Training in the organization: a "new critical reading".

Abstract

This article was written thinking of trainers and of the students who are preparing to become trainers, with the aim of proposing a critical reading of some aspects of training. The article sets out to present some considerations on training seen as an intervention tool in organizations, to re-examine the implicit models and to propose a model based on the individual-context paradigm. I feel that critical thinking can be useful to those building up their professional competence in this field, assuming that the trainer’s main competence is that of continuously thinking of the professional role activated, in relation to the contexts, interlocutors, tools to use and goals to achieve. Training and self-training, in this perspective, means learning from experience, getting emotionally involved, thinking about who one is, where one is, what one’s aims are, and at the same time, reflecting, with reference to criteria, on the emotions evoked by training relationships. All this has sprung from my experience working with the group connected to the Clinical Psychology chairs of prof. R. Carli and prof. R. M. Paniccia. I am still developing these ideas, using them and thinking about them in my professional and training activity. 
As I write I am thinking of the article by Cinti (2006) and I have in mind what was put forward by Dragonetto (2006) in the article published in FOR n. 69. Their proposal is for reflection on the sense of current training, which often seems to lose all meaning and be reduced to the sterile reproduction of patterns that are now empty. In their articles they focus on the words used in training: “a constant, continuous flow of words. But not many. In fact, a limited vocabulary, almost a jargon” (Dragonetto, 2006, p. 64). Dragonetto argues that “words become the terrain where the meeting and the total, complex relationship with the other person’s reality is decided” and poses a question: “how far has training been willing to seriously risk relating with others (the trainees) or has it instead been concerned only with finding new ways of speaking, training, teaching and declaiming, but not of listening; primarily concerned with things to say, company messages to transmit, methods to “convince” and not with the interhuman relationship of men and women who, as they work in organizations, have something to say about the work they do” (Dragonetto, 2006, p. 65).
In this article I will use some theoretical definitions on training and refer to the literature produced on the issue, along with the considerations that have developed starting from my experience at work and in training. The latter experience is very varied in contexts, interlocutors and aims, in the functions adopted and in the different phases of the professional process of which they are part. 
In this article I intend to put forward a critique of the current tendencies in the training field and to discuss a way of thinking of training, basing myself not on a “theory of man” – and I hope to clarify why – but on a “theory of the relationship” between the individual and the context where he works, based on the bi-logical theory of the mind (Matte Blanco, 1975). In this perspective the emotions are no longer considered the individual response to environmental stimuli, but are fundamental to the relations between individuals and the organizational  context, shared modalities for “symbolizing” the contexts one lives in, in other words, cultural models (Carli & Paniccia, 2002). Words,seen in their emotional density (according to Fornari’s principle of double referentiality) are very useful clues for the exploration of such cultural processes.