Patience Pills

I'm storing up on my patience pills. Yall may not know, but sometimes I can loose my patience for a few minutes. Once I realize that I'm loosing my patience it takes me a minute to get myself back together. I'm off on a journey of training beginning on Monday. I'll be training our sales force on an upgrade to the current application that they use to perform budgeting, forecasting and promotional tasks.

My favorite part of my job is training. I think it's my favorite for a couple of reasons:

1. It is very rewarding when you teach someone something and then you get the opportunity to see that you have transferred some of your knowledge to someone else and they can actually use what you gave them. It's like holding a baby by their arms helping them to walk and then one day you see them walking on their own. It fills you with joy.
2. I guess in a way i'm a repressed actor or just a true Leo and love being in the spotlight. I get to run the show. I'm directing the trainees down a path to a common goal.

Now here's where I need my Patience Pills. I need them to deal with all the other elements of training in a corporate environment. Meaning the other trainers and management. I have a psychology degree and am in tune with what it takes for adults to learn. Sometimes it's challenging to keep everyone's attention because we all learn at different paces. Some trainers don't know how to judge that and when you are training with a partner it is painful to see them loose trainees or talk down to them as if they are children. I'm going to be training with 3 different trainers, so it's going to be a challenge to adjust to their training styles. Some of the partners that I'll have, have never done any training at all. I know I'll have to interject a few times but will need a pill not to step on them too harshly.

Also, there will be some management at the training sessions who believe that they know the right way to do everything. It's sort of a corporate arrogance that they have. They will talk on top of you, ignore or undermine your efforts because they believe things should be a their way. What I've learned from adult training is that there is no one way. You have to feel the energy of the room and your students. It is not beneficial to take on a cookie cutter type of format.

Management will be coming in and out of rooms occiasionally to, in my opinion, let everyone in the room know that they are management. What I find about our management is that most of the time they are really not very in touch with what those not in management are going through in their day to day activities and view everyone's job as being exactly the same. Not to mention that most of our management probably should not even be in the positions that they are, most not having degrees, or any experience in anything other than what they are currently doing today.

So for my trainees, I am taking a bunch of Patience Pills with me for my 3 week journey of training. I know I'm going to be exhausted and hope that I don't overdose on pills. The one good thing about training Sales people is that after training they will be buying me plenty of Bourbon's on the rocks! So that will dilute all the effects of the Patience Pills until the next morning.

Solon, Ohio and Dallas, Texas ....HERE I COME!

Oh yeah, I'll be taking a weekend break in Atlanta, GA in the middle of this journey.