Strongly Worded

Knowledge, Skills, Experience

I am writing to you as a proud graduate of the Neighborworks Institute, which is the massive training provider I mentioned earlier. This week, 1,200 community development practitioners from all across the country convened in our fair city of Boston, to enrich our minds and professionally develop.

The training was beautifully, smoothly run. Fresh coffee was served three times a day in silver urns warmed by flames. (You can see this made a big impression on me.) Also, the "continental breakfast" included fresh fruit served in melon shells carved into swan shapes.

As usual, I was amazed by how grown men and women, leaders of organizations, experts in their fields, reverted to first-grade behavior when planted for a week in front of a PowerPoint presentation and an empowered instructor. Our instructor was extraordinarily empowered, and liberally used the phrases "settle down now", "I can only hear one voice at a time", and "as I was saying ... before I was interrupted ..."

At first, we sat meekly at our tables (set with pink tablecloths, silver pitchers of ice water, and little dishes of candies), as we were asked to designate "table captains" to "keep us on track." After the first few hours of Lawrence's pompous, loud, and confrontational instruction, everyone at my table dissolved into sarcastic heckling, infused with anxiety. Betsy, a senior manager from Maine who manages multi-million dollar development deals, kept fumbling with the financial calculator that Lawrence demanded we buy. "Bankers have these," he boomed. "You've got to have these if you want your lenders to take you seriously. You NEED TO LEARN TO USE A FINANCIAL CALCULATOR. It's a key part of this work. Remember: lenders are looking for KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, and EXPERIENCE." He talked a length about why knowledge, skills, and experience are important, and actually distributed an explanatory handout. It was a leitmotif throughout the course.

Everyone freaked about the financial calculators (which are expensive, unintuitive, and used by bankers and mortgage brokers to do long-term financial projections, calculate debt service, etc). Betsy, a senior manager from Maine, who had never, in her 33-year career, used a financial calculator, zipped out during the break to buy one, and then fretted throughout the day because she couldn't figure out how to accurately add. Everyone else was scrambling as well, and Lawrence was annoyed. "IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE YOUR CALCULATOR, GO HOME AND PRACTICE! AND IF YOU DON'T HAVE AN HP10b, or an HP20c, I CAN'T HELP YOU." All the people who had bought different models during lunch looked crestfallen. They looked down at their Casios or their Texas Instruments with faces full of shame.

I have to admit I bought one, too (an HP20C, I'm proud to say). My tough, this-is-ridiculous sensibility told me that I could never learn to use this instrument in three days, that I had never felt the need to use one before, and that I likely would never use it again. I knew that we would work together during the class and others would share their calculations. But somehow my striver self won out, and I sheepishly dropped $43 on a calculator, that, sure enough, gave me errors most of the time (because it has about fourteen different special settings that are hard to turn off). Error messages cause this soft beeping sound. This annoyed Lawrence. "STOP MAKING ERRORS!" he said. "THAT BEEPING IS DRIVING ME CRAZY." I turned off the calculator halfway through the second day and haven't turned it on sense. I may sell it on Ebay; it's two days old and has outlived its useful life.

On the second day, Mike from Providence joined our table. We filled him in before class started, again, four executives regressing to the second day of elementary school, briefing the new kid. "Lawrence is a renaissance man," we told him (as Lawrence had told us the day before). "He's a former athlete, plays several different instruments, and was a leader on his college's chess team." We snickered. "He told us he's divorced." Betsy snorted. "Shocking."

A certain camaraderie emerged over time. One day, Lawrence brought us cookies. It was Sarah's birthday the next day and she brought in Krispy Kremes to celebrate. Rob read USA Today surreptiously during the boring parts of the lecture. We got loopy during the breaks, showed off when we finished earlier than the other groups. Betsy passed me notes.

And then it was Friday, and we all got our certificates, exchanged business cards, and dispersed to our respective jobs and communities, grownups once again.

Posted by Dori at 8:56 AM