I’m not going to go into a lengthy exposition of the importance of communications skills and effective communication when it comes to management.

I was going to, but decided it would detract from my core goal here, which is to tell a funny story.

Some backstory: at my old work our boss, the company President was the textbook definition of a perfectionist.

That’s a good thing. He had high standards, and we were expected to live up to them. The on-the job training I received from him in a diverse range of skills and expertise were invaluable.

Less valuable was his tendency to assume that we were always all on the same page as he was. Yes, he set high expectations, but he didn’t always clearly communicate them.

More than once, he expressed an interest in working as an instructor for CEDIA. He certainly had a wealth of business and technical experience, with a lot of valuable insight he could share with other CEDIA members.

Often, his talk of volunteering his instructor services would reach their apex every year when we attended CEDIA Expo, and we all convened at the end of the day to dissect our courses and share what we learned.

During one of these sessions, after a couple of us had reported on a class that delivered poor value for our training dollars he again said “I really need to teach a CEDIA course.”

“I can totally picture that,” said Derek, the youngest of our installers, who then launched into his best impression of our boss’ voice:

“Hello, I’ll be your instructor for this course. There will be no handouts, no notes, and no PowerPoint…

 

 

…BECAUSE I EXPECT YOU ALL TO READ MY MIND!!!”

Well, we all thought it was funny. A Career Limiting Decision, but funny.