Future Managers Program "Day 2" Effective Business Writing Skills and Listening Skills

Today I somehow reached on time to the program and only my friend was there before time. Effective Business Writing Skills and Listening Skills were today's programs. These programs were completely different from the previous sessions and had brought everybody to discuss and bring their views. This made the sessions different and enjoyable.

Sonali took the first session on Effective Business Writing Skills . She was a completely a formal lady with complete a diplomatic language which was completely persuasive. The way she was taking forward the program was impressive. She started her presentation with her introduction which was different. She was doing her MBA from IIM Indore but quit in between and started her consulting for different behaviourial skills. Later she did her MBA in HR and presently doing her Phd.

She started the program with a bang by asking us what are the short comings a Project engineer or Manager does in emails, documents, etc. Each of us gave good inputs for a written communication to fail. Few were Jargons, writing complex sentences for simple sentences, not having hold over the language, limited vocabulary, cliches etc. Using these points she gave us some hints and then she asked us to divide into 4 teams. Each of these teams were given scenarios for different scenarios. These scenarios could be related to the real life scenarios and one of my team member had already faced such a scenario. He gave really good input from his side on how he discussed, what he discussed and what are the points we can discuss in the mail.

I would like to put these scenarios and how various teams tackled these scenarios. My team started with the discussion on what is the problem and we discussed a lot on the problem and how to formulate the mail. The scenario was that a team member has been working in a project and inspite of his performance he didnt get a band change or a new role or an onsite. His role was changed with out any growth and for all these reasons he would like the TM to release him from the current project for a better growth. The discussion for the scenario started on a personal note and then we started discussing on various points. We came up how we could convey our frustration and also stress on how important it is to us. Parallely one more member from my team started writing his own mail and then we in the end joined both of our ideas to get a final mail which was ready to be sent and was written on the banner sheet.

The other scenarios were pretty good too and would be really tough to handle. Team three had got a scenario about an onsite co-ordinator who has screwed up the project due to his behaviour and understanding of the problem. The co-ordinator is highly experience of about 10 years. So the project manager has write a mail to point our his mistake. Team two had a scenario of project leader. His three of his good performing team members had started performing badly and he is suppose to discuss the same with them. Team one had the appraisal rating issue. The person inspite of his good performance in the project he was given a bad rating and even after his discussion he was not given good rating. All the teams formulated there own mails and then put it across in the banner sheet. All had written pretty well and of this activity we read each others mails. One of the person from other team read our mail and discussed a point during the coffee break. Why is that you are asking for the release when there is two more month to go. How would a project manager be able to release you? When I heard this I was really confused and I went back and read the mail. When I read it, I found that we had left a sentence hanging. The sentence was "I feel now is the right time for my release process when there is two more months for the project to get over". It should had a continuing sentence which would tell the manager that at the end of the project he would be released.

After the coffee break Sonali came up with all the fundas. How we could make our mails really interactive and understanding. Why and how we should have Start, body, and conclusion for our mails/documents. The grammar of our mails and documents should be really well set across. She also told us the foggy index which would give the coherence of our documents or mails. If the foggy index is between 8-12 then the document or mail would convey the meaning to the reader completely else it would be either childish or completely incoherent to the reader. She also got in lot more examples which would make us understand the problem of incorrect sentence formations, complex sentence formations etc. We watched a 26 mins video (i remember because she stressed on it) which had a hissing sound in it which was really pathetic. The video also discussed the similar concepts which gave us the clear idea by getting different people who do business writing etc.

At the end of the sessions I understood what is required in the business writing. The session would have complete had we been on the other side of the mail receipient. For example the mail from my team who wants a release from the project. How should he or she mail him back. These mails at the end would help us as we would be the Future managers.

The second session on Listening Skills was taken by Chandra Shekar. A french beard guy with lot of experience in plethora of domains. He had already created a nice impact on the other FMP batch and I had got a nice feed back about him. He did meet upto his expectation. The very first talk itself made the change. He asked us all to join all the chairs and tables like a 'U' such that he could see all of us and vice versa. Then he started with his introduction which was too exorbitant and people could really get impressed a lot. He was bringing in humour such that nobody can avoid laughing. Either the humor would be through sarcasm or direct joke but it would be at right time. Somebody in the break also told that at the end of the session will we be only taking only the jokes or will we also take the concept of active listening. He had an experience in sales, then in training and in the end he joined TT in wipro

One instance which I really remember is his experience as a sales person in HP. He was suppose to sell the HP PCs to some business guy and he asked him why should I buy your PCs if others are selling at really lesser price and you people are cheating the customer. The PCs which you give and other branded ones provide, do the same job but still you charge very high for the PCs. This guy told him we have mobile technicians and if there is any problem they would be coming to the location withing 15minutes time and fix the system for them. The work wouldnt stop!! The business man showed an expression such that he was impressed, so shekar got his order book and asked how much would he like to order. To his surprise the business man was not going to order the systems instead he asked him something different. He asked him he would order PCs from other brand and take the anual maintainance from HP. This answer was one of its kind.

