What did I take home?
1. I should avoid moving my legs that much at a presentation (stand still for once);
2. I should work on the way in which I watch my audience (I have a tendency to only look at a few persons);
3. A presentation with a clear structure: introduction, contents, ending, is easier to follow (mine didn’t really follow this).

I’ll mention below the workshops I took part to each day and what insights did I have at each and every one of them.

Day 1 – October 7:

Master in leadership (Rares MANOLESCU – Human Invest)

Be a player: pro-active, agile, and persuasive! (Vasile PAUN – Intell Competitiv)
- avoid playing the game of life in order to avoid losing it; play it to win it!

How do we implement an efficient leadership program: from analysis to solutions (Diana ROSETKA – Achieve Global, Anamaria FORNADE – Orange)

The motivating leader (Marius BALASOIU – For People)
- learning is like fire; to exist, it needs:
a. A spark (training itself);
b. Oxygen (organizational environment);
c. fuel (the boss);
If one of the above isn’t there, the fire does not exist;
- do you know how to drive at a drivers’ license examination? You won’t know things after a training either;
- Physics law: a participant to a training pushed by a HR manager is fighting back against the training with an equal force;
- three types of participants at trainings (Romanian acronym T.V.R.: T – tocilar / nerd; V – visator / dreamer; R – recalcitrant / recalcitrant):
a. The nerd – the say things; very active;
b. The dreamer – they get lost in their minds; they are the biggest challenge to a trainer;
c. The recalcitrant – they are angry; they have been pushed too much to participate to the training; they want the trainer’s blood;
- you shouldn’t train people; you shouldn’t make people laugh; you should make people go: Aha! (they should discover things at trainings);

Case study: Training and Coaching in Performance Management (Raluca MOHANU – Wrigley Romania, Mihai POPA-RADU – Seeds4success)
- the role of the performance management? to stimulate and help employees in attaining their own objectives and those of the organization while smiling;

Expanding Innovation & Creativity (Sid JACOBSON, South Central Institute of Neuro Linguistic Programming, SUA)
- stories give creativity (to the speaker and to the audience);
- at 12 years old, people are very creative;
- small children filter very few of the things they say;
- there is little to none of an information transfer without a transfer of the state of minds;
- Walt DISNEY made his employees go into these three specific states:
a. Creative; Encouraged ideas; Everything was Ok to say; Great ideas in here;
b. Critical; Nothing is good; People had issues for saying such things; Everything is bad; A lot of cutting of ideas;
c. Realistic; Combining a. and b., people should select the top ideas from a., that weren’t that badly criticized on b.; And they would act on those ideas;
Those are also the three steps into creativity;
- Albert EINSTEIN: “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”

Day 2- October 8:

HRM Strategic Fit (Decebal Leonard MARIN – Corporate Dynamics)

New innovative ways for learning (Catrinel POSTEMA – Interact)
- there are four ways to learn things:
a. Instruction / Training;
b. E-learning;
c. Blended learning (a mix of a. and b.);
d. Coaching;

I accept any feedback I receive during a training program! But I only agree to some! (Romeo CRETU – HRD)

Emotional intelligence in human resources management (Sabina IRIMIE – Caro Trainer)

Smart Emotions^® personal development trough emotional intelligence (Daniel BICHIS – Competent Consulting)

Day 3 – October 9:

How much do leadership abilities matter in the process of performance management? (Viorel PANAITE – Human Invest)

Business NLP – beyond persuasion and manipulation (Daniel BICHIS – Competent Consulting)
- the potential within ourselves manifests in what we are, do and have;
- the emotions should be an integral part of our cognition, not subordinated to them;
- anatomically, the brain has three parts: rational, emotional, and instinctual;
- there are four basic emotions: fury, fear, sadness, happiness;
- we are built do have negative states to stay out of, rather than have positive states to which to be attracted;

Solution-focused leadership (Petra MUELLER-DEMARY – MDI)
- focus on different things: small steps, desired outcome, solution, resources; but not at all time;

Effective training using classical psychodrama techniques? How? (Irina STEFANESCU – Flux Training)
- life instructions:
a. Have fun;
b. Do not hurt people;
c. Do not humiliate people;
d. Strive to learn;
- any experience is beneficial to learning;
- rules for role-playing:
a. Specific context;
b. Clear and well understood objectives;
c. Clear and well understood instructions;
d. Specific, relevant, realistic, immediate feed-back;

