I sat in the back of the conference room as Margaret, a corporate trainer, was conducting a workshop for a group of financial professionals. She gave the audience a handout of her presentation and they were dutifully flipping through the booklet, page by page, at her command. She would say, “Okay, let’s all turn to page eight. As you can see, it says…” Then she would expound on the material for a while, before turning to the next page. By the end of the hour (which seemed like four hours), the audience had effectively been turned into zombies. At the end of her presentation, the zombies absentmindedly stuffed her hand-out into their folders and filed out of the room. There were bagels and more break-outs waiting for them. I considered putting them out of their misery by pulling the fire-alarm, but I didn’t want to spend a night in jail.

Click here to continue reading