Presentation Skills

In my long career, I've attended quite a lot of corporate trainings on presentation skills/soft skills. Some were from the best in industry and some were the routine spend-the-budget types. The trainers come with lot of assessment tests to understand what the individual knows or doesn't know and suggest a ways to improve the skills and excel in communication.

While the ones who have a natural ability to communicate pick up things well and excel, the one's who don't have it can stumble. The most common tip the trainers give is to practice.

Two things can happen. One who has the natural ability take the tips, improve themselves, they put their head/heart/blood everything and when they deliver a speech if almost every cell in their body contributes to the speech, it ends up becoming a NaMo speech. But on the other hand, if someone doesn't have the natural ability and keep only practicing, can end up giving max-to-max a RaGa speech.

Clearly, what can make a big difference is one's inner ability/one's inner self/personality. Now, the ones who are not natural communicators stand at a big disadvantage and if they want to improve, I found that Meditation can be the most simplest and effective method. For, Meditation has the ability to clear one's mind, bring clarity to the thoughts, improve one's observation and give confidence to speak. After all, a good speech is not about using the most complex English words, but it is the ability to capture the pulse of the audience and communicate with them in a way they can correlate. It is the ability to put forward one's thoughts without confusion so that people can understand. Meditation helps do that exactly. How it does? The answer lies in practicing Meditation :-)

I

I woke up today to learn that India got a woman Defence Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, and she is the first woman to hold a full time Defence Minister portifolio since Independence. The news also buzzed with her attribution of the rapid rise in position to 'cosmic grace’.

A few years ago when Narendra Modi had a thumping victory in 2014 general elections, even in his first ever speech inside the Parliament hall he said - Bhagvan ka Kripa hai, mein ne is chunaav ko jeet paaya. That is after hundreds of rallies, thousands of speeches, years of hard work and preparation, the Prime Minister finally says - I attribute my success to the Divine.

In both these cases, one sees that these personalities very happily chose not to take credit for themselves. One may call it humble, goody goody, down to earth etc etc. But what's the use of doing this? Why not beat their chest for their victories??

The answer is simple. They simply did not want their ego to takeover them. The moment this feeling of - 'I did this’, 'Only because of me this happened’, 'Without me it's not possible’ goes into the head, that's it!! The downfall begins. The word 'I’ is dangerous unless one knows what it is. I am not saying one shouldn't be happy about what they did, take a moment and reflect on the whole thing etc etc, but all I am saying is the I-ness aspect is one easy path to reverse all the fortunes. Thus, the two great personalities chose to simply attribute their victories to an unseen power, the unknown power, the infinity, God. In Hinduism, God is considered the infinite, and as infinite plus something is still infinite, a few credits to the infinity won't change it. The advantage though is, one can save their own Self without falling prey to their ego. And that again helps in achieving greater heights. And more credits, more offering to infinite and more growth, … and so on.

I’ve also seen that people attribute their failures squarely on someone else. They give credits of their success to solely themselves. Both of these approaches don't let them grow. Giving failures to others won't let them introspect where they went wrong, they don't think of growing themselves, fixing their own bugs, think out of the box to prevent a failure next time.

However, if the reverse is done, that is, give one's successes to others or even better, God, and own up the failures, I've seen people improve. They may be having a slow beginning, but their end success is guaranteed. And the whole journey is more peaceful.

My new learning from NaMo

If there is one person who has been the highest receiver of mud-slinging, it would undoubtedly be NaMo. Right from the start of his political career as a CM, to the recent MCD elections, he was targeted by various people on various issues. Vilification campaigns ran over him for years together. Truly, like he once said, he is the only one with a 56-inch chest who can take it all.

None of this is new information to any person living in India. However, there is one new thing that I learnt from him this time. There is an immature political opponent, who clearly dug his own grave by showing over obsession towards NaMo. Right from day 1, he has targeted NaMo personally and professionally. There were no limits to his madness.

There used to be a series of allegations day in and day out. They were so many that it is natural for anyone to hit back, otherwise, his popularity would decline. People would think that the opponent is correct and he may lose some chunk of his support base to the opponent. But I admire his political wisdom, his farsightedness to adopt a complex yet simple strategy right from day one - to keep quiet.

He kept quiet, he continued to work on his dream for the country, some show benefits already and some are a work in progress. The strategy had two benefits, one, it saved a lot of his time, energy and peace of mind. Second, he let his opponent dance so much that the opponent failed to realize that he was shooting bullets, but just forgot that the gun was pointing towards his own self. The final results are evident.

The biggest learning in all this for me is to know when to keep quiet. NaMo is not just a Prime Minister, he is an inspiration - to me.