An Evaluation of a Recent Course
I was sent to a training course last week, on Tuesday and Wednesday - incidentally the last two days of the last year.
Which makes this the first post of the new year, and I haven't yet gotten used to writing dates ending in "15" rather than "14" - but I digress.
It's not the first training course I've ever gone to, but it's certainly the first one to be quite so emotional and rah-rah, and definitely the first one to end without a course evaluation of any kind. This is therefore my rectification of that issue. Naturally, names and titles are omitted for obvious reasons; but you may message me privately for further details.
The trainer was a man. He was articulate enough, and something of a showman - large exaggerated gestures, a wide range of intonations and expressions and humourous props, and appreciably good-looking. He didn't introduce himself other than to mention he was of mixed heritage (his name format seems, however, to contradict his story in that regard - he says his father is a Malay and his mother Irish, but his name seems to indicate the other way around as his last name is distinctly Western) and to mention his family was in the middle of being flooded (but didn't show us any proof of it). However, he was something of a control freak, because he wouldn't let anybody go on toilet breaks other than during the tea breaks or lunch periods (the official line was "I'm committed enough to be here all day and you should be too!"), and one of his favourite tools was the whistle he used to make everybody get into their seats when he thought noise-making activities had gone on long enough. He had something of a sense of humour, but I can't remember any or many jokes of his that weren't either dirty, sarcastic, or terrible puns, generally of the "So, can anybody tell me what an x is? No, not a y!", where x and y would sound similar but y would be a dirty word, variety.
He had four assistants, who went out of their way to tell us their names and try to differentiate themselves in the beginning ("Hi, I'm x and I'm the y Angel!") but they all eventually ended up just being collectively called "Angel" and not really performing different roles at all; they generally helped to keep the mineral water bottles and free mints flowing and judged different teams' performances and things like that.
The training material was... catch-phrases. It was basically a bunch of acronyms and slogans aimed at convincing peple to make themselves feel motivated and good about their work and thus do more - a repeated phrase was "YOU MUST DO EXTRA TO GET EXTRA!" There was some useful stuff in there, of course, about observing one's own unconscious habits (the trainer called them "patterns") and replacing them with better ones, and some of the stuff about communication methods was good. But there was also other stuff like replacing "negative" phrases with "positive" ones, which smacked of New Speak, and other things about everything being everybody's responsibility which sound nice until you remember that roles and responsibilities exist for a reason. At least it was more or less easy to remember.
At least, that was when the trainer was sticking to the material. I definitely didn't see the point in spending half the first day doing advertisements for how great the course was and how wonderful the trainer was and all that - after all we were already there! - and then the first half of the next day was spent sitting in little circles with other people in a dark room while everybody was being encouraged to "share", which... didn't seem to accomplish anything at all, because nobody was quite sure what to share and so ended up talking about family or work, and even then it was a complete digression from the supposed topic of the course. And then there was the way that all the segments tended to be ended with a group singing session for some song that the trainer claimed was picked by the GM or AGM, but I stopped believing that when the AGM started getting surprised looks.
The methods, too, were... rather odd. I'm all for encouraging audience participation, because it can't be great for a trainer to be lecturing to a bunch of sleepy people, but there should be better ways. There were a lot of things being done in the course, but there are a couple that stand out to me.
1. The fake money system was introduced on the first day, and was the criterion by which your certificate would indicate "Attendance" or "Achievement", and of course you'd want the latter. They were given out by the hundred thousands, with people generally receiving 500,000 for things like standing up and answering questions or things like that, or 1,000,000 for anything the trainer thought particularly impressive. Each group had a communal wallet, which was filled up by either group or individual achievements, and there were twice-daily announcements of which groups had done best or worst in the competition. This largely seemed to clash with the reiterations of teamwork and supporting each other - if you want the mood to be everybody striving for a common goal, then having individual or team competitions seems to be decidedly counter to that.
2. The trainer announced that there would be more than eighty games to play. These games turned out to be largely of the "go to x number of people and tell them y!" format. However, because "YOU MUST DO EXTRA!", you were actually expected to go to 2x or more people (or, as some more cynical people interpreted it, x+1 people) and tell them y in as enthusiastic a fashion as possible, almost always involving high-fiving them with both hands. The games of this format were invariably interrupted by the trainer blowing on his whistle, which was the cue for everybody to rush back to their seats and pump their fists in the air (there was a lot of fist-pumping) and shout "READY!" so that the course could proceed. The first time this occurred, everybody was too focused on finishing the task at hand to sit down, and the trainer muttered about it being practice for being alert to opportunities or new tasks or things, and so after that, everybody abandoned the task the moment the whistle sounded - how this is supposed to translate to real everyday behaviour is probably an exercise for the viewer. In the end, the only real game being played that was a game by normal definitions was the bow and arrow - the trainer set up a target and let people shoot arrows at it to earn more fake money.
