Ymag38

Y#38 May 1, 2015

Window for action loving PROFESSIONALS

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Grow your SKILLs 2

Skills needed for Skills Development Conferences

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‘Skills for Seniors’ Quotes

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Excellence is not a skill.

It is an attitude.

- Ralph Marston

When love and skill

work together,

expect a masterpiece.

- John Ruskin

Dear ReadersGreetings!500 million people to beskilled in India by theyear 2022. Not a merestatistical nightmare buta reality that is going totest the might of ABCDE– Academia, Business,Consulting,Development sector andthe Enterprises. TheGovernment can onlymake policies andcontribute to thecreation of someinfrastructure. Whatelse?We, the action lovingprofessionals, have a lotto work towards. Tobegin with, spread theconsciousness, enhanceour own skills andcontribute to thedevelopment andrefinement of skills forpeople around us.Clarity begins at home…Y not!Cheers,Rajiv [email protected].

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Grow your

SKILLs

SStay focused

Don’t start every pursuit together. Pick and choose. Focus with commitment and timeline.

KKeep the right company

You can’t learn cricket in the company of hockey players. Golfers stick to golfers. Who are your pals? Skills enhance when you hang with them and thrive.

IInvest in ‘your feel good factors’

The right mental framework can get nourished with your positive body language and projection. Invest in how you look. Dress well. Behave better.

LLearn the right stuff in a right way

Information and advise comes in plenty. Seek the help of a competent coach or a buddy. See the way others have improved. Create your niche.

L

Leverage, practice, share

Your skill must move from the level of ‘conscious competence’ to ‘unconscious competence’. This will happen when you try to leverage it to every possible situation and practice hard. Seek feedback and improve. When people start benefitting from your skill and sharing, it is sign that you have mastered it.

Rajiv Khurana, CMC, FIMC

Acronym SKILL is the intellectual property of Rajiv Khurana

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“Not again. Not me”, I reacted when my friend Sumit Chaudhurisuggested that we attend a national level workshop being organisedby a premier industry association at a large security-paranoid venuein Delhi. For more than seven years, I have attended many suchconferences and I have become sick and tired of the dullrepetitiveness. Even some of the organisers have become sick of mefor the pestering questions I ask. The law of devastatingly marginalreturns has infected me. Sumit, being the pest he is, still bull-dozedme to tag along. It is tough to pretend attentiveness with ‘open eyedsleeping’. I galvanised my strengths to attend the conference.

Conferences are generally a good place to satisfy my old urge andailment of curiosity. I ask questions to quench my ‘un-endinglearning-thirst’. Sometimes these questions do rub the speaker/s awrong way as they hit their assumption of ‘audience is ignorant or illinformed’ stance. Conferences are expected to usher-in a discussionamong participants who have an agreed serious topic. This indeedwas a serious topic and I started looking forward to the enrichingdiscussions that may follow.

Rituals of inauguration later, the race towards the end of sessionstarted. Seven speakers, each tried to outdo others by stretching theallotted 15 minutes to cover probably their 40 minutes content! Thesarkaris and the MNC type speakers gloriously over-shooting withtheir vocal bullets. The audience kept quiet. I admire theirperseverance to check WhatsApp, send emails, play candy crush, talkin whispers or have the courage of dozing-off in full defiance untilthe lunch breaks-us-apart.

The word ‘conference’ became a big hit. It was hit by themonologues. And some more monologues. This is cheating. I felt likesaying. You convene a conference and then make us all hear yoursame data, same ideas, same stories, same ‘junior’s made seniorspresent crappy PPTs…and same ‘no time to take any questions’arrogance. I kept quiet. Lunch. Someone had paid for my free lunch. Irespect the courtesy. I overlooked my contest.

Skills needed for Skills Development Conferences

- Rajiv Khurana, CMC, FIMC

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The lunch was a successful show of ‘totalabsence of culinary skills’. Yucky! Didn’tchange anything further. The challengebegan. One more big session. Seven morespeakers. His Masters’ Voice in the garb of aconference. Tough time to fake the skills ofattentiveness. Action Replay! Whatever wasrepeated in the first session was repeatedagain! “Where are the skills of speakers andorganisers?” I enquired from Sumit, equallystruggling to show-case a serious conferenceprofessional participant. With over thirtyyears of bearing out each other successfully,we can read each other’s looks. “Why do youtake everything so seriously?” I read in hiseyes and decided not to ask further.

