aren't willing to say, no, no, you're here, you do it our way now, that can negatively impact the culture. If you've been training for a couple years, you've probably seen someone who negatively impacts the culture. And hopefully somebody who positively impacts the culture. What are some ways that culture can be positively impacted? Let's focus on the good stuff.
Andrew Adams:
Well, I mean, using your example, someone comes into your school that has experienced in another style. It gives an opportunity for learning, not just, I mean, the obvious, is you can learn from that person, right? Use that as an opportunity to learn well, your style did it this way? Well, let's talk about it and why? And then why do we in our school? Why do we do it this way? So it's it really a two way street? Right. So everyone gets to learn from that type of interaction. But that involves having an instructor that is open minded about other stuff. And we both know that there are instructors out there that are very, very good about that. And there are some instructors that are maybe could work on that a bit.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sure. And you know, that's not to say that in order to have a positive culture in your martial arts school, you have to permit cross training, not in anything. Culture does not have to be anything, culture is kind of the average of the say the attitudes of the people involved. So if you want as an instructor, if you want people to cross train, that can be part of the culture, if you don't, he can still be a positive part of the culture. In that, let's say, you acknowledge it, you recognize and say, that's great. That's not what we do here. This is what we do here. If people are excited about what they do, if they are thankful, happy, you know, throw a bunch of positive words in here. Then the culture is okay. Do we have to unpack what it is more?
Andrew Adams:
No, I don't think so.
Jeremy Lesniak:
All right, because then the next piece that I want to go to, people don't realize and I've seen this in martial arts schools. I've seen it in professional settings too, given enough time and enough critical mass, a culture will exist, separate from the people that are involved, it becomes its own thing. And here's, here's a great example. I have seen businesses. When I think of these examples, they're they're more businesses, but they could very easily be martial arts schools. Where a group of people got together started a business, and some of them were kind of toxic. And they injected a toxic culture, you know, backstabbing or undermining, or things like that. And even when that person where people left, those things still happened. Now, the people that were still doing it weren't people that had set out to do it. It's just what that used to average of those people became, it was kind of in the center of what they did. And just removing the person didn't change the culture, because the culture had been institutionalized.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, yeah, it's very easy. The word I have often heard used in this type of scenario is that, that person can be a cancer to the organization, very cancerous and cancerous, we know often grows, it gets bigger. And you might think, just because that person has left, you've removed all the cancer. But that's not to say other people need to be removed, but you need to work harder at the edges to get rid of that type of culture that that person has put everyone else a part of.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I think it's important to acknowledge, culture becomes institutionalized. And I think it's really important that we understand and acknowledge that. Because if someone looks at the culture of their school, you know, school owner and instructor looks at the culture in their school, and they say, you know, I listened to this episode, I would like to do some things differently. I'd like to try some things and build a better culture I want, you know, I want to shift us from a group that, let's say the only time people see each other's when they're training to, you know, I'd love to see some of these people become friends and socialize on the weekends and things like that. It takes time. And it takes a tremendous amount of effort. In fact, the effort to overcome an institutionalized culture has to be greater than the effort that went into creating it.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, and it can't be forced. That's the other thing.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, it can be, but it's not going to work.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, well exactly. Like you can't, you can't force two people to be friends. Right?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right, you can create the environment. You can create a situation where... you watch just about any movie and you will see a series of circumstances whereby a romantic coupling happens, right? It's not that one of them set out, I'm going to make this person love me. They just they went through something dramatic, right? And there's so now there's something that happens, you can do the same sort of things, whether or not you want your students dating, you know, I think anyone listening awhile knows my feelings on that. But it takes time and it takes intent. So we know that culture is important. We know that it exists. We know it builds its own organic almost life. It is it is an entity unto itself. And we know that changing it requires effort and intent. Why might you want to change the culture in a school?
Andrew Adams:
Well, we discussed earlier that there could be bad parts of the culture that have just inherently been there for a while. So there may be reasons you want to get rid of that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What are some examples? Let's give people some examples of negative elements of a culture.