We also were told about various scenarios of active listening and how we could grow. For e.g. he told how we can grow in career. One is through impressing your client. If your client is impressed and your boss is impressed rest is history, you are successful in your career. All you need to do is listen and given positive feedback, you would always grow. We also went through the video where in the passive listening or not listening at would lead to. That was a pretty good video which would happen at the real life scenario. The office would be in a trouble of meeting the dead lines and unfortunately the idea given by the junior is ignored. But later when they start listening to each other everything falls into place.

Then he also discussed about how a team work would help in solving an issue. For that he asked one question, where would each of us have the third eye given a chance of having one. Each of us gave diferent answers. One gave behind his head, one person on his hand and others a way of putting the eye in others mind so that they can see what they are seeing. If we see this scenario each of us had given different answers for the same question. This way we could all get a better anwer. In this progamm there was an instance where one of them asked what if a person keeps pinging you what the problem is and how should the person deal with it. Behind this particular question I could easily see that, that the person is actually had experienced it and wanted to get rid of it.

At the end of the day we learnt a lot about the business writing and Listening. These skills would come to our present day needs but in the future we would always be on the other side of the table where in we would be dealing with problems which our managers are dealing with. This also should be incorporated which would be really make us future managers.

Future Manager Program "Day 1" -- Introduction, Oral Communication and Assertive Communication

Today was my first day in Future Managers Program. As usual I got up in the morning at 6.30am and did my exercise using my Bull Worker. At 7.15 I realised I need to go to E-city and I rushed to take my bath and got ready by 7.45. I started driving fast from my house near Malleshwaram, But to my usual luck all the company buses had started passing via my traversing path and the traffic was pretty slow moving.

Somehow I reached E-city at 8.30am by going on the service road and going in between company buses and cars. When I reached their I came to know that it is in EC-1 which I had never new where it was. I started walking by asking the training to all the people whomever I could find on the way. Anyway I reached there by 8.40. I saw that Kailash (only guy whom I new in the training program)and other participants were coming out of the training and Kailash asked why was I late. Anyway I could not explain to him as he along with others were going to the next training room. I was not realising what was happening in the training. So I went and sat inside Venus training room, expecting them to return.

Aravindan from TISP sat beside me. Though I had interacted very less with him, I found him very interesting person. By then all the other participants started entering. They started discussing with Usha (Mentor) what they had observed in the next training room. In the beginning I was not able to relate what they were discussing in the beginning, later I found that they were suppose to find the differences between the two training rooms.

Later Usha started telling the importance of starting on time, just as any other . Later I also found that Kailash was the only person who had come exactly on time (8.30am) and rest including me had started pouring in just like drizzle. She had got really wild with our behaviour. She gave her normal introduction which was quite extraordinary. She had got many degrees and I dont remember them now. She started telling about Talent Transform and introducing the different faculty. As I had never seen any faculty or heard about them I started getting bored about the introduction. So as usual I just raised the interrupt int 3 and asked why we are being introduced to them if we are not going to meet them. But as usual I got an answer that it was a part of her introduction to FMP.

She started with Oral communication and team building activity for the same. The activity was to talk to a person whom they wanted to talk and get connected. At the end of the activity we analysed how many could we connect to and how many were we able to remember and connect with. Aravindan put some point which I dont remember but the discussion lead to whom he really wanted to meet. He wanted to meet Varun and Varun not knowingly moved away to meet somebody else. So Usha asked to shake hands but Varun while shaking his hand didnt make eye contact. Usha asked him to always make eye contact else the he will not be able to make real impact. Usha wanted to show us a video about public speaking. Unfortunately, as usual video player or some connection was not proper. So to fill in the time Usha formed two teams in which each team was suppose to move in the corridor in opposite direction. When they meet each other they are suppose to introduce themselves and I tried my best to remember everybodies names. Well my effort was useless and not many could I remember.

