Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL

Then trainees may agree to believe in many things related to body language, just explained in a
form of presentation. To confirm the effect it is great to show video record made in previous
days of training. This record would demonstrate, that body language is not only language of
others, which one could understand or not, but also his own language, which say some things to
others, whether desired or not. In general the model: ‘introductory demonstration’ - ‘explanation’
- ‘exercise’ – ‘feedback demonstration’ works well for many topics. The challenge is that
trainees should not accept demonstration as a kind of trick or miracle or the evidence of the
participants’ lack of taught. Any demonstrations should be carefully designed for the desired
effect and gently implemented not to produce unnecessary complications.
9.4 EXAMPLES. There are two aspects, which put special requirements to using examples. Of
course, it is necessary to use examples, but not the stories happened in other countries, or
artificially designed ‘cases’. Does not matter, if the stories or cases are absolutely relevant and
give a best interpretation of certain ideas. If the idea is proofed by the strange story - it can be
treated as a strange idea. For example, in one of our seminars the Chief Executive from London
municipality gave the story to leaders of Lithuanian municipalities about certain way to solve a
problem regarding financing new school. He said that they had no funds and had applied to
consultants, who succeed to find a way to save $2.000.000 through the more effective
management of some other services. No one from 20-25 participating mayors and vice-mayors
expressed any interest to this way. One asked, how much this municipality paid to consultants,
and the answer was ‘about $300.000’. It made a lot of fun for Lithuanian audience. They say –
‘you are very rich in London. We cannot afford to pay money to consultants. We have not
enough funds even for the main services’. The guest from London repeated his explanations
about the reason to use consultants and great effect of that several times, but almost nobody
have understood him. Lithuanian local governments have not now and never had before free
hands in generating and using their budgets in a most effective way. They have funding from
the Ministry of Finance and have no headache about services, which are not financed, and, of
course, no money available for consultants.
In some cases, trainer may use examples from the same or very similar country and the same
or similar ‘legislative period’ (since legislation is often changing in transitional times). However,
for all practical exercises, only real stories and situations presented by the members of the
group have a sense. Any attempt to use a ‘case’ from Australia or a curious story designed for
‘average European country’ will make a fun for trainees in best cases, but often it would make
them angry and de-motivated.
On another hand, some trainees may look for the pre-cooked recommendations for the direct
usage (which is a main content of many ‘trainings’ done by state training institutions – just to
give interpretation and guidelines on application of new legislative acts or governmental
decrees), rather than for examples for explanation. They may accept example as a
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