3. There was a point in the second day before lunch, sometime after the trainer had gone over the portions of the material that stated "everything that goes wrong is my fault" and "say no to complaining, blaming, excusing, or gossip!", that the trainer decided to go around every group and nitpick - trash on the ground, chairs or files out of place (they had duct tape on the floor with little x's drawn on to indicate precisely where the chairs and files should be placed), participants who hadn't tried the bow and arrow - and the appointed group leaders would have to take it all without complaining or blaming or anything like that, and then groups would lose fake money for whatever offences the trainer claimed to have found. I suppose it was meant to be practice for it happening at work and stuff, but all that negativity and anger doesn't go away just because you don't express it out loud, so what's supposed to happen to it? There may be a loophole, though; the trainer mentioned that the complaining, e.t.c. were only not to be mentioned to superiors asking for progress reports or status updates on issues, so apparently you're only supposed to give them good news and not tell them anything that you're having difficulty with or that's gone wrong (or if you do, to tell it in some inoffensive way) - which still leaves you with other avenues for venting as needed. (There is, of course, the side issue that superiors who never hear about the things that go wrong will probably eventually go wrong themselves, but I suppose the subordinates are supposed to be passionate and skilful enough to deal with that eventuality.)
4. The trainer insisted that people should plan their toilet breaks and things to coincide with tea breaks and the lunch period, but there was no schedule provided and people had to figure it out by trial and error. It wasn't really helped by the fact the trainer didn't have a very good control of his own timing, and the tea breaks or lunch periods were at different times on each day.
The food provided at tea breaks was lacklustre. The coffee and tea were bland, the fried things were soggy, the noodles were sticky, the meat was little, and the cakes were spongy. The lunch buffet was much better, but since it was always late (at about 1.30pm or later, when the buffet was near closing) and the trainer only scheduled 40 minutes for it, it tended to feel rather rushed.
All in all? I'm... underwhelmed by the entire experience. There were some good, useful points in the material, but no real concrete application for some of them; most of the material was catchphrases and New Speak, delivered amidst dirty jokes and sarcastic put-downs and falsettos; it felt very much like some kind of positive emotions rally; the games were anything but; participants were restricted on a grade schooler level; and good large chunks of time were spent doing pointless activities. So while it was an interesting couple of days, I'm not sure it bears repeating or recommendations.
Which makes this the first post of the new year, and I haven't yet gotten used to writing dates ending in "15" rather than "14" - but I digress.
It's not the first training course I've ever gone to, but it's certainly the first one to be quite so emotional and rah-rah, and definitely the first one to end without a course evaluation of any kind. This is therefore my rectification of that issue. Naturally, names and titles are omitted for obvious reasons; but you may message me privately for further details.
The trainer was a man. He was articulate enough, and something of a showman - large exaggerated gestures, a wide range of intonations and expressions and humourous props, and appreciably good-looking. He didn't introduce himself other than to mention he was of mixed heritage (his name format seems, however, to contradict his story in that regard - he says his father is a Malay and his mother Irish, but his name seems to indicate the other way around as his last name is distinctly Western) and to mention his family was in the middle of being flooded (but didn't show us any proof of it). However, he was something of a control freak, because he wouldn't let anybody go on toilet breaks other than during the tea breaks or lunch periods (the official line was "I'm committed enough to be here all day and you should be too!"), and one of his favourite tools was the whistle he used to make everybody get into their seats when he thought noise-making activities had gone on long enough. He had something of a sense of humour, but I can't remember any or many jokes of his that weren't either dirty, sarcastic, or terrible puns, generally of the "So, can anybody tell me what an x is? No, not a y!", where x and y would sound similar but y would be a dirty word, variety.
He had four assistants, who went out of their way to tell us their names and try to differentiate themselves in the beginning ("Hi, I'm x and I'm the y Angel!") but they all eventually ended up just being collectively called "Angel" and not really performing different roles at all; they generally helped to keep the mineral water bottles and free mints flowing and judged different teams' performances and things like that.
The training material was... catch-phrases. It was basically a bunch of acronyms and slogans aimed at convincing peple to make themselves feel motivated and good about their work and thus do more - a repeated phrase was "YOU MUST DO EXTRA TO GET EXTRA!" There was some useful stuff in there, of course, about observing one's own unconscious habits (the trainer called them "patterns") and replacing them with better ones, and some of the stuff about communication methods was good. But there was also other stuff like replacing "negative" phrases with "positive" ones, which smacked of New Speak, and other things about everything being everybody's responsibility which sound nice until you remember that roles and responsibilities exist for a reason. At least it was more or less easy to remember.
