How are things in Glocca Morra?

My first major project at work came to fruition today. I had built and designed a training program for employees in the hospitality field in St. Louis. The goal is that they are aware and educated on the brand image St. Louis has for itself. While I've written pieces of training before, this was a new experience.

The program went well overall. As a trainer (and a good trainer, I think) I'm fairly critical of how it could have been better for the participants. I felt it was a little choppy in areas and I found that one activity I had thought might be meaningful, wouldn't be. It's difficult to work the bugs out with live audiences, but a necessary step. I was hoping for some real warm and fuzzy feelings at the end, and I didn't get them. I have to keep in perspective what I'm used to - spending 40 hours with mostly engaged supervisors and managers, to getting to spend 2 and a half hours with front line employees. The connection just isn't the same even though I wanted the end result to be.

I have work to do on the program, cleaning it up, but I'm so happy to have the first one done. Glad to see participant reactions, know what goes over well and what sinks, glad to get some feedback and glad to say one has been completed. It only gets better.

Training is such a great challenge. I'll never forget the first time I trained the finance piece back in the Harrah's training I was doing. It was fairly miserable. So, I studied, and I got my facts straight and the second time was worse! It went steadily uphill from then, I'm happy to say, and eventually I was a pro. I'll get there with this. I'm bad with patience.

On to the next big thing...