Andrew Adams:
I think talking about stuff on the map side, you know students that continually hit and go harder than they need to. That sends a message that that's okay, especially if they're upper ranks students. That sends a message down the line. But I also, you know, I think we need to consider, we've said at the beginning that a lot of the more of the culture is stuff that happens off the mat. So you know, we should make a point to come up with someone's that that happened off the mat as well. And I think just this is such a dumb thing, but being polite and courteous when someone comes in the door, you know, Hey, how's it going today, you know, like having that social interaction with each other before and after class, I think is important, even if it's happening in the school, but it's not mat related, creates a warm and welcoming environment for others. And I have been in schools where that doesn't happen. You walk in the door, and you go in the changing room, and nobody said hi to me at all. It's my first day. And that was my first time going to this particular school. I walked in, and there were three or four other people in the changing area and not a word was said. I was a brand new student. No one had idea who I was. It was a really weird feeling.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, yeah, I think if you want the easiest way to kind of sketch this out, etiquette leads to culture, the formalized elements that you request, or that you can mandate, but request of your students in a school lead to the culture. Here's the best example of something we're gonna go "Oh, my God, yes" people showing up late to class. I know schools where everyone shows up late. Why does everyone show up late because the instructor permits everyone to show up late. There are no consequences. And there's no expectation.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
How would we change that? How do we we stop that? Because I think that's a good example and it's one that is simple enough for people to wrap their head around.
Andrew Adams:
I mean, I think it's, it's a fine line, you could go the Uber hard route, and say, the instructor could say to that person that showed up late, you know, go home, you showed up late, you can't come to class, that is the extreme that I don't think either of us would, would be on board with.
Jeremy Lesniak:
No, because then people will just, if they're not going to be able to get there on time, they're not going to show up. Correct. It's not the behavior you want, you want people to show up.
Andrew Adams:
I think it needs to be it needs to be recognized. Right. And I think you don't want to chastise the student necessarily, in front of the whole class, I agree. You know, you don't want to, you know, tear them apart in front of the class. But the entire class needs to see, this person showed up late, you know, sit down over there do warm up on your own or whatever. But clearly, you're not being a part of the group right now, because you chose to show up late, you can join us later. That sets the example for the others, oh, he was late, and didn't get to do this thing. So if I'm late, the same things gonna happen to me. You know, it's important that that sort of scenario was seen by everyone. Because that helps to change the culture.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sure. And that's one way to do it. For sure. I'm an advocate of, hey, everybody knows if you're going to show up late, you don't just step into class. And there may be schools where they don't have that rule. Well, that's an easy rule to set. If you're going to show if you're gonna be late, you don't just step in, you wait on the side until you are brought into class. And there are number of ways you can do that. I'm an advocate of, you know, in the middle of a set of drills or whatever, when you can you get over them, and you have a very quick private conversation with them. "Why are you late? What's going on?" And you look them right in the eye. And if it's the fourth time in four weeks, you and I need to have a chat outside of class. Right? I praise publicly, criticized privately and in martial arts, we kind of blur that line of what's criticism and what's correction. But scolding someone for being late, definitely. Criticism. Now, what's going to happen if you make that change, if you take a school where everybody was showing up late, and you suddenly hold people to different expectations?
Andrew Adams:
Well, I mean, you're when you say different expectations, you mean across the board for everyone? Not Yeah, treating people differently.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. We'll continue with this example
Andrew Adams:
that you have. I mean, it's gonna take some time, it's gonna take time people. Let's say you have a class of 10 people, one person show up, the first guy shows up late. Those nine other people will see it. But the next class, there's different people there, they didn't see it, it's gonna take time. It's not something that's going to be instantaneous.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's like everything else that we do. If you've allowed people to show up late for five years, that culture is deeply rooted in flexibility. You could look at it in a positive way. We're flexible, you know, we want people to come to class we don't mind if they show up fifteen minutes late, because you know, they had to work late. Jobs are important. Families are important, right? Like it's not a judgment. You have to create the culture that you want. You have to understand that manipulating culture takes time. This is not a, you know, again, five years versus it's not day one, week one, month one, it might be six months. What are other things you can do? You can make sure everybody understands the expectations. Clear? What's the phrase you use?
