Learn-Develop-Grow

From Pixabay - an advertisement [The credit for this memory-jog is from my friend and former colleague, partner in crime in Hyderabad, Padma.  She sent me the snapshots which feature in the main text below and got me thinking of how we, as trainers and facilitators, metamorphosed from the humble chalk-and-talk to the various kinds of projection equipment that we used across all our training.  Thank you Padma.  Please Comment and Share this blog.] Mystery Words I mentioned the term "Progressive Disclosure" to a young 20-something and she blushed, flustered. When I asked what she was thinking, she hesitantly muttered, "Is that like strip-tease?"  Knowingly, I tried another word - "OHP".  This time she was truly mystified.  "What's that? A kind of complex -- like OCD?"  Aha!  I was making her think.  Then I popped the next word into a sentence.  "No, it's what came after the good, old charts and pictures. The OHP was replaced by the Car...

  Hotel Airlink - a Home Away from Home (pic from Website) [Everyone remembers 26/11 2008 in India at least.   On the eve of that great tragedy I am prompted to  remember it for reasons that have stuck with me throughout these years.  Learnings of a lifetime were strewn in my path that day, night and the next entire week.] Just three days earlier we had lost our youngest brother, Paul, at the age of 43, to cancer.  On the 25th we attended his burial service and the next day, November 26th, I left for Mumbai by the evening flight to conduct a training program for my company.  I was to train a group of 18 senior-citizen Master Trainers from the world of Banking and Finance.  They had come from around the country for this week-long program. The Backpack and the Strolley As we circled the skies above Mumbai, all that the Captain told us was that we were waiting for permission to land.  He told us this a few times, but not the reason why.  Pe...

Image by  Rudy and Peter Skitterians  from  Pixabay   [Some of us might remember the good old vinyl records that occasionally got stuck in a groove. The music went round and round, repeating the same phrase over and over, till someone stepped over and lifted the stylus arm.  Hence, was born the phrase for anyone who keeps repeating the same things over, "like a broken record".  Sorry to put you through this again, but I feel quite strongly on the subject of online teaching and learning.  The two terms are inseparable as I believe that the result of "I Teach" is that "You Learn" and not "I have taught". Read, react, object, share, comment .. but give me some feedback, please.] Over the past seven months I have been part of a teaching and learning community that has been challenged by the new normal - it's been seven months, so we are dropping the quote marks around those words.  But we also need to learn from the experiments, successes and fai...

Image by  Markus Trier  from  Pixabay   [It's been a while since I wrote my last blog post.  After the cyclone Amphan, there was an aftermath that kept me super-busy till just now.  I promised myself and my readers that I was going to share something with them, so here it is.  Please feel free to read, share, comment, argue, object as you think fit.  I have also carefully placed this in my Learning & Development Blog as it may not be just for laughs as the rest are.] Zoom did it They say (I've always wondered who 'they' could be) that a bad carpenter blames his tools.  So, as schools rushed to ensure their fee-paying students continue to do so, a lot of action happened with "online teaching".  In the middle of this action was one hitherto relatively unknown video conferencing software called Zoom.  Not the market leaders but definitely the 'market openers'.  It was available, user friendly, had an intuitive int...

[This is an article that I wrote way back in September 2016.   It looks at Training, Learning and Development from my perspective.  Going through archives, I thought it might make some light reading for practitioners.  I do notice some places where I might have had a change of heart - leaving them intact for historical reasons.  Please do leave your comments and insights.] A practitioner's view on what the job of Learning and Development will entail in the future  as Published in the magazine Business Manager, September 2016    My first brush with L&D was when I was conducting "behavioural training" at a major software giant way back in the early 2000s. Our training company had given us ready-made Powerpoint presentations, pre-printed booklets of exercises and even a trainer's script which we had to diligently follow. In those days the client company had a system of participants rating the trainer as Red, Green or Yellow -  this defi...

[This blog is a tribute to the enthusiasm of three young persons who are pushing through an intensive 3-day Training of Trainers in late November.  Thank you, Devanjan, Dipannita and Sudipta for believing in your ability to make this training happen] In September I was fortunate to meet the trio at a one-day Train the Trainer program held through ISTD in Calcutta.  The session itself had a motley group of people, all intent on learning skills of training from me.  Among them, some of the most enthusiastic participants were these three -- all of them in various stages of completing their diplomas and getting into the uncertain waters of training. I  have often faced the phenomena of participants getting carried away with the training, asking for my email id and phone number (and a selfie) in their excitement and forgetting all about it a day later. I was therefore totally unprepared for the quick follow-up mail, WhatsApp messages and calls the very next day!...

[This blog post is inspired by a rush of thoughts which floated through my mind over the last 3 days. Last week I conducted an "orientation program" at a well-known school in the city. I was referred to as the "speaker" in the tradition of their having a speaker at their term orientations. Despite my protest, facing a group of 100 teachers from pre-Primary to Higher Secondary level, I was branded the Speaker.  However, this was a small glitch in an otherwise fabulous morning.  Read on ... ] The topic I was to present, though limited by time and space, encompassed teaching skills, motivation, instant lesson planning and, because the teachers felt they needed something for their personal lives too, we added Time Management Tools.  The precise content was not as important as the methods I have been used to employing.  So, on with the show. I firmly believe that one has to live the part, so rather than deliver a talk, I found myself involving the teachers in inter...