This state of affairs lasted for several days, at which time I confronted them about performance. A candid exchange of information ensued. They told me about their expectations for this workshop. To my great surprise, I discovered that many of them had no expectations at all regarding the workshop. They were given no reasons for being selected. Typically, these mid-managers were ordered to attend the program and were not given any choice in the matter. Many of the participants thought they were being sent because they had done “something wrong” and were being “corrected” by me and other members of the training staff. No wonder they were resentful and resistant to participating in this workshop! Even when I told them that they were being sent because of their successes, not their failures, many of the participants were hesitant to participant. They simply did not believe that I was telling them the truth. In the past, they knew that “this type of training program” was only given to employees who had “problems.” They could not get their heads or hearts around the appreciative notion that this program should be considered a reward rather than a punishment.
Fortunately, I had the opportunity to conduct more workshops for this corporation with other aspiring mid-managers. Before agreeing to do these additional workshops, I firmly requested that the supervisors of all managers attending the workshop clearly indicate to their subordinates that this workshop was being offered to the best and brightest managers, not to the “worst and dumbest,” as one manager at the first workshop declared. This second workshop was a vast improvement over the first. Participants were highly motivated and eager to learn.
I still marvel at the failure of this corporation to acknowledge that these workshop participants were selected because they were among the best managers in the organization. Were they worried about future salary negotiations; about how other managers would view their exclusion from the workshop; about the lack of clear criteria for selecting the best and brightest? Was this nothing more than a popularity contest? These are all legitimate reasons for being careful about conducting career-advancing workshops. I found, however, that these weren’t the primary reasons for this corporation’s failure to recognize the successes of their managers. The primary reason concerned the absence of any form of appreciation in this organization. Appreciation was simply not in its blood or culture.
