Top 3 posts of 2015 on my professional blog

Photo Credit 

I spent a lot of time this year working on my professional blog and building my online presence. Over the year, I have about 80 posts on it on communication, soft skills, coaching, training skills and language tips. It has been quite an important project for me. It has taken me a lot of hard work, self-motivation and patience to get all of it up and running. Since I have already done the round up of popular posts on this blog in september this year, I want to share the top three posts from my professional blog here.

1. Since I started my professional blog, I have got some calls from people asking me how to become a corporate trainer in soft skills. After I spoke to a couple of them and shared my experience, I decided to write a post on it. Little did I know that it would become so popular! Read on:

How to start a career as a corporate trainer

2. I got myself certified as a coach this year and realised that the term isn't understood clearly by most. We roughly understand the word to mean what a sports coach does - grooms the team for winning. But coaching, as used in personal and executive scenarios, is very different and enables people reach their goals through the help of the coach. The coach is just the enabler here who might use some tools to help you gain clarity about your goals and how you's go about achieving them. The short video in the post facilitates better understanding:

What exactly is coaching?

3. Communication in difficult situations can be quite challenging. And we all seek to get better at it. This could be the reason why the post on tips to convey bad news in a nice manner was read and widely shared across social media platforms. It talks of practical tips to follow and let the other person down easy in such a situation:

How to convey bad news to anyone

Do read these posts and tell me what you think about them. Also, look around blog and tell me if you like any others. Looking forward to your feedback.

4 Firsts of my life in 2015

Photo credit

As this year is coming to a close, I am surprised at how many things these posts have helped me discover about this year. I had dismissed this as just another uneventful one. But now I think there have been a lot of seeds sown this year and hopefully will bear fruit in the coming years.

Today I want to talk about some things that happened for the first time in my life this year.

1. First friends in Mumbai: 8 years in Mumbai and no friends. This status definitely changed this year, thanks to Twitter and a few events offline.

2. First set of muscles: Though I have been in and out of gyms over the years, I seem to have found my perfect workout place this year. No boring gym equipment - just group exercise with music and the count of the trainer. The different kinds of workouts have ensured that I developed some muscle mass this year. Though I am far from toned, I look forward to being active for an hour a day and work towards fitness.

3. First blogging challenge: Having been a busy year with setting up my professional blog and promoting it on social media, I still decided to jump into my first blogging challenge. And the experience could not have been better than it was. It has made me so much more confident as a blogger and I think finishing a challenge is such a boost to one's self esteem.

4. First open session: At the fag end of the year, I decided to take the online action offline with my first open session on blogging for beginners. It was taking the plunge after being at the edge for sometime. From making graphics to promoting it on social media and designing session content - it was almost a one woman army all the way! I did have friends who have always motivated to go ahead. I made a few mistakes, learnt a few lessons and I feel confident about taking on more such adventures in the coming year.

How has your year been? I am sure you can also think of new things that you did this year. I'd love to hear about them. Do share your experiences your comments.

Sojourn at IIM Indore

It’s the first day of engineering college and Rancho is grinning happily in class! When asked by the professor why he is smiling like an idiot, he responds that it was his dream to get into engineering. And now that it has actually come true, he is feeling very nice about it! Sitting in a classroom at IIM Indore this August, the smile on my lips reflected the same feelings! It's always a dream to be a student at IIMs and i was living it, albeit just for 3 days. 

The name badge on my seat

i have had an indirect connect with the IIMs as a trainer who trained MBA aspirants, including people who subsequently got calls from IIMs. But i never aspired to be there because i knew i would never clear CAT thanks to my pathetic math. Years later, in the current time, i was looking for certification related to training and went to the websites of IIMs. i didn't want to do something just for the sake of an IIM in my resume. Not finding relevant courses in IIM A, B, C, i settled for Indore which offered an advanced certification in training, which is very similar to what i wanted. 

Having enrolled myself in the course, the prospect of going to an IIM was exciting. And the sojourn totally lived up to the hype! i was picked up from the airport and driven through the city to reach the campus. The rooms, though very basic, sufficed the purpose. The campus is huge with sprawling green lawns, made even more lush by the recent rains. The spotless clean campus had narrow roads leading you to everywhere in the campus. Though having to walk all over the place did get a bit tiring!

