Dave Ingle mentioned pretty matter-of-factly, “Please do not mistake me when I say that I have been literally forced by my bosses to attend your training seminar. Pardon me to say that these training programs are a waste of time. I have attended several of such seminars and I have not been benefited by them at all. And yours is a six day long program with a much fancier title “personal and professional excellence” and so, that much more waste of time. So, right away I am declaring that I will be physically in your seminar hall but for all practical purposes, my mind will be somewhere else. Do not expect me to take down any notes or ask any questions or participate in any activities here. Just leave me alone- that’s my simple request”.
In our hundreds of seminars where more than 150,000 people have participated from around 250 organizations, it was not a strange or new experience for my wife and me who conduct many of such training programs jointly. We do come across a few participants in our seminars who express such opinions for several reasons. So, like mature people, we listened to Dave Ingle and allowed him his way in our class room. Interestingly, he was sitting around the very first table in the seminar hall, pretty close to us and exactly facing us. We could not fathom this aspect of his behavior; rather we had expected him to be the backbencher.
We started our sessions. My wife and I kept a watch on Dave Ingle though. Dave Ingle was sticking to his promises to us to the letter. He was seated with blank face and did not utter a single word nor lifted his pencil even once to jot down any notes.
Our seminars are normally very participative with short lecturettes and many management games, individual and group exercises, case studies, role plays, discussions, peer group learning, videos, questions and answers etc. Almost every participant except Dave Ingle started enjoying our sessions. The seminar hall was warming up with lots of rich learning experience.
Towards evening of the first day of the seminar, we noticed one small change in Dave Ingle. He had started listening to our lecturettes and discussions etc.
Next day after a session or two, we noticed one more change in Ingle. He was writing something on his note pad. We concluded that he might be doodling to kill time. He had brought a highlighter pen and intermittently, he was using it too, on the paper.
Two more days passed. The seminar was progressing famously. Dave Ingle’s activity level increased. He started solving the individual exercises and started taking part in group activities though always pretending that he was not much serious about them and was involving himself just for the heck of it.
Fifth day’s sessions brought about a marked sobering effect on Ingle, his countenance was displaying a quiet satisfaction and his entire body language was screaming as if to tell us that he was in terms with himself- my wife and I discussed it a bit during our seminar review conference between two of us.
Surprisingly, Dave Ingle met us privately during the lunch break. He requested for an appointment with us at the end of the day if we could squeeze in some time for him. We readily agreed.
Dave Ingle, my wife and I met up in the evening. We waited for him to speak out, “I have been going through a very critical period in my personal and professional life. But I must quickly admit that your seminar has been an eye opener for me. Yours is a very different seminar than what I have attended so far. You do not use the hopeless jargon and your messages are forthright and really beneficial. I have started finding many answers to my various dilemmas. Many of these things that you were telling in your training program are the very things my wife keeps telling me. I never heeded to her, rather I never understood her- I had even serious fights with her on those ideologies. Your explanations have brought home the meaning of all that. I am going to put these things now in practice in my personal as well as professional life. Hope, things work out well for me.”
He then shared with us a list of points he had picked up from our training program and had highlighted them with the highlighter pen he was carrying with him. We are reproducing the points as written by Dave Ingle below:
- Make yourself capable of managing things independently by imbibing and practicing correct values, knowledge, paradigms and will power to execute. And so, shun the need to be dependent on any kind of crutches.
- Yet, despite this, one should remember that human beings at home, society and profession live interdependent of each other. So, better take cognizance of it and maintain appropriate relations with others.
- Every person is a bundle of strengths and weaknesses. It is easy to spot the weaknesses in others. But if one starts seeing and appreciating the good points of others, things become that much easier for self and others. Every human being has some definite strong points.
- Therefore, one should always communicate with everyone else and that too, respectfully. Communication without due respect is no communication.
- Listening with empathy is the core of any communication.
- One should not be reactive. There is always space and time available to everyone subsequent to receiving a stimulus. Using that, one can appropriately respond to a stimulus without need to give a thoughtless reaction.
- Win-win approach is always beneficial in the long run as compared to win-lose approach.
- Therefore, you can always sort out any kind of conflict with others by using the process of collaboration.
Later on, from some other quarters, we came to know more about the family life of Dave Ingle. Around the time he was attending our training program, he was almost on the brink of taking divorce from his wife who was a lawyer by profession and was a sophisticated lady in her own right. Dave Ingle himself was a post graduate in engineering from a reputed institute. But Dave Ingle carried pretty wrong notions on how to lead personal, family and professional life. And so he was quite a misfit.
After an year or so of this incident, we met Mr and Mrs Ingle in a social party at a common friend’s house. From the looks of them, they seemed very happy together. The person who had given us the news of their divorce also confirmed to us that Mr and Mrs Ingle did not proceed with divorce and had sorted out all of their marital discords. They were an ideally happy couple now.
Related Book
"Sensitive Stories of Corporate World" (available from Amazon, get it online)
Read many more management anecdotes/management case studies in the eminent author Shyam Bhatawdekar's best selling book "Sensitive Stories of Corporate World" available online from Amazon as an eBook as well as a printed book.
Other Related Reading
For everything you wanted to know on building leadership and management, refer Shyam Bhatawdekar’s website: http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com/
Also, refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/
For “out of box thinking” articles by Shyam Bhatawdekar, refer: (Out of Box Ideas) http://wow-idea.blogspot.com/
Read other blogs of Shyam Bhatawdekar at: (Home Page for Writings of Shyam Bhatawdekar) http://writings-of-shyam.blogspot.com
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