Friday, October 8, 2010

Charm school

This week I attended "charm school."

What is charm school you ask? The mainstream doesn't really call what I attended charm school but refers to it as a much more socially acceptable name of "senior executive training" or "leadership training" or something pompous sounding like that. The non-mainstream probably calls it a boondoggle or perhaps "how to teach the boss how to not miss the papers when he has to go."

Charm school was, in reality, an in-depth psychological testing of yours truly to see how I would tend to react under stress along with training around methods to act as a better leader of a high performance team. These tests were reviewed one on one with a shrink wannabe and small group of other senior managers (aka peers) from around the globe. There will be follow up sessions at 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months to see if any of this training sticks.

The good part of this charm school was that my firm decided I was worthy of this investment. This training was held off site at a country estate so we wouldn't be interrupted with the crisis of the day. I was able to find out some things about myself but nothing was a huge surprise. The best part of this training was the establishment of relationships with some very smart people that I now have the opportunity to cultivate.

The bad part is that this "estate environment" was over the top. The food was plentiful and rich so nothing was on my diet. The icing on the proverbial cake was the scotch tasting seminar that I just had to go to as a team building exercise one night. I recommend this type of "tasting" to anyone who has the opportunity. Even if it doesn't build teams well and isn't on most exercise plans nor diets, it is worth a chance to see if it does. I think that I'll try to make the 1 month training follow up to concentrate on single malts rather than blends.

Don't worry, charm school didn't teach me how to solve "round peg/square hole" problem so I still have that going for me.

6 comments:

KC (my 140 point 6 mile journey) said...

Can you elaborate a bit more on the scotch tasting? Very facinating b/c normally you just hear about wine tasting.
Don't they know you don't need charm school? All they have to do is read your blog to see how charming you are! Can't wait to see what the follow ups entail.

KovasP said...

This sounds like fun! All my trainings are in a hotel or business conference center and they revolve around fitting me into a round hole. Jealous.

Caratunk Girl said...

It is so tough to stay on a diet at any conference. If anyone figures out how to do it, I would love to know. I am with KC, I have never heard of a scotch tasting.

Al's CL Reviews said...

Your take on this training made me laugh.

Julie said...

:) Awesome! Rock Star attends Charm School for the professional:) Hmm, scotch tasting...was there wine tasting too? Sounds like a good time!

Heather said...

My husband keeps trying to like scotch. I should find one of these for him.....and then convince his work to pay for him to go?