Workshop (Bruno MEDICINA)

_________
Bottom line: I’ve learned quite a few things at the training event.

This blog post’s contents:
1. What’s the basis for comparison?
2. How have I met Ana-Maria CORLAN?
3. What impressed me?
4. How to contact Ana-Maria CORLAN?
5. Conclusions

1. What’s the basis for comparison?
Besides teachers, I think the number of persons I’ve seen talking for more than 40 minutes with an audience that included me are professionals speakers. Speaking in public has many meanings, from conference speakers, seminar trainers, moderators, but all-in-all I can say I’ve seen quite a lot of speakers.

2. How have I met Ana-Maria CORLAN?
In the winter of 2008 (20th of February to 26th of February 2008) I took part to a winter school about Programmes and Project Management in Predeal, Brasov, in a lovely location on some mountain (or hill). It was organized by National Agency for Supporting Youth Initiatives – ANSIT Romania.

How I got to Predeal? Me and a person I’ve known only via Internet arrived by car in the first day in the evening from Bucharest. After I met my apartment colleagues, we go to dinner. I decide I should sit at a crowded table, with no familiar face (very easy to meet conditions in the first evening). There were 5 persons, not a single boy. After I present myself, another person takes initiative and presents herself, and everybody says a few things. I thought everyone was from the same group of persons, and I only replied to conversations, didn’t initiate any (but I was not very silent, either).

After dinner, an official presentation of the program takes place. One trainer presents his program joyful, full of life, funny. He then invites the other trainer to speak – surprise! It turns out Ana-Maria CORLAN was at the table I was sitting. She gives a less-than-enthusiastic presentation. We are then told by the organizers that we’ll be separated into two groups, randomly. My preference was for the first trainer – I could communicate, laugh and he could motivate me. The second trainer spoke very little both at the table and at the presentation and she wasn’t that funny for my taste.

The next morning I see the lists (we were separated into two groups). “Huh? I’m into this group? No way! I wish to switch!” Switching was not possible, we were told the day before. I go to the training with low morale. I was the last one to enter the room. The chairs were ordered in a U-shape, and there was one empty chair right in the middle of the imaginary U. Someone suggests me to take the chair. I give a “Huh?” look, take a chair from the back of the room and place it right near one end of the U letter, the closest to the flipchart (and where the action takes place).

I knew no one in the room, nobody was talking one to another, after a failed initiation of a conversation with the only person sitting next to me, I get a newspaper and start reading. The training didn’t start yet. The trainer comes and suggests I should put my paper away. “Huh?”, I think, “But there’s really nothing else to do. I can’t just sit here and look at the ceiling. What a waste of time!” Anyhow, I put my newspaper away.

There’s an introduction to the course, we write our names on a name tag, and things start moving. At the end of the first day I was thinking something like “I can’t believe what just happened! This can’t be a training! Wow, and to think I would have switched the trainers. No way!”

What happened next? Imagine courses of roughly 6 hours per day (with minor and major breaks), each day. It was quite intensive.

There were two groups, each with about 20 people, each with its trainer. As said, I was lucky enough to be in Ana-Maria CORLAN’s group.

The training methods involved a theory part (rather short), a work-in-groups part (much longer) and from time to time some fun activities (also known as “energizers“).

The group I was in was kept for the whole week, which meant we could establish good bonds and by the end of the training I had a lot of fun in that group.

3. What impressed me?
At the very beginning of the training there was a definition: What does “Project management” involve? The very first words of the trainer were not “The project is…” Instead, they were “What is a project, from your perspective?” It takes quite a bit of courage to put even the definition of the project, the very first words you start the training with, in the hands of others.

And people were telling things on Project Management, some closer to the definition, some further away. Words pop up, people came with ideas. And the trainer was writing them all on a flip chart. At the end of this there were a lot of words written down.

I was expecting to challenge a few ideas (“wouldn’t you think that it’s better?”, “hmmm, why do you think that?”, “are you sure that’s true?”), to politely refuse others (“yes, this is a worthwhile idea, but I prefer not writing it down”, “yes, that’s true, but it’s better we keep to the core of the definition”), to avoid repetition (“this was said before, even if with different words”) or to come up with hints (“what would you say project management involves on the financial aspects?”) or some brand new ideas by themselves (“would you think that the GANTT chart is involved in the project management?”). Nothing like this ever happened. The trainer carefully listened to each idea, wrote it down. No idea was even challenged, not to say refused, a lot of ideas involved repetition (and they were all written), no hints were given by the trainer (not to mention brand new ideas).

