Let's Call It A Day

Winchester, Ontario 1995

We had just started the second day of a 4 day train the trainer in the employee centered management initiative my company was implementing. I had facilitated a lot of these sessions as we trained people from each of our locations to offer this particular course which was foundational to what we were trying to accomplish.

Every one of those sessions had excited and engaged people in them. Not so much this one!

I could tell they didn't want to be there. So I asked them what was going on.

I probably could have argued their reasons with them, pulled some power play, or tried some facilitator tricks and hoped for the best.

But together, we called it a day. We figured out the best way to keep our secret and we wrapped up our 4 day session about 10:00am on day 2.

The participative management initiative was important, and good. It was also a rollout.

Rollouts have procedures. Participative management has context.

I think we made the right decision that day.