Motivational Poster Child

Profitable, high-powered organizations often like to bring in a corporate consultant to impart to employees the skills they need to survive in a busy, stressful environment. Good time management is such a skill, but my employer is not such an organization.

This did not stop our section director from bringing in an instructor from Fred Pryor Seminars to give a class in "Managing Multiple Priorities" today.

The consultant is perky and enthusiastic and delighted by class participation. The words, "Perfect! Absolutely! I love it! Oh that's too funny! That's so true! Thank you for sharing that!" flow abundantly from her lips. She cites Oprah twice and Dr. Phil once.

I've had several months' lovely reprieve from corporatespeak, so it was a bit of a nasty shock to find myself up to my skivvies in it today. The consultant (whose name was Tiffany!) seemed like a nice enough person, but had the kind of sales-and-marketing mindset that makes honest citizens cringe. For example, when going over the class material this morning, she mentioned that we'd be covering delegation as a time management technique. "But I don't like to call it delegation," she said. "I like to call it empowerment."

You - you - you can't just do that! Words mean things. You don't just get to pick one you like better!

Tiffany poses the question: How do you determine if you have the power to delegate tasks?
The correct answer: Try it on somebody and see if they tell you to fuck off.

Apparently quite a number of the Ready-Set-Retire crowd, the ones who have been working for the state for upwards of 20 years, do believe that they have a heavy, stressful workload, and really need a class like this to help them cope. They'd be melted down for their oil content within 15 minutes in the private sector.

Tiffany poses the question: What do you do when you find yourself overwhelmed with conflicting job priorities?
The correct answer: Quit your job and go work for the state!

My friend b.r. noted that, although Tiffany stressed several times in the morning that life can't be fit into a box, she then kept giving us boxes to fit life into. There's the old urgent-important, urgent-not-important, not-urgent-important, not-urgent-not-important quad that many of us have the misfortune to be familiar with. There were a couple of different matrices for weighting and scoring the priority level of the tasks before you. And then, because the Myers-Briggs and other pop-crap corporate personality tests don't do an adequate job of generalizing human beings into an incredibly limited range of types, there is the results-oriented-fast, results-oriented-slow, people-oriented-fast, people-oriented-slow quadrant into which all human personalities can be neatly sorted.

Results-oriented-fast people are the Enterprisers, decisive and quick to act. People-oriented-fast people are Motivators, who are great at firing up enthusiasm for a project, but not so good with logistics or follow-through. (Every single person in senior management at my old company was one of these, incidentally; so maybe there is something to this grid after all. Then again, it may only apply to salespeople, who don't really have personalities to speak of.) Results-oriented-slow people are Analyzers, who really work through a problem to its logical conclusion. People-oriented-slow people are relationship-builders, who primarily value Togetherness. All four of these types are needed.

Tiffany triumphantly wraps up this chapter by pointing out that these four initials spell the word "TEAM!"
Beth, caught unawares in mid-sip, shoots soda out her nose.
Robbie jots down "MEAT" on his notepad.

Spirituality, Tiffany is convinced, is a vital element in taking care of yourself so you can function at your best, "whatever God you believe in!" She also uses a recent lesson from her Bible class as an illustration of the lesson of delegating. "Moses delegated and empowered his people!" she enthuses. "And God said, 'Perfect! I love it!'"* Later she adds, with somewhat less conviction, that "even if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, it's important to have some kind of spiritual connection."

At the end of the day, Tiffany goes over the class objectives the group had specified in the morning to make sure she's covered everything. One of the objectives given, and the only one I felt applied to me, at least, was "to find a way to keep busy." But as she reviews the list, Tiffany laughs. "Of course we don't really need to worry about this one," she says, marking it off.

Think It, Ink It!** says Tiffany again and again, stressing to the class the importance of writing things down in order to retain what they've learned.
So here it is.

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*That is a direct quote, folks. I wrote it down.

**If it sounds catchy and fits on a bumper sticker, it must be true!