I’ve spent the last three days in trainings and conferences. The first two days were for my company’s sales conference, and today was designated as management training day, where everyone in our company who is either a manager or a manager-in-training had to sit in on an all-day work shop on how to improve ourselves as supervisors of others. While a lot of the tips were very useful in terms of the usual known things (e.g. when pointing out an area where the employee can improve, make sure you don’t use the word “but” as a connector, and instead use “and” or just eliminate a connector completely), a lot of it ended up coming across as very generic. For example, the last session of the day included us identifying “problem employees.” These people were labeled things like “the criticizer” or “the one who goofs off/wastes time.” The problem with these labels is that as most human beings are, we’re multifaceted people and workers. Chances are, there are very few people who just fit into one of these categories; we all kind of embody a lot of these qualities, just at different times and in different circumstances. And just because someone may spend a lot of time socializing in the office and seemingly “wasting time” doesn’t necessarily mean that she doesn’t meet her deadlines or comes to meetings late. The workshop presenter’s advice was to be as specific as possible when giving feedback and managing people, yet her presentation just felt too general, without enough complex real-life situations. It’s almost as though she is not practicing what she preaches herself.