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.

Austrian Logistics

My other project in Austria was a multilocation one based in Vienna with subsidiaries also in Linz and Innsbruck. The project focus was logistics as it was a freight company that needed sorting out their internal efficiencies.

For this project I developed the training approach and also gave the actual training and coaching.

Meetings with the top-client in Vienna were not always easy as he used to scream and swear his lungs out. Some of his staff was scared, some did not care anymore as they knew they'd get screamed at anyway.

I don't remember too well what happened in those early projects, but I have the slight feeling that they ran out of money and it could not be finished. But that was after the training.

From the Innsbruck site I got a reference. I translated a bit of it and pasted it onto my website. In case anybody is interested.

I remember that training there was fun. At least more fun than in the other Austrian project. Did people finally change their behaviour? I am not so sure about the Viennese managers, as they did not seem to get get out of their firefighting mode, but the Innsbruck site was a very successful installation indeed.

Again, I was a junior consultant then; today I would approach these difficult situations of either Austrian project differently.

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.