Andrew Adams:
open, clear communication
Jeremy Lesniak:
Open, clear communication is the hallmark of every relationship, whether it's a professional relationship, a personal relationship, a martial arts Student-Instructor relationship. Let's say you're 20:48, and you're like, oh, I'm sick of showing up late, I want to change this. You could yell at everyone. You could send out a nasty email, I'm sick of everybody showing up late you don't respect me. Or you send out an email, Hey, everybody. Want to let you know, we're going to change the way we handle people showing up late. If you are late moving forward, if you show up, after we have started bowing in, or started warmups or started whatever. Here's what I want, I want you to stand on the side, or I want you to go warm up on your whatever it is, whatever behavior you want them to take. This is not optional. This is a requirement. And if you choose to give them a reason, I find that the distractions of people coming in late, are negatively impacting the people who show up on time. If you are calm, confident, clear and open, about how you communicate this change. They will mostly be on board now there are plenty of changes you can make that are bigger, and may have some fallout. But you've got to trust yourself as the keeper of the culture because a martial arts instructor is the keeper of the culture in a school? Absolutely, it is it is the most most important element that we never talk about.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, I would agree. I also think there needs to be.. if you are going through this problem, if you're listening to this episode, and realizing you know what, I want to change some things about the culture in my school. I think having a really open hearted conversation with your top students is required it has to happen. Because everything trickles down from them, you know, and the reality is, and there are obviously exceptions to this rule, but your top students likely see more of what's going on culture wise in your school than you do. As the instructor.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You may be the keeper of the culture, they are the the implementers of the culture. You know, in a typical school, let's say, you know, you've got a handful of low rank black belts, and, you know, some high rank colored belts under them sort of thing. They're the ones that the way they act to everybody else sees it. They're gonna look at you and say, Okay, that's Sensei, that's, you know, Sabumnim, they act differently because of who they are. But, you know, they look at the hiring students that's how I'm supposed to act. And if you don't get them on board, you will change nothing. Yeah, you might be able to swing it temporarily, but it's not gonna be permanent.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, so having that that discussion with those students will pay off dividends in the long run, because they're the ones that are going to help implement the culture shift that you would like.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Having those conversations, both one on one in groups is important. You can get better feedback from a one on one conversation, but you're going to get better buy in with understanding from the group because remember, this is a group change, you're trying to implement not a one on one change. You may have people who don't want to adapt, if the cultural change is important enough, you may have to kick people out. And sometimes, that is the best thing you can do. Again, take it back to a professional setting. If you have someone who was maintaining the toxic toxic culture in the workplace, and everyone knows it is them contributing to that and you have tried to get them to stop doing whatever they're doing, and then they are no longer there one day that helps people understand that there are consequences to not following the cultural guidelines or manifest, that you have laid out as the boss or the instructor.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. And you could go the other side as well that you could be an instructor listening to this, and be so far removed from your students that you might not even know what the culture is. And so again, I would encourage you to have discussions with your upper ranked students. Because they're going to know what the culture is, I suspect better than you. If you're listening to this and are unsure, then definitely, they're going to have a better idea.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I would say that for most schools, the culture is the biggest indicator of whether or not they will be successful, have the number of students they want, whether those students will be the type of students they want. If your culture is misaligned, with your vision, things will not go the way you want them to. Yep. If you say, you know, why is it students join, and then three months later, they're gone consistently. There's something in the culture. If people show up, and they never talk to each other after class, they take off their uniforms or whatever, and they put their stuff in their bag, and they walk out, they're not lingering to have a conversation. That's culture, if you can't throw them out, because they're all great friends, and they want to chat. But you want to turn off the lights and go home. That's also culture, culture is the good and the bad, the better you can understand it, the better you recognize what can be done to adjust it, the more likely you are to have the culture that you want, leading to the school that you want. And checking all your boxes hitting your goals.
Andrew Adams:
Now, how do you indoctrinate a new student into that culture?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Whether you try to or not, it's going to happen. Just by being in the room. They're gonna pick up on what's going on. And that's I think, another great, maybe counterexample isn't the best word, but we'll use it. Where, you know, I had my top student working with this new student, and things were great for like three weeks, and then all of a sudden, they started doing stuff differently and weird, and they're showing up late. Ah, there's your culture. Your culture swayed them from what you wanted, because everybody else apparently was doing stuff differently. Anything to add?
Andrew Adams:
No, I don't think so. I think that's good. Sit down and take a look at what your culture is. See if it's the culture you want. And maybe it is which would be awesome, like there's nothing wrong with that. Make sure that your upper ranked students know the culture that you expect to have, especially if you plan to have some sort of a change. And go from there.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And for anyone who's watching or listening, and they're saying, you know, Jeremy Andrew, our culture is amazing. It's perfect. There isn't nothing I would change about it. Would you like to have more students bring their friends to class? As potential students? That's culture too.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Culture is not just good, bad, culture is marketing. Culture is all of it. It's all rooted in the culture of your school. And if there's anything at all that you would dream of changing, start with how to change it, as part of the culture, reward the behavior that you want. Well, if you've got feedback, and you've got stuff to add, if you have questions, hey, how do we unpack this, that or the other? Let us know Jeremy@whistlekick.com Andrew@whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. Of course, you can follow us on social media, we're @whistlekick. And if you head on over to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com You're gonna find the transcript, you're gonna find show notes and all kinds of good stuff for this and every other episode we have ever done. If you're up for supporting us, you've got a bunch of ways patreon.com/whistlekick is the main one that we ask for. But you can also buy something at whistlekick.com with the code, PODCAST15, as well as leave a review anywhere you can think of, grab one of our books on Amazon, or just you know, tell your friends about what we're doing and our love and support for the traditional arts. That's all for today. Until next time, train hard smile. Have a great day.