I’ve had a busy week already this year! We launched the marketing campaign for our brand new, energy efficient, super performance grocery cart. My team was all over it!
Janet did a fantastic job on the graphics although I had to bribe her with a larger computer monitor to get her properly motivated.
Ray looked after the ad copy and press releases. He can be a bit wordy sometimes which threatened to spoil Janet’s layouts but I was able to broker a compromise between them and it all went well after that.
Brian, as always, took a little reining in. It’s difficult working with a friend and trying to behave as his supervisor without compromising our relationship. He’s such a party animal, always wanting to quit work early and go for a drink. Because he’s my friend, he seems to think it’s OK to roll into work late some mornings so, as diplomatically as possible, I have had to put a stop to that. I ‘tasked’ (new age verb) him with organizing a celebratory barbecue for the team after the ad campaign hit the media; it was right up his alley and he did a marvelous job!
The truth is … Janet, Ray and Brian aren’t real. They are my new robotic virtual pals featured in an on-line leadership and management course I am currently taking. By the end of this programme, I will receive a certificate indicating that I have completed the requirements of the course and am now a project champion and team manager; all achieved without having spoken or worked with a single real live human. How alarming is that!
I will be qualified to supervise and negotiate with two-dimensional make-believe people who don’t yell and scream, who don’t gossip behind my back, who are consistently well-groomed and presentable, whose barbecued burgers are completely calorie-free and who don’t ever need a day off to look after a sick child with a virtual virus!
The disconcerting part of all of this is that I sometimes get so involved with my virtual office team that I am tempted to chat about Janet, Ray and Brian when I go to work in my real office on Monday mornings. While everyone else is discussing what they did over the weekend, I have to stop myself from telling them about the great barbecue I went to at Brian’s place!
Is this really how we are expected to learn in the 21st Century? Acquiring leadership skills without the inconvenience of having ‘real’ people to lead is rather like becoming a pilot without ever leaving the ground.
Well, I must get back to work. I’ve scheduled performance reviews with Janet and Ray this morning and I don’t want to be late. Janet’s a bit of a whiner and I’m hoping to inject a bit of positive thinking into her. Ray’s attitude can cause him to trip over his ego once in a while and I’d like to encourage him to be more of a team player. Brian and I will have lunch later … I’ve decided he’s actually quite cute and so perhaps I can combine on-line dating with my on-line training!
Happy New Year, Everyone.
