September 21, 2007
Guru made it back from the CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition in Harrogate in one piece - a very tired and emotional piece, but one piece nevertheless.
Personnel Today's fringe event in the Holiday Inn was a great success, with scores of HR professionals visiting for the free seminars, free food and free massages (pictured, courtsey of the XpertHR Employment Intelligence blog) and manicures.
Guru himself took advantage of a relaxing shoulder rub, and promptly dozed off on the massage chair. Well, conferencing is an exhausting business.
As usual, some of the CIPD conference sessions were good, others were just so much hot air.
One of the more engaging presenters was Emmanuel Gobillot, director of leadership services at Hay Group and author of The Connected Leader - creating agile organisations for people, performance and profit.
Gobillot, who disarmingly described himself as a "gobby, fat Frenchman", delivered pearls of wisdom such as:
The person you report to is 72.8% waterValues don't work
Make people dream
He was smooth, charming and funny, if a little unsubstantial, and made his 90 minute slot fly by. It was only a shame that the session's chairman Adrian Roberts, HR director for the Shaeffler Group in the UK couldn't match Gobillot's style.
Roberts - over-sized light-tan suit, Hush Puppies (you get the picture) - made the classic mistake of opening his address with a joke - not a bad joke actually (see Guru's version below), but too long and rambling for a non-comedian.
US president George W Bush is on a state visit with the Queen and, while they are chatting he asks her about her views on leadership.She replies that her policy is always to surround herself with highly intelligent people, and that the way she determines their intelligence is with a simple question: "Your parents have a child. It's not your brother or your sister. So who is it?"
To illustrate, she picks up the royal phone and calls British prime minister Gordon Brown. "Mr Brown," she says, "your parents have a child. It's not your brother or your sister. So who is it?"
Quick as a flash, Brown replies: "It's me, Your Majesty, Gordon Brown."
Bush is impressed with this tactic and, on his return to Washington, he summons his chief aide. "Your parents have a child. It's not your brother or your sister. So who is it?"
The aide responds: "I will find out for you Mr President," and immediately convenes a meeting of the heads of the Department of State. After a two-day conference on the question "Your parents have a child. It's not your brother or your sister. So who is it?", the senior officials draw a blank and agree to ask Condoleezza Rice, since she is very clever.
"Ms Rice," says the chief aide, "your parents have a child. It's not your brother or your sister. So who is it?"
Quick as a flash, Condy replies: "It's me, Condoleezza Rice."
The aide dashes back to the president and proudly announces that he has a response. "Mr President," he says, "the answer to your question is... Condoleeza Rice."
The president sighs wearily and says: "No, you idiot, the answer is Gordon Brown."
Comments (1)
a little unsubstantial? moi!
thanks for the kind words and glad you enjoyed the session.
E
Posted by emmanuel gobillot | September 21, 2007 2:26 PM
Posted on September 21, 2007 14:26