jaizen
Jan 8, 2010
Graduate / MBA Essay on Leadership through mentorship [4]
Please describe a time when you coached, trained, or mentored a person or group. (500 words )
My goal for starting an 'Effective Communication' club was not to improve the communication of the club members but, strange as though it may sound, to help them write better computer code. Sprouting from my surprising discovery of 'Mother-tongue influence' as the root cause for the lower-than-expected quality of many software created by my team working in (location X), I decided to take immediate and affirmative action: bi-weekly training sessions on the English language for my team. But, in a twist to a seemingly easy task, additional persons in positions of leadership were 'required' by senior management to voluntarily participate. One week into the training, I realized that the team was poorly cohesive and highly pessimistic. Although I was aware that previous such attempts had met with failure, I believed that I could, with my minimal skills, make an impact. I also realized that, in order to influence people, I had to master the key elements of leadership, build a shared vision, and align measurable goals.
With this newfound enlightenment, I changed my traditional approach (content intensive lecture series) into a three-pronged one aimed at accomplishing quantifiable, tangible and immediate results. I would conduct personal sessions to address specific issues with the language, toastmaster sessions to encourage public speaking and interactive propel sessions to address non-verbal aspects of communication.
However, several hurdles lay in my path of successful empowerment, the most significant of which was members' lack of confidence. In order to bootstrap their confidence, I showed inspirational speeches and movies on video and even shared my personal story of transformation from an extremely introverted person to a confident public speaker. I started to record the objective feedback from toastmaster sessions in order to plot a growth graph and show improvements. I also conducted short parodies of the work life to help bring out natural expression. I also tackled the lackadaisical attitude of senior members by urging them to speak on stage followed by gentle critiques on their presentation, which, along with demonstrations of impactful body language mechanisms tipped them over into mainstream participation. But the biggest hurdle was in maintaining consistent participation. Considering the hectic workload of members such as project leads and managers, I needed to imbibe in them a reason to look forward to these meetings. Through team building games targeting specifics of communication and through surprise quizzes with secret prizes, I was successful in keeping the interest flowing.
Word soon spread around and within two months, participation increased to 60 persons. I made the original ten persons as 'co-owners' in managing and conducting these sessions with monthly gathering of the entire club. Surveys of the clients across the enterprise taken before the start of the club and after 6 months of active participation showed over 40% of respondents noticed positive changes in the style and effectiveness of communication of the participants. The results were gratifying. What started as a simple goal of mentoring a team of 5 became an enterprise wide effort in coaching persons to speak confidently, express ideas better and influence decisions through new found courage to communicate effectively.
What I learnt from the whole experience was that no matter how hard the challenge, if you believe in change, you have to be it and then push it - especially if business demands it. By bringing about positive self-awareness in a disjointed group and through learning by leading, I was successful in bringing about a long awaited change .
Please describe a time when you coached, trained, or mentored a person or group. (500 words )
My goal for starting an 'Effective Communication' club was not to improve the communication of the club members but, strange as though it may sound, to help them write better computer code. Sprouting from my surprising discovery of 'Mother-tongue influence' as the root cause for the lower-than-expected quality of many software created by my team working in (location X), I decided to take immediate and affirmative action: bi-weekly training sessions on the English language for my team. But, in a twist to a seemingly easy task, additional persons in positions of leadership were 'required' by senior management to voluntarily participate. One week into the training, I realized that the team was poorly cohesive and highly pessimistic. Although I was aware that previous such attempts had met with failure, I believed that I could, with my minimal skills, make an impact. I also realized that, in order to influence people, I had to master the key elements of leadership, build a shared vision, and align measurable goals.
With this newfound enlightenment, I changed my traditional approach (content intensive lecture series) into a three-pronged one aimed at accomplishing quantifiable, tangible and immediate results. I would conduct personal sessions to address specific issues with the language, toastmaster sessions to encourage public speaking and interactive propel sessions to address non-verbal aspects of communication.
However, several hurdles lay in my path of successful empowerment, the most significant of which was members' lack of confidence. In order to bootstrap their confidence, I showed inspirational speeches and movies on video and even shared my personal story of transformation from an extremely introverted person to a confident public speaker. I started to record the objective feedback from toastmaster sessions in order to plot a growth graph and show improvements. I also conducted short parodies of the work life to help bring out natural expression. I also tackled the lackadaisical attitude of senior members by urging them to speak on stage followed by gentle critiques on their presentation, which, along with demonstrations of impactful body language mechanisms tipped them over into mainstream participation. But the biggest hurdle was in maintaining consistent participation. Considering the hectic workload of members such as project leads and managers, I needed to imbibe in them a reason to look forward to these meetings. Through team building games targeting specifics of communication and through surprise quizzes with secret prizes, I was successful in keeping the interest flowing.
Word soon spread around and within two months, participation increased to 60 persons. I made the original ten persons as 'co-owners' in managing and conducting these sessions with monthly gathering of the entire club. Surveys of the clients across the enterprise taken before the start of the club and after 6 months of active participation showed over 40% of respondents noticed positive changes in the style and effectiveness of communication of the participants. The results were gratifying. What started as a simple goal of mentoring a team of 5 became an enterprise wide effort in coaching persons to speak confidently, express ideas better and influence decisions through new found courage to communicate effectively.
What I learnt from the whole experience was that no matter how hard the challenge, if you believe in change, you have to be it and then push it - especially if business demands it. By bringing about positive self-awareness in a disjointed group and through learning by leading, I was successful in bringing about a long awaited change .
