I signed up for a WorkDay training session and received a confirmation email with the Zoom meeting link. On the appointed day, I followed the link to Zoom meeting that included only me.
At first, I was puzzled and, to be honest, annoyed. That is, until I realized that, in fact, I was to blame: I simply had the wrong expectations, and once I corrected my interpretive framework, everything fell into place. To save you from a similar experience, I’m going to give you some coaching on how to engage in WorkDay training effectively, by developing the right mindset.
Step 1: First, as with so many things in the cycle of birth and death, things are not what they appear to be. WorkDay training is intended, not as training on WorkDay processes and procedures, but as spiritual training — like Zen. As in: “Hit me again, Sensei.” The purpose is not to impart skills but to build character, and in particular, independence and autonomy.
Which brings us to Step 2 in getting your mindset right: Aside from the general point about building character, there actually is a message in this training, a message you would do well to heed.
Pause here and reflect: You sign up for WorkDay training, you click on the link to join what you think will be a class lead by a facilitator for participants who, presumably, want to learn a new skill, and you end up in a Zoom room alone. What conclusion should you draw?
If you just responded, “I’m in the wrong room?”, you’ve given a commonsense response, and that’s where you made your mistake. On the contrary, you’re in the right room, all by yourself, because you are both the participant and the facilitator. Let me break the message down for you, in practical terms: If you want to know how to do something in WorkDay, you’re on your own.
And from this fact it follows with elegant inevitability that the training session you signed up for is not useless: By design, WorkDay training takes up 60 or 90 minutes of your workday to give you time to search for resources and tutorials on your own, without being interrupted by your actual work.
Spiritual discipline, increasing your autonomy, and time to improve yourself: That is the point of WorkDay training.
