Relating this to management, I believe that you need to use different managerial styles under different circumstances. Of course, the nature, experience of the person you are training/coaching must also be accounted for.

Here are some managerial styles – affiliative, coercive, coaching, pacesetting, democratic etc.

In situations, where there is an immediate deadline and the person in charge of the task has minimal experience or is raw, pacesetting – where the manager/coach dictates exactly what needs to be done and in which order, could be the style that should be used.

With an experienced team, you could use a more democratic style to let the team come to a decision and the coach acts just as a guide to make sure that the discussion does not go off-tangent.

In situations where the task is compliance related, a coercive/authoritative style maybe needed.

Depending on the task and the team, a manager may even have to switch between these styles in a single meeting even.

Ganesh

One more thing that I feel aids great learning is the amount of confidence a teacher is able to have in his student. Perhaps the very fact that your friend kept quite could be because of his confidence in your abilities to learn driving.

Many a times when leaders impart tasks, there is an inherent air of unceratinity that runs in his/her mind whether the job would get done or not. The leader might not show it outside, but the person who does the job can immediately make out that there does exist some air of uncertainity regarding his execution.

Also the need to make the student feel that the work he does is indeed important can’t be brushed off. The task might be as simple as driving or swimming but I guess once the learner understands the bigger picture of things , learning automatically becomes a joyous experience. An empowering feeling can be a wonderful motivator to learn.