Workshop Methodology:
PARICHAY: “Lead Yourself” is a signature program exclusively delivered for the fresher’s as a part of the ORIENTATION program. It is an eight hours program which started off with the ice breakers and expectation settings of the audience. The workshop focused on the importance of understanding “Self” and the power of intra – personal communication and inters- personal communication.
The objective of the workshop was to acclimatize the newbies with the importance of soft skills in the contemporary times and create an awareness of the impending challenges in today’s world. The methodology opted was lecture, case analysis, video reviews and role playing.
The wrap up of the program was based on interventions chosen from behavioural science. The session was a power packed energizer delivered by Preeja Sreedhar, Corporate Trainer and Faculty in the area of Communication and HR.
A full day workshop PARICHAY: “Lead Yourself ” was organized for the students of PGDM(2017-19) on 19 July 2017. Mrs. Preeja and all the students evoked a short prayer to fill the room with spiritual energy, tranquility and peace in our mind.
She then quickly asked each one of us to attribute an animal to one self. Sounds easy? You could as well try this. Monkey, ant, horse, butterfly, elephant, lion, eagle, and wolf the entire animal kingdom was here. All the students were patient to know the objective of this little exercise. Mrs. Preeja later shared that it was a psychological way to analyze one’s personality. Human race has to watch and learn their way of life. Taking the example of cockroach she explained how these creatures are highly adaptable and can endure even a nuclear disaster, this fact was jaw dropping.
The present world is termed as VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) and to deal with such a competitive environment we have to be self-aware of our abilities so as to upgrade our skills to meet the evolving world.
Self-awareness comes from self-reflection, this involves knowing oneself well. A brain storming activity was conducted to note down our strength and weakness. Once we were aware the next step was to develop and transform this into strength by consistent constructive effort.
We also learnt that Inter personal communication is the path that has to be followed to achieve self-awareness. Its only when we completely understand one self we can lend hands to others. This process of interacting and understanding the emotions of others is termed as Intra personal communication.
A wonderful video of a dog, cubs and a wolf was shown. The essence of this video was to understand how a creature as simple as a dog could protect little cubs from a mighty wolf by sheer confidence and the will to protect others. The dogs inter & intra personal skills helped the cubs. Mrs. Preeja urged us to implement these skills in our lives.
After having understood the importance of self-awareness, inter & intra personal skills it was time to experience how industries practice it. A Harvard case study of Taj Mahal hotel attack, which happened on 26/11, was discussed. We realized that during the entire three-day attack none of the staff members fled away from the hotel despite being aware of the crisis they faced. Manager Mr. Karambir Singh flew back to Mumbai to extend help. Despite knowing his family was also trapped in the hotel on another floor, he continued to help the customers escape. Out of the 1700 customers present in the hotel during this mishap only 34 were shot dead (majority being office staff who sacrificed their lives to protect their customers).
The mind boggling question here was how did the staff manage to hold on to their composure and continued to serve? The study shows that all the employees had embedded company’s value system so well in their mind that they could regulate their emotions and were capable to access the situation to help others.The Inter and Intra personal bond that TATAs have established into their organizations is remarkable!! Mrs. Preeja also mentioned to us about their unique HR policies, mentioning that the candidates are handpicked based on their attitude from small districts of India. These man and women are trained to be leaders to work as a team who could manage self and others in the hour of need.
Now we had to implement these values through the process of self-development that Mrs. Preeja displayed to us. She further discussed the three stages of self-development as,
- Imitation stage (adapting behavior of others which is specially found among very young children)
- Play stage (influence)
- Game stage (starts from 2-4 years and never ends)
Post this we had a very interesting activity where we all were divided into 6 groups and we had to present a role-play on the topic ‘imitation’. It was really fun, the session ended with a discussion on James Marcia stages of self-identity. It was a wonderful session where we all learnt the importance of development and how this helps us scale greater heights in corporate world.