A rant about a useless seminar at work
Feb. 16th, 2012 07:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
noracharlesDo business coaches typically do their best to frighten and worry their clients, so that their coaching will seem more indispensable?
My boss got a coach to come and give us an all day seminar today, which mostly consisted in making what we normally do seem hopelessly complicated, difficult and fraught with danger, and soliciting input from the audience which he then cruelly mocked, especially if they made a better or more coherent point than him. Even if they were agreeing with him and he had to contradict himself to do it.
Last week we had a pre-seminar meeting with him, to explain our company's wants and needs. My boss and the director don't have any experience in what my department does, so they had invited me and my co-worker S to the meeting. Coach-douche asked us how we normally accomplish our task, and we told him. Then he mocked S right to his face and in front of all of us, while our boss and the director laughed. I got angry and backed S up, telling coach-douche that the procedure S had explained works, and how and why. S stared at the floor and said nothing for the rest of the meeting.
After the meeting, my boss told me to adjust my attitude.
Today, coach-douche uses several of the points I gave him without giving me credit, even going so far as to copy-paste a large chunk of text from an email outlining my points he had asked me for "Not to do anything with it, just so I can read it and think about it".
And my boss corners me during the break to ask me how I think the seminar is progressing. Having adjusted my attitude from "respond thoughtfully to ideas on how to go about our job with constructive advice and nip harassment of employees in the bud" to "be a bootlicking corporate yes-man and go behind my boss's back to actually get the work done" I complimented coach-douche for saying many true things (which all entry-level employees in my department learn on their first day, but my boss doesn't know).
And then I did damage control behind my boss's back, reassuring everyone that their job is not complicated, difficult or likely to cause a break-down from emotional stress (wtf coach-douche? O_o), and the tips they had shared on how to tackle typical, minor problems were useful and appreciated, no matter what coach-douche had mockingly said during the seminar.
Amusingly, it seems our boss had not talked to S about his attitude, because he spent most of the seminar commenting sarcastically under his breath, and interrupting coach-douche to disagree with him whenever he said anything especially unrelated to how real people act in real business situations.
(For example, we deal a lot with the building sector. Coach-douche advices that when calling a roofer on the telephone, and he replies with a curt "I'm on a roof", the correct response is to ask "Oh really, why are you on a roof?" because this will establish a rapport with him. I think "Sorry, when would be a better time to call?" is more likely to result in a lasting business relationship. Even though I'm not building a human connection through genuine interest and curiosity about the client as a person with that reply. Douche.)
My boss got a coach to come and give us an all day seminar today, which mostly consisted in making what we normally do seem hopelessly complicated, difficult and fraught with danger, and soliciting input from the audience which he then cruelly mocked, especially if they made a better or more coherent point than him. Even if they were agreeing with him and he had to contradict himself to do it.
Last week we had a pre-seminar meeting with him, to explain our company's wants and needs. My boss and the director don't have any experience in what my department does, so they had invited me and my co-worker S to the meeting. Coach-douche asked us how we normally accomplish our task, and we told him. Then he mocked S right to his face and in front of all of us, while our boss and the director laughed. I got angry and backed S up, telling coach-douche that the procedure S had explained works, and how and why. S stared at the floor and said nothing for the rest of the meeting.
After the meeting, my boss told me to adjust my attitude.
Today, coach-douche uses several of the points I gave him without giving me credit, even going so far as to copy-paste a large chunk of text from an email outlining my points he had asked me for "Not to do anything with it, just so I can read it and think about it".
And my boss corners me during the break to ask me how I think the seminar is progressing. Having adjusted my attitude from "respond thoughtfully to ideas on how to go about our job with constructive advice and nip harassment of employees in the bud" to "be a bootlicking corporate yes-man and go behind my boss's back to actually get the work done" I complimented coach-douche for saying many true things (which all entry-level employees in my department learn on their first day, but my boss doesn't know).
And then I did damage control behind my boss's back, reassuring everyone that their job is not complicated, difficult or likely to cause a break-down from emotional stress (wtf coach-douche? O_o), and the tips they had shared on how to tackle typical, minor problems were useful and appreciated, no matter what coach-douche had mockingly said during the seminar.
Amusingly, it seems our boss had not talked to S about his attitude, because he spent most of the seminar commenting sarcastically under his breath, and interrupting coach-douche to disagree with him whenever he said anything especially unrelated to how real people act in real business situations.
