Are you ready for a tale of challenges, insights, and positive changes ? Let me share with you my experience handling a Corporate Induction training. It was a batch of 120 engineers, freshly recruited as Data Scientists by one of the high growth companies in India today.
The brief from their L & D was straightforward: they knew their newly recruited engineering minds had brilliant ideas. Now they needed training on corporate etiquette, communication confidence and corporate accountability.
I put my heart and soul into every single communication training, but this was special for many reasons.
You see, as an engineer, I know all too well the struggles around giving an opinion until I am fully convinced. In my fresher days, that meant disaster. I often stayed silent, even in meetings where I had some pretty good ideas. I would be perfecting the logic in my head, and the meeting would have moved on to the next topic. Getting these people to put their opinions out in the open, in a graceful manner, ready to be vetted and challenged, was my brief. It took some debate, some cartoons and the showcasing of actual client feedback to start them on this journey.
Once we got past this hurdle, the next two steps were all about formulating a strategy and thorough practice – and these people excelled here. As long as they were convinced of the necessity, they had no qualms staying with the problem till they solved it.
The training was completed with a lot of goodwill on both sides.
Fast forward to 2023, and the company came back with a follow-up brief: some of these engineers were now interacting with clients. They needed a Structured Consultant Communication Training.
I was thrilled to take on this new challenge. I knew where my struggle would lie: convincing them of the need for this change. You see, a person who works with Big Data, when asked to sell the story to a client, needs an entirely different skill set.
I spent the first 2 hours getting them to think like the client. Then I got them back into their own shoes (yes, empathy) and they were ready for the race. Yes, there was a time constraint. But once I sold them on the concept, this batch took over the trainings with their inputs and questions, making sure they gleaned every bit of knowledge available with the trainer. And let me tell you, it was an impressive batch. These people come from some of the best colleges across India. They are not afraid of the work required once they see the necessity.
All in all, it was another interesting and exhaustive series of training, done and delivered with pride. The growth and progress I saw in these engineers fills me with happiness, and I’m thrilled to have been a part of their awesome journey.
Sharing with you the one slide that carried with it the most hours of practice :
The Tahr Speaks 