Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Business Communication Course at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan sets the trend

Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Chennai launched an unique skill based Business Communication Course for the working professionals in July 2010.  This is a  week-end course spread over  120 hours (20 week ends - 40 days x 3 hours each) focussing only on skill development.  15 experts and 10 CEOs/achievers handled the sessions.  The course was launched by Dr Abdul Kalam in July 2010 at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.
L to R: K. Srinivasan, N Ravi, M Narendra,
T S Krishna Murthy. K N Ramaswamy and Vaidyanathan
The convocation to distribute the certificates was held on Sunday the 2nd Jan 2011 at Bhavan.  Mr T S Krishna Murthy (Former Chief Election Commissioner of India and now the Chairman of Bhavan's Chennai Kendra), Mr N Ravi (Vice Chairman of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and Editor of The Hindu), Mr M Narendra (Chairman and Managing Director of Indian Overseas Bank) participated and shared their valuable thoughts on communication trends. 
The photo stream of the event:


Mr K. Srinivasan, Chairman of Prime Point Foundation and the Course Director presented a brief report on the course.
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Mr T S Krishna Murthy, Chairman of the Chennai Kendra delivered his special address.  In his address, Mr Krishna Murthy stressed the growing importance of   business communication in the competitive environment. 
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Mr N Ravi, Editor of The Hindu presided over the function and delivered his address. Mr Ravi emphasised the need for maintaining  long form of communication, which is now distorted due to SMS, Email, etc.   Mr Ravi will be the Chairman of the 'Board of Studies' for the Second batch, which will start in February, 2011.
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Mr M Narendra, Chairman of Indian Overseas Bank was the Chief Guest and delivered his address focussing on the need of internal communication in organisations.  He said that only internal communication leads to external communication.
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Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Chennai will be launching the second batch of the Business Communication Course in February 2011.  Interested may contact through email bizbvb@gmail.com

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Workshop on presentation and public speaking skills

In my earlier two postings,  I had mentioned about the TNSC Bank Staff Training College and their enthusiasm to train the district central cooperative bank officials on communication skills.  For the third time, I was invited to conduct an half a day workshop to their officials, drawn from different districts.
Workshop on presentation and
and public speaking skills 
I conducted a workshop tody (5th Jan 2011) on presentation and public speaking skills.  After an introductory presentation by myself on the various techniques and steps, we made some of the participants to make presentation on their topic of choice, for two minutes.  Their speeches were video recorded and then displayed for review and analysis.  
Every time, such workshops are conducted, I always observe that the participants assume 'stage fear' and assume 'lack of confidence'.  Once they are given a chance, they do better.  I was very happy that the particpants enjoyed the workshop and got a self confidence to remove the stage fear.  
I always used to admire the commitment of the officials, who are all coming from various rural and semi-urban branches.  The enthusiasm and passion by the Principal Mr Manohar and his team is really worth admiring. This college is situated at Madhavaram and they have been silently doing great job in the nation building.  The urbanised high profile, IT Company managers should visit them once for drawing inspiration from these 'unsung heroes'.
Some of the pictures taken during the workshop:

Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Domain knowledge should be supplemented with business communication skills

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Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Chennai Kendra launched a skill based business communication course in July 2010.  This is an unique course in India, probably, the only of its kind  with 120 hours of teaching and working sessions (40 days x 3 hours).  This course contents were designed after an extensive research and understanding of the needs of working professionals and industry.  This course was formally launched by Former Indian President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam on 10th July 2010.
N Ravi
The course was completed in December 2010.  A function was organised by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Chennai to award certificates to the participants who completed the course.  Mr M Narendra, Chairman and Managing Director of Indian Overseas Bank and Mr N Ravi, Editor of The Hindu, one of the leading Indian National dailies delivered inspiring speeches.
In this edition, we publish an extract from the speech of Mr N Ravi, Editor, The Hindu on the importance of business communication.  During his speech, he focussed on the following points:
1.  Presently, though youngsters possess excellent domain knowledge, they do not have adequate business communication skills.
2.  Even educational institutions do not give importance to  develop communication skills of their students.  They remain satisfied with the text book knowledge.  On the other hand, developed nations like US provide enough importance on developing communication skills at schools and college level.
3.  The youngsters should get trained in business communication skills through such courses, to fill the gap in their communication skills.
4.  SMS / Emails have brought a new culture of short form communication.  Though such short form of communication is done for quick communication, only long form communication is accepted in the formal communication.  Youngsters should focus on the long form communication more.
Please listen to his speech by clicking 'play' button. (7 minutes).  We will separately publish the speech of Mr M Narendra. 

This video may also be listened from:

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