Trained

My week of management training went rather better than expected. I expected to be unconvinced and cynical. Instead, I could see the usefulness of many of the techniques presented to us. I also enjoyed meeting the other people in the class. It was kind of like jury duty in that way. Not quite as diverse but people from really different backgrounds doing very different things whom I wouldn't have met otherwise. Very interesting!

Now, of course, I am not a manager, so I won't have many opportunities to apply the things I learned in class. But in a couple of exercises I worked through ways to deal with coworkers that might actually yield better results than my past efforts. The focus in the class is on changing oneself, something I find hard to do, but which I'm open to trying. I will be trying some of these new strategies to get better cooperation from coworkers.

Better cooperation from contractors, though, is a different matter. The course didn't really touch those issues and I'm still struggling with how "empowerment" and "delegation" or the "Pygmalion effect" will get better quality work from fully empowered completely separate entities. Oh well.

I talked much too much, but got positive feedback from my classmates about what I said. They were interested and entertained by my tales of work-place miscommunication. Way to go dysfunctional agency!

The fighting with Mom has commenced. I'd say the problem from my end is that I'm not as engaged as she'd like me to be. Isn't that usually our problem? She's annoyed, among other things, when I'm on the computer. But it's not only her fault that I haven't posted, though that's a big part of it.

On the road tomorrow. Yom Kippur today. Have an easy fast if you're fasting (I am).

Grateful for: forgiveness.