One of the uncelebrated triumphs of corporate America is the hugely successful effort to make all workshops identical. This has been achieved despite the varied names given to these nearly uniform gatherings: seminars, classes, and “things,” as in “I have to go to that thing on Team Building next week at headquarters.”
Workshop rooms must be furnished with fake-veneer tables and metal chairs with plastic cushions that hiss when you sit down. Outside the room will be an easel holding a flipchart with “WELCOME to the ABC Associates Seminar on Something” written carefully in Magic Marker. At the back of the room, on a long table covered with off-white cloth will be several coffee urns, and in front of each urn you’ll see a little tent card marked “Coffee,” “Decaf,” or “Hot Water.” The coffee will be weak.
Management will have hired a consultant to inflict the workshop on you. This consultant will begin by saying “Good Morning!” in an unnecessarily hearty voice. He or she will have the accent of an airline pilot. He or she will deliver the following speech:
“Good Morning!”
(Desultory rumbles from most of the audience, except for the inevitable peppy reply from someone who is never grumpy in the morning.)
“Well, I’m (either a completely bland name or one you cannot pronounce.) I’d like to thank you all for taking time out of your busy schedules to come to this workshop on Something. Before we get started, there are a few housekeeping details I’d like to go over. The restrooms are to your right as you leave this room, down the hall. We have coffee here,” (pointing to the back of the room) “and you can feel free to just go get some whenever you like. We will be taking a short break at about 10:30 or so, and I want to ask you to get back promptly from the break…We have a pretty tight schedule, and we want to be sure we get you out of here on time.” At this, he or she will grin.
“Well, I think we can go ahead and start.” For some reason, they never simply do something; they “go ahead and” do it.
He or she will tell a joke. It will be funny, but you will not remember it. “Why don’t we go around and introduce ourselves, tell everyone your name, what you do, what Something means to you, and what your expectations are for this course.”
Everyone will do this, some rather earnestly.
“Well, as you can see, we all have different understandings and expectations about this complex subject. Something,” he or she will say, walking over to a flipchart and turning up a new sheet, “Something has a lot of definitions. But we can say that” – and here he or she will point to the neat marker-writing on the chart – “Something is:”
A convoluted sentence, containing multi-syllabic words and many qualifiers, purporting to be a definition.
At this point someone who actually cares will ask, “Well, how about Something Else? I mean, that’s really the same thing, because…” You will not follow the logic, but the consultant will need a few minutes to get everyone back on track. Finally the consultant will get down to business.
In front of each participant will be a workbook, and agenda on colored paper, and a pen with the name of the consultant’s company. You and the rest of the group will read a few pages; on each page will be a few short paragraphs and a great deal of white space. Certain words – alleged to be key concepts – will be bold, underlined, or italic. The consultant will have you break up into groups, and the number of participants will not divide evenly. Once in the groups, you will do an exercise. Your group will consist of one person who is very nervous and who will therefore volunteer to take notes, someone who does not understand the instructions regardless of how simple they are, and another person with an inappropriate amount of enthusiasm. You will be assigned roles for the exercise; however, the consultant will insist that you exchange roles with your fellow participants, and you will have not quite enough time to finish. You will have to use markers provided by the consultant to make notes on flipchart paper describing the group’s activities; the notes will later be displayed on the wall and you will select one of your group to get up in front of the audience and explain what you did. You will notice that the person who made the notes wrote at an angle and spelled one word incorrectly.
You will have a lunch break. The consultant will make a point of noting that it is 12:05, and ask you “…to be back here at, oh, say, 1:05, ok?” After the group returns from lunch, 5 or 10 minutes late, the next section will begin. In 30 minutes, you will be so sleepy that you will consider drinking a cup of the coffee that by now is not only weak but much murkier than it was a few hours ago. When you go to the urn in an attempt to stay awake, it will contain only half a cup, which you will take back to your seat but not drink.
The afternoon will include more group sessions and some workbook exercises, including one in which you will have to write how you “…are going to apply Something to your work or personal life.” You will find yourself actually coming up with an example or two of how you might do this. Finally, at the end of the day, you will be asked to complete an evaluation form, which will include a section for comments. You will ask for more group participation.
You will think about the workshop, estimating the probable income of the consultant, and wish that you could do that sort of thing for a living. However, you will sigh, you might know your subject, but putting together a workshop – how do you do that?