So, at the end of the task, we had a page of flipchart filled with words, some closer to the truth while others further away. Clearly some of the ideas were less important, and we had to know which one was good and which one was bad. Who was the one person in the room who knew most about project management theory, much more than anybody else? You’re right: the trainer herself (Ana-Maria CORLAN). Now she had to have the list reduced to a little more than the current list. And what does she do? Instead of cutting the words on the current page of flipchart (which might offend someone’s feelings), and instead of picking up the right words herself (a thing for which she had the most expertise), she challenges the class: what would you pick to be the right definition of a project?

Now I am shocked: I had to write down on my notebook a small list of words chosen by my colleagues from a larger list of words coming yet again from my colleagues. And I had to learn this definition for a end-of-winter-school examination. At that very moment I didn’t quite realized what happened. But by the end of the day I knew this was one of the most unexpected things I’ve seen in a training until that date. It was huge. After day one I was all eyes-and-ears to everything that happened in the training room. It was just unbelievable.

You may think that this was a one-time event. No way! There were more and more examples of coming up with ideas. I think that a lot of the training was question-based. I came to the winter school eager to accumulate, and I was challenged to give. Now that’s what I call change of perspective.

Hadn’t I known better, I would have doubt her judgment abilities – “you can’t empower others so much. This can’t be. There’s something wrong with your abilities”. But no, it was her option to do it like this. Quite contrary, she was a good trainer also. This is breathtaking.

What determined such thinking from me? The thing that impressed me mostly was empowering. According to Dictionary.com website, citing Princeton University’s WordNet, “empower” means to “give or delegate power or authority to”. Days passed and many things happened, but the most important thing that impressed me was empowering.

Another thing that struck me was the emphasis put on working in teams. This was, by far, the longest type of learning I’ve done at the winter school. We worked on teams a lot. And, for myself at least, I had a lot of fun doing this. What can I learn out of this? Even if I was mostly impressed with the abilities of Ana-Maria CORLAN as a trainer, she still allowed the participants to better express themselves in teams, rather than present them with information. So, she put emphasis on teams, even if she could have done a great presentation, or good interaction with the participants. Now how can’t that be great?

Some people put little emphasis on feed-back. Others more. Ana-Maria CORLAN made it like this: in the first day she asked for a feed-back via a fill-in form. In the last day she asked for feed-back in a form. In the last day she also asked for feed-back in a live manner, with real discussions. I think feed-back is important. How did she treat the feed-back? I’ve noticed a change in the way she reacted to the persons who were late after the first day. Also after the first day she said that some persons asked for energizers. We had plenty of energizers from that day on, and the second day started with two energizers.

At the end of the training, in the last day of training, prior to the examination session, we had the option of switching sides. Yet again I could pick things. My alternatives were this: a cool trainer, funny, very sociable and a trainer which encouraged personal thinking and initiative to the maximum. My general pattern of thinking when choosing this is simple: “if I don’t know you, if there’s something new about you, if I can learn something new from you, I’m your man.” This means I prefer diversity, and I would rather see a new trainer than the same training or trainer again and again. There is just one exception to this: the trainer has to be very good, or to impress me in such a manner that the option of diversity simply fails. In this case the choice was very simple. After knowing her, Ana-Maria CORLAN was the obvious choice for me. It’s nice to mention that I have looked on the presentation written on a large paper for both trainings and the written presentation for Ana-Maria CORLAN was much better this time.

In the last day I found out with great surprise that the class I was part of didn’t behave according to the trainer’s expectations. My reaction was something like “Huh? What did you mean? It was perfect. It was great”. Well, it wasn’t that great after all. It seemed that some things which I appreciated a lot – empowering others, letting them express, encouraging communication -, were misunderstood. Some persons, including me, expressed too freely. It seems the training participants exaggerated the very large options they had. I hope nothing changed with the trainer’s behavior after that.

Regarding empowering actions: she asked for help whenever needed (help with materials, arranging the room). During games, she asked for help from some participants.

4. How to contact Ana-Maria CORLAN?
You may find another training with her. Leaving a comment for her on this blog post might also help.

