So what Austria?

Now what is the conclusion from my 2 Austrian projects, what did I learn and take away?

Most important for me was to learn that clients can be real "bastards" who try to make your life a misery. That was my reality check. Training is not just happy clappy show time stuff, but an area where they drop their frustration and one needs to deal with it effectively.

I also learned how to deal with the whole variety of clients. One trains 1 subject and the response can be amazingly widespread. I figured out that the ones who nod and say "yes" to everything can be the worst participants as they do not really apply anything they learned, whereas the ones I struggled with were my best trainees; once we came to an all-satisfying conclusion they finally did it and changed their behaviour.

I learned how stressful it can be to have 2 clients at the same time in 4 locations. In any 2 weeks period I had to give 11 workshops and 60 (!) coaching sessions, and that for about 4 months. And I won't mention the whole travel issue.

These projects were also intense due to the internal (as in consultancy) politics. I had to deal with a bully of a project manager who was also incompetent, the other project manager just blackmailed me back in Switzerland, so I was not the best friend of her, the consultants were not well trained and only freshers, and my support director had no days to visit me on my projects and coach me in how to do my job.

It was tough, but I do not regret it. Not in the aftermath anyway, as I learned so much. I can hardly describe how steep the learning curve is once you are on your own and the clients expect results and of course do not care about our internal hick-hack.

After I left those 2 projects I was sent to Germany to another one. But that's on tomorrow's blog.