Somehow the video setup was ready and in the video some great public speaker "Patricia Fripp" whom I never new, spoke. But I found her pretty interesting. She put lot of things about public speaking like how we need to start our speech, when humour should be used, how you need to you need to put the facts and story to make your speech more powerful. I started relating all these to my technical communication in MS and Professional communication and report writing in BE. These were really helpful to me in many cases and I have tried it a lot. But Patricia Put it across in a much better way. She brought humour, the end audience, a story and various instances of real life in a better way. But I didnt like the way in which she told her real life story. I felt it was rather pale. In this discussion we came across my first question of why were we introduced to the FMP staff. It was a direct question but many in the room found it very harsh. Sooraj also added that he really wanted to know about them and had really interrupted his thoughts.

From here Usha gave a precis of what Particia talked and how we could use in real life. Later she went into different principles of oral communication. I really dont remember any of them. May be in future programs I would make notes of the slides, as things which are priciples or postulate or what so ever, If i dont relate I wouldnt be able to remember. If somebody could help I will be more than happy. Please help me in relating those things. We again watched a different video. In the video a bald man, pretty jovial who told how well we could be jubiliant etc. But the music and his talks were making me lost and getting deviated from the discussion. I felt that, had he put his ideas without music I would have understood things much better. I was getting carried away by the music(the beethohoven) one of my favourites. Later we discussed about the video. But this video and presentation ate away our introduction to the entire team. This was the opportunity where we had to make the maximum impact on the team.


After the lunch we had the assertive communication program. Revati was our mentor and she had 16yrs or 16months of experience. She was pretty jovial and she always had a smile on her face. Only thing which I didnt like was her voice, she didnt have the effective timber or the power which would make people listen. In spite of this she was able to put lot of ideas about assertive communication. One more thing which I observed was, she was trying to fit in lot of concepts in the short duration and was rushing through in the end. She was suppose to finish her program within 3hrs as Azim Premji was suppose to meet them.


We then started with the discussion on assertive communication. She appropriately got an analogy by drawing a swinging pendulum. First she asked us what is it and as usual I misinterpreted as 'T'. It was a swinging pendulum and the edges of the T were middle, left and right extremes of a pendulum. How could we need to be assertive by not swinging to the extremes of our feelings. The left extreme was being extremely aggressive and right extreme was to be completely submissive. If we are submissive we would be bullied by others. If we are too aggressive we either loose a team with which we are working with or friends with whom we are with. But being assertive is being more positive and have balance between the two extremes.

Also during the program we discussed about the creating a win-win situation if there is a cut throat competition. For this Revati gave really a good instance. She called prity and asked to arm wrestle with her. She also added that if prity pushes her hand to left, Ravi would pay Rs 5 to prity and if Revati pushes the hand to right she will get Rs 5. from Ravi. But in this case prity was trying to win not realizing that she could win more money if they swing her hands both sides. Thus it is always good to have a win - win situation. But Kalyani also raised a valid point, what would revati should have done, had Ravi had not offered the money; then it would have become a competition. Revati answered it really well. In this particular scenario it is always required to win the competition but by playing it fair and even. Revati also gave a good example of a person being possessive of his new car. How we need to be assertive and create a win - win situation if a friend who is accident prone asks you to give the keys his car.

We watched a video which talked about the assertive communication. It brought pretty good scenarios which also gave instances to understand the concepts. Later we went out for coffee break. In coffee break Sooraj brought really a good fact about Indians. A third factor, that is ego. When there is a discussion/debate between two persons ego is one thing which comes in between a lot. Which most of the foreign videos dont cover at all. I did feel his point right.

Post tea break we were divided into three teams which were named as April Assertive, Donald Doormat and I dont remember the third guy. We were suppose to group together and jot down some points why does a person act or behave to be a doormat or aggressive or assertive. We all came with our won ideas but Revati summarised all our points into one single one. It was the fear which causes them to behave that way. She also gave how the FEAR acronym was formed F-Fall E-evidence A-appearing R-Real or Feel Everthing And Run. This I really felt very good. But I feel we could have discused more on being assertive, as she was busy she had rushed through the slides.

At the end of the day I got the concept, but had we discussed some more real life scenarios like in Client locations, Manager and team member etc could have helped me a lot. It should have been more on real life scenarios. Because I felt even I could have given those fundas, but had the mentors given more instances we could have grasped it much better and inculcated it in our real life. I would expect at least future classes would go better.