5. Conclusions

_______________
Bottom line: I took part to other summer and winter schools, to other trainings, conferences, seminars and workshops. I’ve made friends at the winter school in Predeal and I have some great memories in there. But the empowering abilities as a trainer of Ana-Maria CORLAN impressed me most for any public speaker I’ve seen.

Related posts to this blog story are:
a. English message: How to make a career decision? IT – Economics – PR – IT back again (personal case study);
b. English blog post: Status on self-improvement: March 2008. What you can learn from this;
c. Romanian text: Cea mai penibila intamplare din viata mea si ce am invatat din asta.

Have I left a mark on you? Do you have an opinion you wish to share with the world? Please post a comment below.

This blog post’s content:
1. How many Romanian trainers did I see? (with whom do I compare?)
2. History of events (when have I seen Bruno MEDICINA?)
3. What do I like most about him? (What makes Bruno MEDICINA a great trainer?)
4. How to see Bruno MEDICINA for yourself?
5. What decision to take?

Note: you may wonder why in this blog post I say little to nothing on what Bruno MEDICINA actually says. The reason is very simple: the thing I like most about this speaker is not the way in which he speaks or the things that he says. It has mostly to do with what I feel when he speaks. And this is largely unwritable. I will describe some general feelings on Bruno MEDICINA, but I can’t give you too many examples.

First of all, who is Bruno Medicina? You may wish to see his profile on Business Edu web site or his own web site.

1. How many Romanian trainers did I see? (with whom do I compare?)
In the autumn of 2001 I joined the Faculty of International Business and Economics (the Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest). I would stay in there for four years. After college, I’ve worked full-time, and then for almost an year I’ve been a freelancer. Now I work for another full-time job.

Most of those four college years, and the year working as a freelancer, I’ve taken part to a large number of activities involving public speaking (other than formal education). Even when working full-time I went to a lot of public speaking events. I have even created a mailing list dedicated to such events, where I informed my readers about conferences. I’ve been a member of some NGOs specialized in event organization, and basically I have been always interested in hearing someone speaking. You might want to note the fact that the “trainers” category of professionals I recommend is currently the largest one. Most of the speakers I’ve seen were Romanians, but some International speakers also. I can say I compare Bruno MEDICINA with quite a few other trainers or speakers.

2. History of events (when have I seen Bruno MEDICINA?)
The very first time I’ve seen Bruno MEDICINA was actually at a fair, rather than a conference event. I was living in a hostel of the Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest, somewhere near RomExpo exhibition centre (the area is know in Romanian as “Agronomie” – Agronomy – due to the closeness to the main office and University campus of University of Agronomical Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Bucharest). I think it was in a winter or spring, perhaps in 2001-2002 or 2002-2003. Anyhow, sometimes between autumn of 2001 and spring of 2003.

I came to the fair with two thoughts: to see the fair itself as quick as possible and to attend to at least one workshop. By the time I finished seeing the fair, the Bruno MEDICINA workshop already begun. It was in a room with multiple entries, there weren’t that many people present (it’s natural for this to happened at an under-promoted fair), and I sat in there. I didn’t understand everything Bruno MEDICINA was saying (he was speaking in Romanian, but with an Italian accent), and this lead me into not paying attention. Writing down wouldn’t help either – I was writing down words, but wasn’t paying all that much attention. I left disappointed. Time passed and I forgot his name, but the attitude remained with me. Back then I was only focusing on what can I learn from a speaker, not on the things that happen within me.

In the second (or third maybe?) year of faculty, I found out about a fire walking experience, first time in Bucharest, for free. Just the thought of it provoked me badly. “Me on fire? Wow, now that’s something!” But I managed to cut down on enthusiasm and self-convince that it isn’t all that great (not that I was, by any chance, afraid). I thought “What a waste of time”. I didn’t know back then who Bruno MEDICINA was, even if I’ve seen him before, so I didn’t associate the two events.

I think I’ve seen him after that at some other conferences, one-time-only events (my memory doesn’t help me all that much). While working as a freelancer (2007-2008), I had a lot more time to go to conferences. I went to see him a lot of times in the middle of the day at a tea-shop in the Bucharest center. I was enjoying this a lot, mostly due to the sense of emergency (Some announcements went like this: “Come to see Bruno MEDICINA today, in two hours time, at a Tea-shop”; Quite funny to be always vigilant). I’ve seen him quite a few times like this. The event was filmed and broadcasted on the Internet.