Disengaged, I finally started to jot down mypoints to write this article.

I am not a sceptic. I know the big challengeahead. Skilling 500 million people by 2022 isa daunting task. Every way to create a recordof sorts. Seven more years to go and wherehave we reached? Nowhere on the rightpath! We are still contemplating our wayswithout understanding the ground realties.Having spoken with lakhs of youngsters inover 50 cities of India, I do have some minorgrip over the problems we face. The reality isa pathetic mismatch of APSIRATION,INSPIRATION and PERSPIRATION resultantlychoking the RESPIRATION of the futuresociety we talk about in sometimes idealistic,sometimes scary and mostly demographicalconnotations.

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Do these conferences help? Should be. That’s why they areheld. They create some ripples, some data, some eventsand in most cases some recommendations that get createdby some back-end innovative writers covering theconferences to cook up what is said and often left unsaid.These conferences are turning out to be a big industry toattract people to jump on to it. The task is too big and thetoughness is getting bigger.

How do we make them more meaningful? How do wetranslate Prime Minister’s dream of co-creating ‘Skill India’from a mere gathering of thoughts to generate and add to‘Bill India’?

Do we need to introspect? Especially the organisers andthe speakers. To start with, let’s ask ourselves some easyquestions.

• Why not plan a proper structure for the conference andtell the speakers in advance to stick to their ‘lakshmanrekha’? Better still, give them some penetrativequestions to answer from their domain instead ofmaking motherhood statements and making macro-talks. Make the knowledge partners work harder tojustify their logo on the backdrop.

• Why not invite speakers who have done some workcloser to the ground and understand the realitiesinstead of operating from their ivory towers?

• Why not invite the beneficiaries to share theirexperiences and expectations? These could be thepast, current or probable students along with theirparents, guardians, teachers etc. At least, we canunderstand the correct way to create alliance amongstthe aspiration, inspiration and perspiration of thetarget audience.

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• Why not think broader to include themembers of the un-organised sectorincluding MSMEs to contribute to thethought process? After all, they aregoing to absorb the large number ofworkforce with them – whetherskilled or not. How can we afford togenerally overlook them from MAKEIN INDIA and SKILL INDIA initiatives?This sector can only inspire people toturn to entrepreneurship withwhichever skills they learn orenhance.

• Why not invite families [from middleand lower middle class background]who have gladly accepted theseskilled people as prospective groomsfor the daughters? It’s high time tohave a reality bite on the dignity andacceptability of labour. We havewoken up very late to inculcate thispride and dignity. We have a long wayto go.

• Why not spend adequate time to thedevelopment of teachers andcoaches to teach, train, motivate orgroom young India on skills? Don’tforget to even find ways to improvetheir income. If you pay peanuts, youknow what you get.

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• Why not think broader toinclude the members of the un-organised sector includingMSMEs to contribute to thethought process? After all, theyare going to absorb the largenumber of workforce with them– whether skilled or not. Howcan we afford to generallyoverlook them from MAKE ININDIA and SKILL INDIAinitiatives? This sector can onlyinspire people to turn toentrepreneurship withwhichever skills they learn orenhance.

• Why not invite families [frommiddle and lower middle classbackground] who have gladlyaccepted these skilled people asprospective grooms for thedaughters? It’s high time to havea reality bite on the dignity andacceptability of labour. We havewoken up very late to inculcatethis pride and dignity. We have along way to go.

• Why not spend adequate time tothe development of teachersand coaches to teach, train,motivate or groom young Indiaon skills? Don’t forget to evenfind ways to improve theirincome. If you pay peanuts, youknow what you get.

How should speakers prepare and improve?Their preparation needs to polish some S-K-I-L-L-I-N-G.

S – Stay focussed. Both in terms of time and content. The audience is interested in your thoughts and not your greater glories and the power behind your organisation’s name.

K – Keep jargons at bay. Please express. Don’t impress with your heavy duty words and abbreviations that audience may be ignorant about won’t admit or oppose. By the way, words like, “Strategy, Value proposition, Out of the box etc., etc.” are all becoming stale due to over usage and under impact. Try something different. Something simple. Talk ‘dil se’.

I – Introspect deeply and prepare. Integrate your thoughts with entrepreneurship, self-employment, arts and craft etc. instead of talking about jobs alone. India can’t create so many jobs. People will have to fend for themselves especially in the surroundings they live in. Animal husbandry, fisheries, handlooms and power looms etc. make more sense.

