Concrete Heads in Austria

My first project as a freshly baked trainer was in Wiener Neustadt, Austria. The location was about an hour south of Vienna in the most rural part of the Burgenland. The client was a local producer of concrete, the people working there were most stubborn and did not talk a lot.

The project manager was a pushy Dutchman with insufficient German language knowledge (not good in rural Austria), the full-time consultant was brandnew with no experience whatsoever, and there was I, the part-time inexperienced trainer who had 2 projects at the same time.

To say it bluntly, the project was an utter disaster. The client's management team absolutely hated us. They arrived to my workshops sitting there with their arms folded telling me that this training was a complete waste of their time and that they did not intend to participate.

I did the training anyway as good as I could. I remember vaguely that they tried to plot against me by telling lies of what I said in the workshops to get me out of there. They did not only block the training but mainly the operations department's efforts. They rebelled till the owner was forced to close the project prematurely. What a nice start of my career as trainer!

I DO NOT WANT TO DISCREDIT MY CLIENT AS I DO NOT MENTION THEIR NAME, I ONLY TRY TO EXPLAIN FROM A CONSULTANT POINT OF VIEW AND A PERSONAL ONE WHAT IT MEANS TO DEAL WITH DIFFICULT CLIENTS.