I’ve had a quiet revolution in myself. It happens every now and again when you discover stuff about yourself that you didn’t know or had forgotten or was not seeing clearly I’m really happy with the work I do.

Sometimes when you lose sight of why you do the work you do, why you chose it, why you enjoy it, it becomes a millstone round your neck. And then sometimes you have the opportunity to be shown why you’re in this game. I had the opportunity to work with WBHO over the last two months. For those of you that don’t know it’s a large construction company.

In August I had the opportunity to train some of their level 3 engineers. They were on an intense two week academy that WBHO had set up for them. These guys are generally in charge of running a construction site. They work in a tough environment with a wide range of people from different race groups and cultures, with different languages and vastly different education levels. They talk straight, very straight, you call a spade a f-king shovel and you don’t pull the punches, that’s a waste of time. When someone makes a mistake coaching is straight you f-ked up, now get it f-king right or I’ll f-king kill you and so everyone knows exactly where they stand and what to do. And then along I come, feeling slightly apprehensive that my work on Empathy, Emotional Intelligence and Transactional Analysis is not going to go down very well amongst a group of straight talking engineers.

Well what a great experience. These guys are amazing. We did work on Personalities, on Parent Adult Child, on Listening, Empathy and Assertiveness. We discussed Negotiation, Conflict and dealing with Cultural Fluency. Every time I connected with them my paradigm of engineers and the construction industry was challenged. Every time we connected we had fun, we laughed and we got serious. AND every time they took what we were discussing to heart, looking for ways to implement the knowledge and skill at work, at home and with one another. My experience with conferences or academy type learning programmes is that they’re about playing - team building and drinking, oh and training is for recovering. Well these guys would not stop working that is and it blew me away. They devoured every thing I threw at them and I was only a small part of their programme. And so I finished on an absolute high feeling fantastic about what I do.

Over this small time while connecting with Marileen, who managed the academy, to deciding what to include and what would be most valuable, to dealing with the guys on the programme I began to get a super feeling about WBHO. Then some of the other Avos who connected with them started saying the same thing. Whenever one of us connected with the WBHO team it was a memorable experience. That starts to tell you something about their culture: they are just damn nice people. That was August. I should have blogged all this then. I got busy, back to back with more training and so you think I’m writing about it now cause I’ve got time no I don’t but I’ve got to tell you I just connected with them again this weekend in a completely different division and it’s the same!

Jules and I went to Swaziland to do two talks on Saturday to all the guys that manage the Plant (aah-ha me speak ‘constructionish’.) They provide all the big trucks, graders, excavators etc to the different working sites around the country and around Africa. Yes we had the same experience. The guys were even more straight than the engineers mentioned in previous paragraphs, but just as warm, friendly, interested and enthusiastic about our messages. So to Marileen, thanks for your faith in us, and to Bill and Rob, thanks for taking us on to do that work with your guys. But it’s not just thanks for the work, you have a culture that has impacted all the Avo’s that met with you.

I thank you for helping me with my quiet revolution. Because of you, I remembered how much I love what I do.