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cc&d v202

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 Weathered
Management Training

Edith Parzefall

    I had no choice. My boss signed me up for this four-day management training in Brussels. I expected the worst brainwashing ever and an advanced level of bullshit bingo.
    To my surprise, the trainer was fantastic. After the usual embarrassing games to break the ice, we talked about typical situations a manager faces on the job and acted them out in role-play giving each other a hard time. It was stressful and fun until they gave us the task to tell our teams they’d have to accept a salary cut of twenty percent. I prepared a flaming speech circling around the word Enough! But I wasn’t asked to act the part. Our General Manager EMEA delivered the message like a good soldier. I wanted to quit my job right then even though it was just a game.
    On the last day I felt exhausted, elated, and energized at the same time. My thoughts squeaked with the soaping and scrubbing. As the last topic, the trainer focused on trust. They warned us how easily trust is lost--I know, I thought, glaring at our GM EMEA--and how hard it is to regain--fat chance.
    After lunch and just before wrap-up time, the trainer asked us to talk about a personal experience of trust. My heart raced. Not in front of all these big-shot colleagues! We sat in a wide circle and I was one of the last to speak. A husband thanked his wife for her trust, some guy spoke about jumping from a plane trusting his parachute, another talked about a coach who had believed in him.
    My mind worked frantically to find something innocent to reveal. I thought about my parents and how I’d stood with my suitcases at their doorstep begging them to let me come back after I’d gone off with the wrong guy--twice. Of course, nobody needed to know what an idiot I had been, so I said, “Trust is when you know you can absolutely rely on someone even when you screw up. They will catch you if you fall, no matter how often you pushed away their helping hand. They might say, ‘I told you so’, but they’ll embrace you.”
    Sobs erupted. The woman next to me buried her face in her hands. I stared at her in shock. What horrors of the past had I evoked? The GM raised a brow, most people lowered their eyes. The woman still cried. It would have been her turn to speak. She couldn’t. I swallowed a lump. How had real drama intruded our artificial little world of management excellence?
    The trainer nodded at me, her eyes glistening. “Thanks everyone. Good stuff. We’ll ask for your feedback after the coffee break.”
    At the cake buffet, the lady walked up to me. She still looked a bit shaken. “Sorry about this stupid melt-down,” she said.
    I smiled at her. “Oh, don’t worry about it.”
    I didn’t dare to ask if someone had caught her.



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