In the autumn of 2007 I went for the very first time at a firewalking. Lots of preparation prior to the event, excitement and fear, enjoyment and stress, all in one. Great day, great memories.

I’ve also seen him a few times in the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Studies, at events organized by ASPSE students’ organization.

I’ve seen him two times at Palace Hall, in the spring of 2008 and 2009 (I have made a video at the last event in here: Bruno Medicina on the things that really matter).

And in the autumn of 2008 I went for the second time at a firewalking event (and this time I had quite a physical experience). You can see me in this YouTube clip: Bruno Medicina – Firewalking at Studentiada (I’m the second one to pass, after Bruno; I’m the white-collar guy).

3. What do I like most about him? (What makes Bruno MEDICINA a great trainer?)
I told you that the very first time I’ve seen him, sometime in 2001-2003, I had a bad impression after meeting him. The two faults I saw were:
A. He said blunt things;
B. I had problems understanding what he said (he didn’t do a lot of question and involvement of the room).

If I were to look at the current behavior, I would say that the biggest two problems are:
A. He says blunt things;
B. He doesn’t involve the audience by communicating directly (even though now I can follow what he says much better).

So, where’s the evolution? Why since 2007 until this day I constantly went to see him again and again? Why is it that I went through fire (literally) two times at events where he lead the action? Why is it that I consider him such a good trainer that he is on my blog? The answer is simple: it’s not the things that he says, it’s the things he provokes in my mind via the things that he says. I evolved during those years, and now I interpret his actions differently.

He has a way of putting my mind to work, that I leave most of the presentations thinking “What was that!?” He says simple things, some things that are really boring. But the way those things make me feel is out-of-ordinary. I’m touched, I have insights, I get new perspectives, I find new paths of thinking, I develop my creativity. He’s that good.

I’m pretty sure that if Bruno MEDICINA would pick a subject he knows nothing about and he would speak about this subject for the first time in his life, I would have some things to learn. Because it’s not the things that he says, it’s not the way in which he says it (he mostly puts rhetorical questions, not involving the audience), but it’s all on how he makes my thoughts wander.

I could go see Bruno MEDICINA for countless times, speaking on no-matter-what. I’ve heard him speaking on firewalking for a quite a few hours, and one year after I repeated the experience. My feelings on that? I want to go again this year. I’ve heard some of his ideas for three to four times. And yet I go again and again to hear him talking.

Unfortunately, it’s not him the one that talks. It’s me. The things that he says wake up thoughts in me. And that’s plain wonderful. Yet I can’t really describe this in detail.

Sure, he has other qualities that make him a great trainer: he’s sincere (to the point that you may wonder if he wouldn’t be losing money if he says some things like that), he’s funny (and laughs at his own jokes, which is cool – I know when to laugh), he’s supportive (I’ve always felt support from him), he does CSR, although he wouldn’t call it like that (how many free events have I seen from him?), he does engage the audience when he wants to (at the firewalking sessions he’s a totally different person than when he speaks in public at a conference), he’s good with technical part (better than a lot of other trainers at least).

There are other persons from which I got more insights on a given period of time. There were people who made my mind wander in a better way. But for a training / public speaking / workshop / conference / seminar of 30 minutes to 5 hours to constantly give me fresh ideas, to constantly provoke me, to fully break barriers in my mind, I’d definitely pick Bruno MEDICINA. Because it’s not on what he says. It’s on what you think about what he says. This is all about coaching.

4. How to see Bruno MEDICINA for yourself?
Bruno MEDICINA is an international man of business, but you can mostly see him in Romania. You can sure provoke him for another country, see what happens. He has a web site, an Yahoo Group, a Facebook profile, a Facebook group, a Facebook page (these three are different one to another), a LinkedIn profile and he works on all of them thoroughly. You can find him on YouTube, you can search for him on Google and see a great article on him on Business Edu. But I do suggest you see him in person to have a clear glimpse on what he can do.

5. What decision to take?
Bottom line: I read articles by Bruno MEDICINA from time to time (I actually read them all). I see him on videos. They’re not that bad, but they’re not that good. But being in the same room with him, letting him play with your mind, is one of the best experiences one can have. Bruno MEDICINA is all about real experience, is all about the things he puts in me. And that’s why I deeply admire him for: for making me think in a really creative way.