Course / Work

Apologies for the lack of updates recently. I know my readers (both of them) have been waiting with bated breath for the next post.

(Sidebar: I had to look up the spelling of 'bated breath' just now, as I wasn't entirely sure it shouldn't be 'baited breath'. It's definitely 'bated', although I found an amusingly correct use of 'baited' here.)

I've been off the blog and off work for the last couple of days, attending a management . . . sorry, Leadership . . . training course.

Companies like mine often send their middle management off on this sort of thing. It's a chance to get them out of the office, get them fired up, and more importantly, show them they're not indispensable.

This course was pretty good, and one of the slightly more entertaining I've been to.

The location was certainly better than most.

It was held at the Life Saving Club in Port Melbourne, in a room with sweeping views of the beachfront, the bay, the kids playing cricket on the sand and at one point, a couple snogging for a full half-hour in waist-deep water.

So there were more than a few distractions when the content of the course ran a bit dry.

Day one and the first half of day two had us looking at our management 'styles', particularly how we rated in a questionnaire filled out by our reports. Or my 'minions' as I like to call them.

My results were (in a nutshell) that I'm good at planning for the future and setting team direction, but I'm a bit too nice.

They obviously don't know I call them my minions.

All in all I'm quite happy with that. Although if a situation comes up that calls for a micro-managing asshole, apparently I'm screwed.

The second half of day two was a complete change of direction. A personal trainer took us through some stretching and gravity-based core strengthening techniques (see how I can speak the speak?) which covered the gamut from embarrassingly painful to sadistically torturous.

The floor work was intercut with a PowerPoint presentation, telling us more than we could possibly take in on glutes, medials, various acronyms I've forgotten and some other stuff I don't remember.

At the time I remember thinking it was awesome. Then like a fine weed, it all seemed a bit unreal after the comedown.

But we got a foam exercise roller and massage ball to take home. So that was nice.

I went back to work today to an Inbox packed with emails and aches in my glutes and medials.

On the upside, the aches made grunting dismissively at my minions slightly easier, so maybe there's hope for my asshole side yet.