Of Course
I spent a week on an intense course where it felt like information was being forcibly wedged into my ears. It was residential, and a good thing too, because it started early and most evenings we did not finish until about 6 or 6.30 and then we usually had a couple of hours preparation work to do for the following day.
It is years since I had to concentrate this hard, and I could feel the scales of rust falling away.
I had a little time to be fascinated by the dynamics of the group. The initial wary circling and weighing up; the revelation of perosnal and work information a bit like playing a card game; the gentle exploration of the limits of humour. The nature of the course divided us into two non-competing teams (?), which further complicated things.
We would regularly split into our teams and work in separate rooms to achieve something, and this presented some interesting problems. At the start of the course we were told that 10 was the absolute maximum: by the time we started we were thirteen.
My group was of 7, and totally unmanageable. We tried democracy, evangelism, shouting and reason; we kept running out of time. We were given - say - 45 mintues to discuss something and come up with a recommendation. There was the One Who Had Been On A Course who insisted that we have an objective for the meeting and an intended result, there was the One Who Liked Flipcharts who wanted to get everyone's ideas of the objective of the meeting written down so we could discuss them properly, and Tangent Man who thought the task we had been given didn't relate to the real issue and we should be discussing something else. On one occasion we had twelve items to discuss in 30 minutes and after 15 we were still arguing about the format of the meeting. Four is the real maximum for a meeting like this and we suffered.
The course leader was one of those interesting and rather infuriating people who seems to have been everywhere and done everything. His job took him all over the world and into contact with an enormous range of industries. He had endless stories and observations, and a very dry but warm sense of humour.
The course had a proper exam at the end. Not the notional test where you can get the certificate so long as you spell your name right, but the serious kind with trick questions and a tight timeline. I don't remember having to concentrate this hard in ages.
Very much worth it though. I could feel my life changing as I watched.
It is years since I had to concentrate this hard, and I could feel the scales of rust falling away.
I had a little time to be fascinated by the dynamics of the group. The initial wary circling and weighing up; the revelation of perosnal and work information a bit like playing a card game; the gentle exploration of the limits of humour. The nature of the course divided us into two non-competing teams (?), which further complicated things.
We would regularly split into our teams and work in separate rooms to achieve something, and this presented some interesting problems. At the start of the course we were told that 10 was the absolute maximum: by the time we started we were thirteen.
My group was of 7, and totally unmanageable. We tried democracy, evangelism, shouting and reason; we kept running out of time. We were given - say - 45 mintues to discuss something and come up with a recommendation. There was the One Who Had Been On A Course who insisted that we have an objective for the meeting and an intended result, there was the One Who Liked Flipcharts who wanted to get everyone's ideas of the objective of the meeting written down so we could discuss them properly, and Tangent Man who thought the task we had been given didn't relate to the real issue and we should be discussing something else. On one occasion we had twelve items to discuss in 30 minutes and after 15 we were still arguing about the format of the meeting. Four is the real maximum for a meeting like this and we suffered.
The course leader was one of those interesting and rather infuriating people who seems to have been everywhere and done everything. His job took him all over the world and into contact with an enormous range of industries. He had endless stories and observations, and a very dry but warm sense of humour.
The course had a proper exam at the end. Not the notional test where you can get the certificate so long as you spell your name right, but the serious kind with trick questions and a tight timeline. I don't remember having to concentrate this hard in ages.
Very much worth it though. I could feel my life changing as I watched.
posted by Other Kosh at 7:48 am
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