Entries Tagged 'Workshops' ↓

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!

The first step we took was to ask people to speak for two minutes on a topic of their choice. They were given about two days to prepare for it. The topic could be any topic. Since we can’t do the workshop for everyone in the office in one go, we repeated the sessions for different teams.

There were patterns in how people performed in the elocution.

Body Language
One team had a lot of people taking on wrong posture or showing up with ineffective body language. Some people stood still and some were too animated. Some ruffled their hair too much, some used the wall to support themselves. Most people stared outside the window or looked at one fixed position during their speech.

Diction, Language
Hardly a few demonstrated clear diction and correct language. Common behavior included taking unnecessary pauses, speaking too fast, having a strong accent, speaking monotonously and incorrect tenses in the language.

Fear, Confidence
Many of the participants were scared. Most experienced trembling feet, faster heartbeats and stress. Some forgot what they came up to speak and some couldn’t control themselves.

Adherence to time limit
Most of the people did not rehearse and time their speeches. We had a timer visible to the speaker and that increased stress levels for many. Hardly anybody finished on time. Most wound up before two minutes and some crossed the time limit and had to leave the speech half delivered.

We provided individual feedback and discussed these points. People worked on themselves and we now see a significant improvement in their oral communication. The confidence level has shot up tremendously, the body language and posture are much better and the way people speak has also improved. We have also had people who realized that they could actually speak well in English, it was only their fear that was stopping them.

The group setting, individual feedback and daily meetings allowed Magneteers to practice these principles. We have Monday meetings as well where people can make their presentations; some people have already taken presentations for the first time and have been very happy with their performance.

There were people who were good with elocution. They also got tips on how they can deliver even better speeches. There were people who were simply afraid to speak up, they were able to go beyond their fears and actually do very good presentations due to personal coaching.

Personally, I am very happy with the way people responded to this workshop and got results for themselves.