Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Feedback on Training Sessions - Gap Miners

Every Tuesday evening I go to Gap Miners, my friend Ramaraju's company, to conduct a training session. Ram believes in training like no one else I know - and indulges me with an hour of productive time from his team. I do all I can - book reviews, concepts, movies, TED talks - you name it, we do it. We end the hour with a nice hot samosa and chai from the nearby Balaji Mithai House.

There are times when I wonder what my effort is getting for Ram and his team. My talks are generally centred around the mindset, the approach, the big picture. Sometimes, actual tools and techniques as well but generally big picture and context. I am aware that organisations prefer training that's more useful on the job but someone has to give them the big picture right. So I stick to my approach.

Today, being the last training program for the year, I indulged myself and asked the team to tell me any three things from my sessions that impacted them and they carried to their job. I needed to know if I am making any impact at all.

Siddharth told me that the session on the Mindset (Mindset - Carol Dweck) changed his life (it changed mine too). He told me how he used the concept to start running 10 km, get better from an 80 mts timing to the current 45 mts. How he uses the concepts to get better at his sales job - he's a star performer who thinks through and works carefully building up momentum - so there is something to it. He told me that relationship building was another thing he learned from the sessions, how he learned to listen and be patient and how it helped get many orders.

Tej has attended many training programs and he has the mindset and work ethic of a winner. He said the three important things he learned from the sessions are to-do-lists, doing the top 6 everyday in the order of importance (the Bethlehem Steels story) and Ownership with a capital O.

Venkat is a new recruit but he picked up the right things. He said he understood what 100% responsibility means and how important it was to close all loops to get the job done. He said he analysed offers and tried to better the same (John Girard, greatest salesman in the world) - thanks to Siddharth pushing him to get better value from the offers instead of blindly taking them as they come.

Kamesh said he loved the session on financial planning for individuals (from the Richest Man on Babylon), the Stockdale paradox (Good to Great) and the Mindset (Carol Dweck)

Raju said he found the To-Do list very helpful, the 80-20 rule (Pareto's principle) and that he learned much from the culture setting meetings about professionalism. Tej stepped in an spoke for Raju and said Raju had improved his communications skills by leaps and bounds and was serious about his growth as a professional and an individual.

Ravi, who has come back into the company after a brief hiatus said he found the sessions on believing in oneself, the ones on goal setting and planning to achieve the goal highly impactful. he said he uses those techniques everywhere.

Dayakar said he became more  punctual and has taken up more responsibility at work.

Sharmila said the session on leadership, about the quality and quantity of work and delivering work on time impacted her. In other words, ownership for work.

Santosh Baba said that he understood the word responsibility in its true meaning, the to-do lists and mostly from the session on Secret (Rhonda Byrne). He said he was deeply impacted by the process of Ask, Believe and Receive. He said he would earlier only believe but now he understood that to ask is 50%, to believe it 40% and to receive is 10% of the process.

Harsha said he understood concepts of ownership, quality of work and completing work on time. He also said that the session on financial planning really helped and told us how he put away money after that and saved every month. Fantastic.

Pavan said he remembered leadership qualities, patience and improved his communication skills.

Aravind said he has become a much better professional thanks to the experience here and he was increasing his skill set and area of responsibility. He was now planning to buy a bike and then a car. He said the session on financial planning helped to plan ahead.

Siva said he learned about patience and being punctual.

Overall glad that they got most of the important concepts. I am happy they could pick the concepts clearly and tell me how they applied it in life or at work. That's very encouraging.

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