At the end of last week, i.e. Thursday and Friday, training sessions, referred to as "Refresher" training sessions took place... These sessions, according to all reports were less to do with refreshing anything and more to do with learning the EC company philosophy...
It involves things like; smiling is the most important thing in the world, we need a sense of responsibility, an unbiased look at the world, and some incomprehensible rubbish about being like the sun... The first session was in Funabashi Minamiguchi on the Thursday and the second session took place at the Ginza head office... They were run by a Mr. Yamaya... The same man who, until now, had organized EC OJT and other training sessions and the man whose reputation as a trainer is less than sterling... According to everything I have heard, he did himself no favors in these training sessions, giving the first group about a 1 hour smiling and saying "hello" practice session...
People have said that he was "unprepared", "amateurish while telling us how to be professional", and "full of crap"... As far as I know, no-one died in any of these training sessions which is the only positive I can see coming from them... He was talking to some very experienced instructors e.g. 12+ years in NOVA like they were brand new... From all reports the rooms for the first two sessions were filled with BTs and ATs and even one AAM in the second session... Yet they were treated like people who had never stepped in a classroom before... Apparently most left angry and/or slightly amused by the whole thing...
Can anyone here report on what the sessions were like? Did you enjoy the feeling of being patronized???
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The people who would have benefited most from the session no longer work for Nova. There were some valid points but it could have been cut down to about 2 40-minute sessions. These points I found most interesting (even as
a reminder of what we already
"knew"):
1. 80% of the Japanese population
are in level 7 (I'm not sure
where he got this number from
but if we are to consider the
number of level 7 files we had
back in the days when Nova was
a fairly healthy company I'm
inclined to go along with this
number or at least 70%).
2. Most of the students who came
back from the old Nova are in
levels 5 and above (no
arguement here)so level 7's are
an important market. "New Nova's
success depends on our ability
to keep lower level students."
3. There are 3 reasons why low
levels quit:
a. lessons are "too difficult"
(they feel miserable about
their ability and humiliated
as they feel it's a
reflection of their
intelligence)
b. they had a bad experience
(humiliated, neglected,
intimidated)
c. they can't see any progress
He gave us a little insight into what is going on in the beginner student's mind when using English for the first time (personal anecdote).
There was a lot said about motivating the students and how students perceive a dislike for them through body language etc.
The rest of the seminar was, well, filler.
Paul... Thanks for the contribution again... Most of what I had included in my post referred to the filler, but I am glad you got something out of it... There weren't thousands of useless anecdotes? That's a nice change from what I heard...
Well, he did tend to repeat himself a lot. He also went off on some tangents. I guess I'm just good at note-taking. After taking down pretty much everything, I dumped about 75%. By the time people were brought into the training sessions, a general mistrust had already solidified so potentially insulting aspects of Yamaya's presentation were brought to the foreground. Like everything else, G-Comm was just too late. I delivered some advertisements in apartment postboxes recently and a student who received one called up saying she had no idea Nova had reopened. The campaign is valid until the end of this month. Two weeks. Duh!
you don't want to be restructured...
Anon, what does that comment refer to? The restructuring of head office and the elimination of foreign staff?? You got to give us a bit more than that...
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