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L – Link with the aspirations of the students and parents. Having written career columns for over 12 years, I broadly know what parents generally force their kids to do. Be a doctor, engineer or civil servant. Period. How do we make the aam janta see the change? How do we convince them that there could be better careers as a self-employed electrician or a plumber instead of a third-rated qualified engineer? How do we encourage the creation of a society that respects people engaged in jobs or careers hitherto looked down upon?

L – Leverage stories of success. Nothing beats some true stories. If the person can’t be present, show pictures or better still some multi-media clippings. This can be inspiring and trendsetting.

I – Improve your presentation skills. If you must show your PowerPoint skills, work on it. Avoid showing a slide made out of your office document or report. Ensure that the font sizes are big enough to be read in a large conference hall, the colour scheme is good and pictures are sharp. Avoid graphs, tables and full paragraphs. The slide is not a presentation. It’s a tool. You are the presentation. Work hard. Don’t rely on CPT – Cut & Past Technology. This is the luxury of the lazy MNC executives who show the busy slides, mumble some data while the audience tries to discern some meaning out of it before giving up.

N – Neutralize babudom in thinking and sharing. Negate boredom in the audience. Nurture optimism. The challenge is big. The preparation needs to be bigger. We cannot deal with tomorrow through yesterday’s mind set, preparedness and actions. Project ‘managing from tomorrow’. We know 500 million people to be skilled by 2022. State your roadmap for 2015 and 2016 clearly and precisely.

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G – Give audience a chance to interact with you. They may have ideas you might have overlooked. They may probe you further with some penetrative questions. Open the two ways street. Tell them what you want to tell them. Learn from them. Ask the organisers to plan for such interactive time. Or else, refuse to go and speak. Learning from the audience could be more rewarding than the memento you receive. Try it.

Coming back to the conference. It’s an oldsaying, “Meeting is a place where minutesare kept and hours are lost.” What do we calla conference? “A meeting place where postconclusion reports get generated by cookingup something out of nothing said orunderstood. The reports reachingsomewhere to be left on the back burnerwithout gas.” How mean of me! Sorry, but Imean it. I wish there was an RTI on theconferences conducted on SKILL INDIA andthe recommendations adopted andimplemented. I would love to understandthe ROI.

I still dread the likelihood of attending asimilar such conference. Mercy, my friend!

Rajiv Khurana CMC, FIMC International Management Trainer, Consultant, Coach, Author, Venture Mentor, Photography Enthusiast

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Skills forSeniors

Communication is a skill that you can learn. It's like riding a bicycle or typing. If you're willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life.~Brian Tracy

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.~Henry Ford

Making good decisions is a crucial

skill at every level.

~Peter Drucker

It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill.~Wilbur Wright

Creative thinking - in terms of idea creativity - is not a mystical talent. It is a skill that can be practised and nurtured.~Edward de Bono

I really believe that

everyone has a talent,

ability, or skill that he

can mine to support

himself and to

succeed in life.

~Dean Koontz

Only those who have patience to do

simple things perfectly ever acquire

the skill to do difficult things easily.

~James J. Corbett

Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.~John Ruskin

Awareness

Creation

Broadening

Horizon

Creating

Curiosity

Decluttering

Thoughts

Enthusing

Actions

Rejuvenating PERSONAL BRAND

Accelerating CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Jumping ahead with IMPACTFUL PERFORMANCE

Intensifying INFLUENCING

Vibrant CREATIVITY

Knockout BUSINESS PRESENTATIONS

Harmonizing RELATIONSHIPS

Upgrading LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS

Role-impacting COACHING & MENTORING

Achieving high results through TEAM PLAYING

Novel ways for TRAINING THROUGH MULTIMEDIA

Actioning high calibre CUSTOMER SERVICE

Call these the handshake programmes or celebrating Learning and Development in ‘tasters’ menu’, these 3 hours customized inputs will help your people undergo sensitization through Coaching Learning Advancing Sharpening Smartening

at your place and time with the quality commitment of Rajiv Khurana, CMC, FIMC.

Visit us at thepersonnellab.comto know more about our consulting facilitation.

Better call us at 9810211256 .

Rajiv KhuranaCMC, FIMC

[email protected]

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Ymag38

Leadership & Management

Transcript of Ymag38