Just back from a training programme for Prolite Autoglow. This company manufactures emergency signs. A family run concern, it is now expanding into a limited company and the family wishes to include their original staff on this journey. Needless to say, its a big shift. The organization has a strong hierarchy, even though there is great warmth.
As a facilitator, it was a challenge for me to get people to see beyond their roles. Yet, the flexibility with which the participants adapted to the training programme, and their willingness to experiment, once they realized its value had me humbled.
As a professional, this was the greatest change I had witnessed from the start of a programme to the end. It served to reinforce my belief that as long as there is a will, change will happen and it will be for the better.
The group began with a very strong sense of roles and definite boundaries between the “labour” and the “elite”. The people lower down the ladder were not used to providing inputs and contributing to the progress of a task, while they excelled at following directions exactly as told. The ones higher up the ladder were not very experimental in their approach and very often the first option to occur to a “leader” was the one the team followed without exploring possibilities.
It was difficult to get people to explore their potential beyond what they were used to doing. Yet, with the coming change in the organization, their roles were headed toward a change.
We experimented with discussions in small groups, examining contributions and their relation with the satisfaction derived from success and a variety of approaches. By the end of the next day, the group was functioning far smoother, and had got used to being aware of how they functioned, resulting in escalating change and eagerness to take their new learnings even further.
In India, the corporate scenario rarely uses outbound training as a genuine organizational intervention and objectives are mostly “fun and excitement” with little, if any focus on objectives beyond that. This programme was a low budget programme conducted with an objective to help employees function more “professionally” than their usual family run scenario. It was a low budget programme and a leap of faith. This difference is what contributes to results.
It is the intention that leads to results, and I am very happy for this group, for they have gained something of far greater value than many of the 5 star programmes with jaded participants eager only for their dose of adrenaline and organizers who would like to justify training budgets while keeping employees relaxed and unchallenged.
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