(For example, we deal a lot with the building sector. Coach-douche advices that when calling a roofer on the telephone, and he replies with a curt "I'm on a roof", the correct response is to ask "Oh really, why are you on a roof?" because this will establish a rapport with him. I think "Sorry, when would be a better time to call?" is more likely to result in a lasting business relationship. Even though I'm not building a human connection through genuine interest and curiosity about the client as a person with that reply. Douche.)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-16 07:58 pm (UTC)Your boss sounds so sucky. Wtf, adjust your attitude? That's the response he has after inviting you to -- presumably -- participate in the meeting??
Wow, humanity...
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-16 08:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-16 08:24 pm (UTC)My boss is kind of sucky, though. I mean, I can understand why she had to approach me about how I was going to play it in front of the team, because challenging his (coach-douche's) authority directly would be tantamount to challenging her authority, since she was the one to bring him in. I do understand that providing asked-for, constructive criticism during the planning phase to superiors with decision-making powers is not the same as presenting a divided front to co-workers who have no choice but to try to comply with directions, but she doesn't know that about me, since she's new.
But the fact that she failed to acknowledge how he had humiliated S, and how he said cutting, denigrating things to our co-workers who answered his questions during the seminar made me lose faith in her.
I did notice one thing, though: His first anecdote about stupid things the stupid people at my company stupidly do because we're so helpless without his sage advice was about my boss. A transparent ploy to show that 1) we are all human, haha! and 2) I'm on your side in the imaginary boss/employee divide!
My boss politely laughed at his punch-line about how stupid and incompetent she is. Then when it was her turn to speak, she politely asked my permission to use me as an example, and told us the story of a made-up scenario that was funny without being mean.
So she may just pretend to be oblivious to his manipulative shit because she doesn't want to lose face in front of me and S.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-16 08:38 pm (UTC)Oh, that was your new boss, not the boss-boss. It still seems to me, from how you described the situation, that she could have handled it better. But maybe it's important to her to appear bossy and give directions rather than ask nicely?
From her reaction to the joke on her expense, I think she might have responded negatively to his putting down S and the others -- just because she didn't acknowledge it to you, doesn't mean she didn't think it. Maybe it's another case of Being Boss, and maybe sharing that with people below her isn't something she thinks is appropriate. So, yes, what you said :D
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-16 08:40 pm (UTC)He also wore a three piece suit, with the shirt, waist-coat, jacket and trousers all different fabrics in intense colors and loud patterns, and stank like he bathed in perfume. I got the impression he was terrified of not being the center of attention at all times. How does that inspire confidence in anyone?
His first practical exercise for us was to play a trivia game about him and his personal life. Yes, like Gilderoy Lockheart. I got 6 correct guesses about his living arrangements and love life and the cars he owned and the sports he liked and his ideal woman out of 20 possible. (I guessed Joan Ørting, because she's the most annoying attention-seeker I could think of.) We corrected the answer sheet of the person next to us, so we wouldn't cheat, and then had to stand up and be mocked for how few points we got, because it just went to show how stupid we were to let our assumptions blind us (because we should always build a human connection through genuine interest and curiosity about the client as a person, doncha know).
He lied about his age. When giving us the correct answers for that he told us one thing, then later he absentmindedly told us a different, higher number when regaling us with his exciting CV.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-16 08:50 pm (UTC)Yeah, I think she could have handled it better. She probably feels that she has to establish her authority, being both new, younger than me and inexperienced in this particular area. And having to justify the expense of hiring an external coach for an all-day seminar to teach us what our in-house coach P usually teaches in an hour (and much more coherently). Only, our in-house coach P used to be T's boss when she was a trainee, and our new director B is currently in what used to be P's old job, so for complicated pecking order reasons, I think T was probably forced to look for outside expertise.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-16 08:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-16 09:32 pm (UTC)He did sort of mention that he had spoken to people from the department, saying that "Jeg har banket lidt på vandrørene, and people here have a prejudice that..." and then a complete misrepresentation of an objection I had made, followed by an explanation of my actual point but credited to coach-douche himself. My co-workers looked a bit surprised and puzzled that we apparently hate one of our core values, but when he segued to the sensible refutation of his own strawman they relaxed. So I'm sort of relieved he didn't mention me by name ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-16 09:40 pm (UTC)Ohgosh, I'm glad he didn't mention your name! That would be rather awful. Though given how horrible he was, you probably could have explained your way out of it again.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-19 08:15 pm (UTC)And that was correct? That says a lot, if not everything, doesn't it…
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-20 06:16 am (UTC)