Vatsan’s Ramblings

I have been living in Hilton in Bellevue, Washington since yesterday to participate in the Management Excellence Foundation Event.

This is unlike a traditional training, thus the use of the word ‘Event’. This is being facilitated by consultants from Bluepoint Leadership Development – John Colburn and Rebecca Perry.

[I finally figured out who Rebecca reminds me of - she vaguely looks like Marlee Matlin from The West Wing and The L Word! ]

Day 1

On day 1 yesterday, we were mostly subjected to routine classroom sessions that ranged from powerpoint lectures to highly interactive group activities. This day was set up as a precursor to Days 2-4, where we learned some tools for interacting with each other, decided on what we wanted to learn from our experiences and how to give and receive feedback. These are common activities, but it was very helpful to to have our ideas and perceptions dissected and deconstructed to illustrated productive vs. unproductive styles of communication and interaction.

At the end of the first day, we split up into groups and chose to work on a project. We are taking turns being the project lead, and some participants are acting as managers of managers. This is very reminiscent of The Apprentice, but it is intended to teach us about ourselves and offer us an opportunity to learn and expand skills that we want to focus on.

The 6 Values exercise was part of this event.

My focus in this training is learning to set goals effectively and create good plans for achieving those goals. So far, I haven’t made much progress on this front.

Day 2 – 4

These are the project days. The project is simply a vehicle for other learning, which have all been very interesting experience.

The days start at 8am (earlier actually, counting waking up, showering and getting breakfast), and end around 8pm or sometimes later. We work through lunch, drinks and dinner. Occasionally, we meet for a check-in with everyone across all the teams and share our views on what is going on in our head and how things are coming along, as well as anything else we’d like to share.

Others had mentioned that they had heard about participants breaking down and crying in this event. I received some really detailed feedback about my working style and personality from my peers, which didn’t affect my self-esteem too much. But it definitely helped me see how someone else might break down and cry at such a brutally honest and direct feedback system!