Insight

Proud to see my name

I’ll be in Angeles, Pampanga until Thursday, Feb 24, 2010. I’m running a 7 Habits Workshop for National Grid Corporation of the Philippines. This is a special run for me, equipment-wise. My help forgot to load my tech bag. This is the black trolley I carry with me always whenever I conduct training for companies and other organizations.

Since my household help was usually reliable in loading the same things whenever I travel, I did not check the contents of the car trunk.I only realized that I did not have my training war chest when I arrived at the venue some 120 kilometers later.

There goes my slides, my sound system, my lcd, my wireless remote, my wires, and the rest of my training armory.

I suddenly felt very unsure of myself. I battled between having someone bring the bag here in Angeles or wing it and start over again.

Luckily I brought my spare laptop, a 45-day old back up of my data in a hard disk, and then the power cord. Good that the venue had a decent sound system, a windows laptop, and an lcd.

The smallest DLP player I have ever used. Half the size of a small DLP Player. Cool!

Boy was I glad that I had everything I needed! The only thing left to do was to redo the content. I went through the training manual again and started from the basic slides; setting aside the anguish and the regret  over the hours i spent preparing.

I did the slides again from memory. I revised one module at a time. I just believed in myself and allowed the participants to work with me. I am not sure if they noticed my concerns yesterday. But all I did was to be at my best to focus on them and their needs rather than my own feelings of inadequacy.

How did my day end? It ended with a trip to ShoeMart; a visit to the computer shops to look for a VGA cable, a USB card slot, and a wireless presenter. It also ended with a personal reward of char broiled tuna belly.

Thank God for stores like CDR king. I bought the things I needed without shelling out an arm and a leg (but the VGA adaptor for my mac cost an elbow and a knee).

I went to bed early, tired after wrestling with my own personal challenges. I felt that I had survived one whole day between wanting to trust or wanting to blame.

My simpler recipe for a successful workshop? Trust, fun, reliable technology, mastery of subject matter, and a deep faith in myself, my participants, and the Lord. Today, my MAC went back to work. Everything else is back to normal. But my self trust is higher over this unfortunate incident.

I went back to basics. Even if I had all the bells and whistles in training but did not have subject mastery and self trust, no amount of equipment can cover that gaping hole of inadequacy.

It would have been horrible for the participants to go home with bellies full of delicious food, yet starving because their greater needs were left unmet.

My spartan war chest