THE HDC LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Courses are held usually in the UK or France.  Freed from the opportunity to contact or be contacted by their businesses (using the telephone for any reason is actively discouraged), participants concentrate on sixty hours’ training over 4½ days with a pupil-teacher ratio of 6:1.

They are not allowed to arrive late or leave early; and they may not attend as observers, or in any other role which allows them to escape when under pressure.  They have no time off.

A proper sense of humility is induced very early on: instructors are arrogant enough to assume that the participants are there to hear what they have to say and it is they, the instructors, who decide when the participants' comments aid learning or not.

The environment is tough, direct and extremely hard work. It is assumed that all participants are adult, and they very quickly learn when they are not being so.

Notwithstanding all this, at the end of the course most participants are enthusiastic and feel the experience to have been very worthwhile.

The course has been running since 1972.  Of the thousands of people who have attended it, in their feedback only three have written negatively.  Two others left the course early because they could not take the pressure; one had the courage to return.

Training is the opportunity to perform in non-critical circumstances. Learning is maximised when fear is minimised. For this reason, nothing that happens on a course is reported to the clients by HDC.

It is for participants to judge how profit-driven they have become, and for employers to judge the results of this.

The employers' feedback is a summary of the participants' view on the course and their individual progress. The average rating given to the course is above 97% and that for the instructor over 92% - the discrepancy lies in the fact that the instructor has to get some people to accept some rather unpalatable truths which tends to diminish his popularity. Skilled negotiation is not about being loved.