Entries Tagged 'Freedom' ↓

I was with a friend yesterday and just talking about all the things happening in life. He asked me: “How do you manage to get time to do all this?” After pausing for a while, he reflected: “Aah, you are single!”

But I started thinking about it, and felt time management is indeed a lot important for all of us. We have Maya, but not everybody uses it to really plan their days! We have had time management sessions, yet we do not practice many techniques. Why is that so?

I believe that is largely because we are driven by urgency. We do not take out time to think! We do not take out time to plan the day / week / month. If we do, we fail to allot time to review and follow up. The urgent matters of the day just drive us.

I then looked up a MindTools has a very good collection of classic time management techniques and tips. Priorities, Todos, Goal Setting etc.

I invite you to take out half an hour every day and think about the day that went and the day that’s starting. This can transform your life!

Let me summarize a few important characteristics and results of the communication workshop.

Important Results

• Tremendous boost in confidence levels of participants
• People went beyond their fears and reservations - they got freedom!
• Stronger bond within the team
• Many breakthroughs in oral and written communications

Important Characteristics

• Style of workshops - hands on, interactive, fast paced, assignments
• Personal attention to participants, coaching as required
• Structure - buddy system, follow ups, facilitating tools
• Commitment to generating breakthrough results

So what’s next? We are currently carrying Creativity and Logic workshops. I will start posting about that soon. I am planning to podcast these sessions, as speaking is easier than writing

In the communication workshop series, we also covered written communications. Being an offshore software development company, written communication is very important for us. Most of the business is over email - internal and external. So we wanted to create a breakthrough in the written communication skills of our team as well.

We started with a small exercise to find out the current skills in written communication. You would write a small essay - a page full - about your favorite color. Once people did that, we exchanged the essays with the buddy and asked for a review. People came up with many suggestions and praises. This gave us a first shot of feedback. Overall, people were experiencing the following hurdles:

• Incomprehensive flow of thoughts
• Grammatical mistakes: punctuation, capitalization etc.
• Insufficient vocabulary
• Writer’s block: for some it was too hard to write about their favorite color

Equipped with these insights, we started on the remedies. The flow of thoughts was not too much of a problem since people could always edit their emails or documents. At the same time the “introduction, body and conclusion structure” was made clear to the team.

Grammatical mistakes are tough to crack. We asked people to re-read the document before sending it out. And even to show it to their buddies for a review. A peer review generally clears up most of the grammatical mistakes. Spelling mistakes were easy to correct with the help of automated spell checkers.

How do you develop vocabulary? Well, the only answer to that is to read more. The more you read, the more you learn. The more you read, the stronger your vocabulary can get. Some people also took up the assignment of learning a few new words every day. They would not only learn the new word, but also its synonyms and antonyms. This expanded their understanding of the language.

The writer’s block is simply that - a mental block. It is all in the mind. It is not real. It does not hurt to write a bad piece. It may hurt if you don’t write at all! We asked some people to translate an article from their mother tongue to English everyday, some were to write up an article on the subject they liked, and almost all took up the assignment to post their daily learning on our internal knowledge management system.

Practices like this created outstanding results. I don’t think the team is afraid of written communication now. Most have developed better writing skills. Their emails are now well written, their overall communication too has been a breakthrough.

As a matter of fact, when I look back at the communication levels three months back, I can clearly see the sea change. Did I tell you I am so happy with this?

One of the other major areas of improvement was the accent and diction of participants. We have people from different backgrounds and geographical places. They have their north Indian / south Indian / Gujarati / Marathi accent. Many a times the pronunciation of a word is wrong and a lot of times the other person would not be able to comprehend what was spoken.

A few techniques that we used to achieve noticeable improvements:

• Speak aloud, speak in English. Your buddy will help you correct your pronunciation.
• Watch news on TV. Pick up the accent and diction from there.
• Watch news on TV. Repeat each word immediately after the newsreader speaks! This is really an exciting experiment. It not only improves the accent, it also improves confidence and concentration.
• Read an article from newspaper aloud in your team. If you make any mistake, read it again from the start.
• Focus on the problem pronunciations. Some people face difficulty speaking the last “d” in a word, especially the past tense. E.g. “dropped”. Some would pronounce it with an emphasis on “p” rather than the “d”. We worked with them on reducing this habit.
• Read more. Increase the vocabulary.
• Drop your “conjunction noise”. Many people use “um”, “aa”, “basically”, “actually”, “I mean” as conjunctions between words or sentences. We asked them to be conscious to this and drop their usage once and for all. For some, there was even a penalty of giving a chocolate to others every time they used their favorite “conjunction noise”.

The results in accent training were amazing in some cases and not too strong in some other. Accent and diction comes because of years of practice, so it would take a little while to improve on that. But what we saw, was certainly great improvement in the short time.

While doing the communications workshops, we did some amazing work. We actually created the future!

Some people were afraid to speak in public. I discussed things with them and invited them to imagine what would be their experience just after finishing the presentation. What would be the feeling of the audience? I asked them to be specific and positive in defining this.

One person defined this about the situation just after the session:
I feel this was the best presentation I have ever given. People also liked it since they applauded so well. They also understood the core principles of what I presented.

With this definition and a few tips on how to deliver the presentation, he was able to actually create the future. What happened was not only what he created, but even better. People even asked questions! When people ask questions in a session, it means they are tuned in, they are understanding and participating in what you are talking about.

The whole experience was superb.

And then we did it again. Another person was afraid to speak because she did not feel comfortable talking to others in English. She felt she would say something wrong and her impression would ruin. We created the future that she would not have any fear of speaking in a group after she finishes her elocution. That she will speak in English without mistakes and breaks. That people will appreciate what she did.

Yes, that is what happened. She did excellent in the elocution and does not feel any fear in communicating in groups now. I clearly see the difference in her before and after the elocution.

So what makes it work?
I think a few things make this process work! First, when you create the future, the confidence level automatically increases. The expectations from self also increase and you give the job a better shot. Subconsciously the visualization of the future builds up in the mind and provides power to actually achieve that. The trust in the coach and one’s self shows up in the future actually happening. You are clear about what you are creating and it becomes much easier for it to actually happen. You are free from the past worries and focus on how to create that future.

Try it out! It’s worked for me!