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Lee E. Meadows, PhD.
Professor of Management –
Authored: Silent Conspiracy
& Silent Suspicion
Seminars help chase away winter blahs
Rumor has it that we are all on motivational seminar away
from higher levels of workplace productivity. The start of the spring season
marks the return of flowers, birds and seasonal joggers. It also signals the
next round of motivational seminars being hosted in cities and towns across the
business landscape. Thousands of employees across a variety of industries will
be encouraged to attend these day long events in an effort to shake off the
winter doldrums and bend the attitude around a positive frame. Given some of
the challenges being hurled into the work cube, we need to be reminded from
time to time that we more than just Dilbert clones.
Motivational seminars exist, in large part, as an exit ramp
away from the fast-paced congested flow of our professional and private lives.
As one of my mentors was fond of saying, “Even adults need to take a time out.”
When motivational speakers roll through town, it usually means that its time
for us to experience a cognitive cleansing of all the negative bacteria we’ve
accumulated over the previous months. I’ve never been one to follow a guru, but
I will listen to someone else’s positive view of the human condition in an
effort to enhance my own. The last motivational seminar I attended was an
upbeat, hilarious off beat take on life inside the cubicle. The speaker did a
rousing job of engaging the participants to ‘stop your stressing and count your
blessings’ and we should ‘work to live and live to play’. In a setting of just
over two hundred people, I wondered how many actually used any of his
suggestions to make their work lives easier to manage.
Now, there will always be those of you for whom a motivational seminar is just a childish romp through the forest of common sense and nothing more than just a bunch of sis boom bah humbuggery. Some of that criticism is understandable; however, the real benefit is not in the trite phrases shouted in unison to a rap beat, but the marvelous connections made with people from other organizations who took time out to breathe and refocus. There is no doubt that career advancements are measured by tangible accomplishments. It is also wise to include intangible accomplishments that produce slow growth in those areas where you might be standing still.