taking ourselves too seriously

If you'd had visitor's pass to a specific training suite in central London on Thursday and Friday this week, you;d have seen 2 very different styles of learning environments in action.

One room had its tables in a circle, and all the participants had a laptop in front of them. There was never any noise; it all looked very serious. At scheduled intervals participants (mainly men, wearing the corporate-world financier uniform of neatly pressed shirts and ties) would come out for chocolate biscuits and coffee. You'd only know if the participants were doing an exercise because the tutors would be in the coffee area, whispering to each other.

On Friday morning Pietro, the finance tutor, stood in the doorway of the other training room. Here a ragged flip-chart was crookedly pinned up with the strapline: "How we work together" (What did the contract contain? - Listen, communicate be responsible for your needs, share experiences, have fun). And the horseshoe table was were covered in a colourful jumble of devil ducks, hyperhead hairy squeezy ducks, windup toys, coloured stickers, stretchy aliens, smelly pens, playing dice, coloured cards, and fluourescent pens.

'But what are you doing, and what are these for?', he asked. I explained that the participants came from the management teams of Directors, CEOs and Chairmen of the boards of companies from across Europe and the middle east. And we were looking at changing patterns of choices, developing insight and alternative ways of approaching communications, relationships, decision making and performance. I handed him a duck, then another, then another, then some pens, some card etc etc ... till finally he said 'Stop - I can't h0ld them anymore'. And I explained that's one way I might use them, to demonstrate our patterns for saying no, assertiveness, time management etc. He nodded, and reflected that he now understood how these could be seen as symbols...

I invited him to take some of the ducks into his training room. He looked horrified - and said that they were all very seriously involved in understanding and learning about dealing with the current financial turmoils and melt-down of the global financial markets. And anyway, his colleague was currently running the session. I gave him three little ducks anyway and suggested he just took them in with him and put them in front of him on the desk and see what happens. He did walk away with them (too polite - or reflective - to say no) ... but 30 seconds later was back returning them to me. 'No', he said 'I can't do it'.

We'll never know. The introduction of 3 little yellow ducks into a financial training room could have led to a breakthrough moment and changed one or more company's handling of crisis and recession. Or it might not. But it might just have introduced a moment of light relief!

Still, those little yellow ducks should by now have made it through passport control and be gracing a chairman's office in Dubai! And it's for sure that their new owner will be implementing her action plan with energy, inspiration and determination. I wonder who she'll pass them on to?