When I had a job with a multinational corporation one of the things that Human Resources was sure to get was people to impart self improvement seminaries. You name it, teamwork, motivation, quality management, how to cope with your workload, how to manage your salary with a budget, we got it, and these are just a few of the ones I remember.
I really was never too keen on doing these workshops or whatever they were called at the moment, I actually thought it was a waste of time. And eventually I was able to prove it, twice.
Once, on a Saturday, my boss had hired a lady to give a motivational talk, I really had a lot of work to do and it was a Saturday, but my boss insisted and I had to go and lap it up, luckily it just lasted an hour. Then about a year later I was on vacation but HHRR made me go to a seminar at a University conference room in town, it was word for word the same thing the lady had talked about, only this time it lasted eight hours because there were a lot of examples.
Then we had one on teamwork, this one really got me upset, because the guy imparting the seminar was getting 2K USD per talk, and, I remember it was about teamwork, a work mate, on his own, had picked up before the seminar from the internet nearly the exact same thing the seminar guy talked about.
So you can see, I was practically forced to see these seminars, workshops etc, as a ruse or a con, I think it is just quick witted people who have found out how to make money the easy way, just by talking. Ok, maybe I am wrong, you can blame that on me being a grumpy old man.