Sounds of Silence - Leadership Development Training

Early on in my career I participated in an agency-wide leadership development training program. This training also served as an orientation for bright shiny new government leaders. About 25 of us participated in the two week session.

Despite the agency having numerous important (expensive) senior executives, the agency contracted the training to a few third-party (expensive) vendors.  One vendor was responsible for the first week of training.  This particular firm had 3 employees/trainers: an older man, his son, and his nephew. The nephew seemed to be the only one that had any sort of leadership experience (or work experience). The son had a lot of experience working for his dad.  And the dad had a lot of experience getting to know important senior executives that make decisions on whom to hire for leadership development programs.

By day 4, all of us future leaders had gotten to know each other and developed a good rapport.  We arrived at 9:00am for the training, took our seats, and the three trainers entered the room and stood behind us.  As we all became silent and looked at the trainers, they continued to stand there and do absolutely nothing.  I was not sure what to expect: a speech, a dance routine, or a clip of the first 21 minutes of Saving Private Ryan which was supposed to represent the battles we would soon be facing as bureaucrats (that would come the next day).  But the three relatives leadership experts stood their ground.  They did not say a word.  Now, we were a smart group, future leaders and all.  So people started asking questions.  "Should we be doing something?"  "Was there an assignment we missed?" "Are you okay?"  Nothing.  I started to estimate the amount of money the agency was spending in salaries for us to sit in silence (about $13/minute just for the salaries of the government employees...I don't have any idea how much the trainers were earning during this profound lesson).  Eventually, somebody suggested that they must be trying to teach a lesson, we just needed to figure out what it was.

People started to emerge as leaders of this Lord of the Flies experience.  I started to emerge as the indifferent guy who wished he had internet reception.  One guy wanted us all to brainstorm possible lessons to be learned.  He drew a word cloud with the suggestions.  A woman suggested that we try to trick the trainers into spilling the beans by asking them casual questions before slipping in questions that might help us figure out what the &#*@ we were supposed to be doing.  We took a vote using the ideas in the first guy's word cloud.  There were (sadly) not that many abstentions.  The group eventually decided that it must be a lesson on how people rise to the occasion and become leaders in difficult situations.  We asked the trainers if that was correct.  No response.  To up the anti, we agreed to vote on a leader from our group that could negotiate with the trainers.  We picked Mr. Word Cloud.  He approached the trio of relatives but they remained stoic.  Various levels of this went on for four hours until it was time for lunch.  We all ate lunch together and tried to understand what was going on.  Less hungry, but just as confused, we returned to the training room.  I was pretty sure when we got back the patriarch of the trainers would tell us what the point of the morning was.  Nope.  They were sitting in the same spot and still were not talking.

Finally, about five and a half hours into the ordeal (and $4,300 in salaries down the drain), the older man got up and said he was putting a stop to the project.  He then went on to tell us he was indeed testing us.  Then he asked how we all felt.  People generally agreed that "confused" was the most common feeling (for me it was bored, annoyed, and frustrated I didn't have a better internet connection).  The trainer told us he had conducted this exercise frequently in the past, sometimes it would go on for days, but we could not handle it well enough for him to keep going.  He told us it was okay to be emotional and sad.  My eyebrows started moving like The Rock's

and I looked around to see if anybody else was buying this.  A few people said they did get a little choked up over the ordeal.  You did??? When??  I still keep in touch with some of the people from the training, but not anybody who admitted tears about this training.  Most of us believe that the training vendor clearly forgot to plan for a day and thought "hey what if we just don't say anything and see what happens!"

So if you ever plan a leadership training session make sure you follow the steps below:
1. Don't hire a company where all of the employees have the same last name.
2. Don't hire a company that has "Silence" as a significant part of the agenda.