Training Daze

Recent research has turned up the surprising fact that during the working week, one in 20 people may be found in a room with a person called Geoff or Pam, several hundred Magic Markers and an over-heated lap top. Love them or leave them (and many of us would) you can't ignore corporate training courses.

Of course there are probably excellent courses, but few of us seem to get them. What we do get is either a size-disadvantaged room in an 'executive' hotel or a training centre's Portakabin (usually for public sector employees as this makes them feel at home). And there is little point hanging around the hotel foyer examining displays of model vintage cars or John Grisham novels. You can't escape your fate. Geoff and Pam are waiting.

The first rule of training courses is that no-one should be called by their full name. If the course leaders lost their annoying suffixes years ago, why shouldn't you? But there is hardly time for a friendly 'hi!' from our team before the dreaded name badges are produced. Complete strangers are suddenly metamorphosed into chummy sounding Daves, Jans, Mikes and Sues.

Not that this is sufficient. You might be a Dave but what do the rest of the group really know about Dave's psyche? A warm-up exercise is therefore de-riguer. One current favourite is to ask members which vegetable or fruit they would most like to be identified with - and why. Soon unknown junior executives are nervously introducing themselves as Cox's Orange Pippins and beetroots. What years of British rectitude have kept at bay is destroyed in seconds as Cath from Chelmsford reveals she has definite banana tendencies.

All barriers safely down, people sit in a post-embarrassment situation wondering if anything worse can happen. It can and does.

Once Geoff or Pam have explained how to break out of your huddled group at the other side of the room, you are finally ready for business. Your trainer (who may prefer to call themselves a facilitator so that they can't be blamed for what is to happen) will spend some time 'framesetting' ie explaining what comes next. It little matters that you have already been sent course details. Given your new mental age, how can you possibly be expected to remember?And if at this stage you are not also over-provided with felt-tips, sugar paper, Pritt Sticks and other nursery stationery, complain loudly.

Already, of course, some jargon has been introduced and more will follow. Your company or organisation has, after all, paid a considerable sum for you to be present here today. Participants and paymasters may as well feel they are getting something our of it, even if you're not. Most important, however, is that you feel intimidated. Experienced course-goers know to fall asleep during 'framesetting'. Newcomers are in a state of high anexiety, lest they are asked to reveal anything further about their real Desiree potato identity. Old timers know the day has been carefully arranged so that no-one can escape the brain-storming session to come.

Whether you're doing assertiveness training, 'learning to say no in middle management', or finding out how to prioritise tasks, it'll be hard to avoid a brainstorming session. Time stands still as you're encouraged to indulge in an endless stream-of-consciousness. Who would have thought 20 adults could spend six hours on 'Making the Most of Meeting Situations' - and then decide the most important thing is to communicate? The uninitiated might feel flattered initially at the Einsteinian connotations of the exercise but soon come to realise the profound truth of the term 'a pool of ignorance'. That is your brain, that is, up there on the screen. The over-enthusiastic ask if they can possibly keep their sugar paper (the use of two or more Magic Markers is always a dead giveaway). Other people's 'ideas' are collected up for future recycling.

The truly unlucky will be shanghaied into role playing games involving lying on the floor or revealing their dreams. If you find everybody apart from you is wearing shoes accept that you will soon have to stand on a chair and pretend you are a tree.

Recently I took part in a day-long role play that involved groups 'creating their own built environments' using, yes, sugar paper and cardboard and acting out 'silent tableaux' inside them. It was noticeable how we were split down the middle: those of us who didn't mind pretending we were four years old as long as we could sit in our 'houses' and read the Guardian, and those who did a runner. Quite what the point of the exercise was nobody knew but then, as somebody in my group said, at least it kept the facilitator out of the community a bit longer.

Surprisingly it's quite rare for course members to admit publicly to dissatisfaction. One must make do with strained expressions, the merest flicker of dissent. We assume instead that our intransigence is a personal failing. And who wants to admit to being anti-social, incapable of working in groups and lacking in team spirit? For Geoff and Pam the future looks rosy, as more of us have multiple careers and there are even more training courses. There's not a lot we can do about it. Apart from brainstorming our feelings about it on sugar paper.

Send in the Clones

How spooky is it when you find your department rapidly filling up with clones – of your boss? It’s all very well expecting us to imitate their body language during the interview but we didn’t know we needed the identical DNA before we got the job.

Bosses all know that teams are meant to be a ‘diversity of skills and personality types’ (er, you don’t want everyone crying behind their work station at the same time as there aren’t enough toilet rolls to go round). Except many managers don’t feel capable of making these subtle distinctions. They’d much rather employ staff with the same psychopathic tendencies as themselves. After all with the long hours culture wouldn’t you rather share evening meetings with someone like yourself who's quite happy to practise urinary retention and share half a Wagon Wheel?

In one recent job my line manager saw it as her mission to clone herself lest a tragic accident made her incapable of holding any of her eighty-six ring binders. Admittedly no one quite shared her dress sense, although a tendency to look as if you were attending a wedding reception circa 1987 was slowly becoming de-rigeur. But when it came to being perfectly humourless and to facing off colleagues with meaningless processes and procedures she must have felt great pride in her recruits. And many of them, I slowly became aware, had developed a penchant for cat calendars and soft toy kittens and would often be found together enjoying the latest cat diary. Needless to say those of us not of a feline inclination were glad to feel ostracised and soon found ourselves working elsewhere.

On the other hand I once worked with a colleague I had a great deal – too much – in common with. We would spend whole afternoons rapping about films and literature rather than devising ad campaigns for Southern Gas. It wasn’t good for either of us and he was sacked shortly afterwards.
Just another lose-lose corporate situation. Though, quite honestly, are any of us still counting?