At least, that was when the trainer was sticking to the material. I definitely didn't see the point in spending half the first day doing advertisements for how great the course was and how wonderful the trainer was and all that - after all we were already there! - and then the first half of the next day was spent sitting in little circles with other people in a dark room while everybody was being encouraged to "share", which... didn't seem to accomplish anything at all, because nobody was quite sure what to share and so ended up talking about family or work, and even then it was a complete digression from the supposed topic of the course. And then there was the way that all the segments tended to be ended with a group singing session for some song that the trainer claimed was picked by the GM or AGM, but I stopped believing that when the AGM started getting surprised looks.
The methods, too, were... rather odd. I'm all for encouraging audience participation, because it can't be great for a trainer to be lecturing to a bunch of sleepy people, but there should be better ways. There were a lot of things being done in the course, but there are a couple that stand out to me.
1. The fake money system was introduced on the first day, and was the criterion by which your certificate would indicate "Attendance" or "Achievement", and of course you'd want the latter. They were given out by the hundred thousands, with people generally receiving 500,000 for things like standing up and answering questions or things like that, or 1,000,000 for anything the trainer thought particularly impressive. Each group had a communal wallet, which was filled up by either group or individual achievements, and there were twice-daily announcements of which groups had done best or worst in the competition. This largely seemed to clash with the reiterations of teamwork and supporting each other - if you want the mood to be everybody striving for a common goal, then having individual or team competitions seems to be decidedly counter to that.
2. The trainer announced that there would be more than eighty games to play. These games turned out to be largely of the "go to x number of people and tell them y!" format. However, because "YOU MUST DO EXTRA!", you were actually expected to go to 2x or more people (or, as some more cynical people interpreted it, x+1 people) and tell them y in as enthusiastic a fashion as possible, almost always involving high-fiving them with both hands. The games of this format were invariably interrupted by the trainer blowing on his whistle, which was the cue for everybody to rush back to their seats and pump their fists in the air (there was a lot of fist-pumping) and shout "READY!" so that the course could proceed. The first time this occurred, everybody was too focused on finishing the task at hand to sit down, and the trainer muttered about it being practice for being alert to opportunities or new tasks or things, and so after that, everybody abandoned the task the moment the whistle sounded - how this is supposed to translate to real everyday behaviour is probably an exercise for the viewer. In the end, the only real game being played that was a game by normal definitions was the bow and arrow - the trainer set up a target and let people shoot arrows at it to earn more fake money.
3. There was a point in the second day before lunch, sometime after the trainer had gone over the portions of the material that stated "everything that goes wrong is my fault" and "say no to complaining, blaming, excusing, or gossip!", that the trainer decided to go around every group and nitpick - trash on the ground, chairs or files out of place (they had duct tape on the floor with little x's drawn on to indicate precisely where the chairs and files should be placed), participants who hadn't tried the bow and arrow - and the appointed group leaders would have to take it all without complaining or blaming or anything like that, and then groups would lose fake money for whatever offences the trainer claimed to have found. I suppose it was meant to be practice for it happening at work and stuff, but all that negativity and anger doesn't go away just because you don't express it out loud, so what's supposed to happen to it? There may be a loophole, though; the trainer mentioned that the complaining, e.t.c. were only not to be mentioned to superiors asking for progress reports or status updates on issues, so apparently you're only supposed to give them good news and not tell them anything that you're having difficulty with or that's gone wrong (or if you do, to tell it in some inoffensive way) - which still leaves you with other avenues for venting as needed. (There is, of course, the side issue that superiors who never hear about the things that go wrong will probably eventually go wrong themselves, but I suppose the subordinates are supposed to be passionate and skilful enough to deal with that eventuality.)
4. The trainer insisted that people should plan their toilet breaks and things to coincide with tea breaks and the lunch period, but there was no schedule provided and people had to figure it out by trial and error. It wasn't really helped by the fact the trainer didn't have a very good control of his own timing, and the tea breaks or lunch periods were at different times on each day.
The food provided at tea breaks was lacklustre. The coffee and tea were bland, the fried things were soggy, the noodles were sticky, the meat was little, and the cakes were spongy. The lunch buffet was much better, but since it was always late (at about 1.30pm or later, when the buffet was near closing) and the trainer only scheduled 40 minutes for it, it tended to feel rather rushed.
All in all? I'm... underwhelmed by the entire experience. There were some good, useful points in the material, but no real concrete application for some of them; most of the material was catchphrases and New Speak, delivered amidst dirty jokes and sarcastic put-downs and falsettos; it felt very much like some kind of positive emotions rally; the games were anything but; participants were restricted on a grade schooler level; and good large chunks of time were spent doing pointless activities. So while it was an interesting couple of days, I'm not sure it bears repeating or recommendations.
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