Every couple of months the latest and greatest in self help work trend comes out and everyone jumps on board raving about how insightful it is.  Over the years, I've been subjected to everything from moving my cheese to the 7 habits of effective people.  I have coloured my parachute, discovered my colours, dissected difficult conversations, found the power of positive thinking, tuned in, tuned out, found the secret to success, built teams, embraced change and organized my attitude; often, multiple times.  Each time I go to the workshops and smile, laugh, cry, dance, sing, improv, act and build whatever is the flavour of the month.  For the next couple of days, everyone talks about how great it was and then everything goes back to the same as before.  This time it was communication and power.  We tossed balls, we played hallway chicken, we danced, we made fools of ourselves all in the name of communication.  All hail the latest fad.  The afternoon was devoted to body language and power. We did improv, we stood in a giant circle and mirrored each other.  All the time listening to the faciliator tell us how by asking if we can help someone we are saying we are lower in status and only people who associate with those in higher status get promotions; how support staff like me have the lowest status; how to improve communication we should use body language to show lower status to make the other person feel better oh and support staff can never say no.  By the end of it, I felt totally worthless.  So, I learned that I'm the lowest of the low and should demean myself even more on a daily basis to make everyone else feel better, I will never have the authority to say no to anyone and helping people is destroying my career, as is talking to my coworkers.