The beautiful campus made even more lush green by the rains 

 Roads that take you around the campus

The real thing was to be a part of an IIM classroom and learn from professors who were, without doubt, an authority in their subjects. We had lectures on a variety of HR and training related subjects. It was inspiring to see the professors walk the talk. Their knowledge of the subject, energy levels, style of delivery is worth learning from and emulating in real life. The peer learning, which i was also looking forward to, turned out to be a dud because we had 80% participants from a govt insurance company who had spent a good 2 decades of their lives in the same job. i don't think there can be anything more opposite to the vibrant, contemporary culture of corporate training.

The session in progress

The final presentation (non-evaluative) was a group task where we were supposed to create an session plan for a 2 day session outlining the instructional approaches we would use. The group comprised my room mate and 2 other fellows. They boys were least interested and i had to use some force to get them to do their part. What followed our presentation was the most fun. Some senior members of the class from the govt company raised serious objections at our presentation because it talked about brushing up grammar and vocabulary to improve communication. Even though it wasn't meant for them, they took offense at grammar being included in a presentation made before such a senior group. The professor was proactive in controlling the crowd. Though i was tempted to answer these gentlemen back, i resisted since i wasn't supposed to justify the contents of my presentation. And the professor was already there to talk to them. But thanks to this hullabaloo, we missed out on the professor's comments about our content!

The final presentation

All said and done, it was a proud moment to be certified by an IIM!

And Convocation!

What remain after the program, apart from the certification, are valuable insights learnt about training and HR. As a freelance trainer for 6 years, i am already at a time in my career where I want to do something more fulfilling. The visit to the IIM came at the right time driving home the point harder that training is indeed just a small function of HR. There are so many interesting and challenging allied functions which i never get involved in due to the nature of my work. So i have been involved in some thinking about the future course that my profession should take.

I think we lament when we are forced to be students in school/college but jump at every opportunity to become a student later in life!

Customer dissatisfaction..

Customer has been the king for a long time now. There are a plethora of options in any product category. Technically better, extended warranty schemes and growing competition have made it very tempting for the customer to switch brands. In such a scenario, only a committed customer service can ensure a fair amount of customer loyalty. 24/7 customer care centres, technical helpdesk, telesales - companies can go to any extent to retain current customers and also win over new ones.

But some incidents in the recent past have left me wondering if the zeal of customer service is losing its sheen after being at its best for more than a decade. Here i mean the failing customer service and incompetent executives of even known brands like Reliance and Airtel. i am personally quite finicky as a customer and hate to hear a telebanking guy advice me “please drop in at your nearest branch to get a detailed statement”. Why do customer care numbers exist if i have to make that trip to the bank. Even a month after my request to change my tariff plan, Airtel has not done the needful. The new customer care center of Reliance has rude executives who don’t seem to have heard words like polite and courteous basic to customer care. A smart customer executive swerved my decision to subscribe to Tatasky as opposed to a lousy executive with awful English on the competitors front. i don’t want to get try sign language on phone to get my problems sorted out later!

On further analysis, i figure out that big brands with big ad campaigns are fine but customer care is where the truth of the company lies. The interface between the customer and the representatives of the company is at this point. Though the executive sitting at the other end of the customer service numbers is at the lowest rung of the corporate ladder, he or she is a crucial link in the whole game. But not a lot of people would dream of a job that involves saying, “Hello, thank you for calling %%&*, I am &^%*&^$, how may I help you” for 9 hours a day (or night). Most of them are college freshers or people who don’t seem to fit in anywhere else. And from experience i can say that their skill levels are not too high. The biggest challenge being language skills. There was a time when training for domestic and international call centres was at a peak, but not anymore. Since these guys are no MBA or Masters, their emolument is not too great and hence they have no motivation to upgrade their skills. Most mouth standard lines and have mechanical answers to all your problems. Deviate from their list of questions and they flounder like a toy whose battery is almost finished!

Customer Delight is lost in the melee of executives trying to woo customers and lives only in the manuals of company procedures. Though, there are companies that have competent people who are efficient and quick and have all the right answers to keep customers happy. I do remember stray incidents of customer delight like prompt customer care from Deutsche Bank.

A lot remains to be done to get customer service back on track and make it the way it should be. Training to treat people right and listen to their issues and resolve them should be a good start for people straight out of college. The selection criteria should have some level to it and training should be top priority if companies hope to win the battle through outstanding service standards.