Term 4

Business Communication
Course Pack
Kanishka Sinha
Girish Manimaran
Avantika Sinha

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 Indian School of Business
Business Communication Course Pack

Table of Contents
Course outline ......................................................................................................................................................... 4
Objectives & learning goals .................................................................................................................................. 4
Session by session course description................................................................................................................... 5
Evaluation components ........................................................................................................................................ 8
Assignment schedule............................................................................................................................................ 8
Attendance and punctuality ................................................................................................................................. 9
Report writing ....................................................................................................................................................... 10
SCQR format (Situation, Complication, Question, Recommendation) ................................................................ 10
The Pyramid Principle ....................................................................................................................................... 11
MECE (Mutually exclusive, Cumulatively exhaustive) ........................................................................................ 12
Basics of formatting ......................................................................................................................................... 13
Group report assignment ...................................................................................................................................... 14
Sample group report that got high marks .......................................................................................................... 16
Sample report that got low marks ..................................................................................................................... 21
Crucial conversations ............................................................................................................................................ 25
Sharing vs Judgement & Advice ......................................................................................................................... 25
Feedback .......................................................................................................................................................... 26
Listening (interpretations) ................................................................................................................................ 27
Questions.......................................................................................................................................................... 28
Requests ........................................................................................................................................................... 29
How to say no ................................................................................................................................................... 32
Managing agreements ...................................................................................................................................... 35
Holding someone accountable for broken commitments .................................................................................. 36
The Ten Commandments of Emails ....................................................................................................................... 37
How to run meetings that do not destroy souls .................................................................................................... 42
Executive presence and personal brand ................................................................................................................ 48
Principles of leadership effectiveness ................................................................................................................ 48
Self-awareness ................................................................................................................................................. 51
Range model of leadership development ......................................................................................................... 54
Leadership effectiveness check (to be done with study group) ......................................................................... 54

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 Indian School of Business
Business Communication Course Pack

Table of Contents (cont’d)

Impactful presentations ........................................................................................................................................ 55
Presentation do’s and don’ts ........................................................................................................................... 55
Making communication ‘sticky’ ....................................................................................................................... 59
Presentation homework for Lecture 5 .............................................................................................................. 61
Group presentation assignment ............................................................................................................................ 62
Placements & Interviews (note from Prof) .......................................................................................................... 63
Appendix 1 – List of technical terms used in the course (for multiple choice exam) ............................................. 65

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 Course outline

Academic Year & Term: 2016-17 Term: 4

Instructor: Kanishka Sinha Office Hours: Please feel free to email and
Affiliation: Stillwater Consulting arrange a time.

Email: kanishka.sinha@stillwater.co.in

Instructor: Girish Manimaran Office Hours: Please feel free to email and
Affiliation: Stillwater Consulting arrange a time.

Email: girish.manimaran@stillwater.co.in

Office Hours

Kanishka and Girish are visiting faculty who are consultants at Stillwater Consulting. Their schedule is
liable to changes as a result of client requirements. However, they are both happy to arrange time to
speak to any student who has any questions. Please feel free to email and arrange a conveniently
workable time (which can be on weekends or outside regular office hours)

Course Objective and Key-takeaways from the course

One of the major requirements from employers looking for is for their high potential managers to have
world class communication skills. However, although this is a teachable skill, very few institutions
actually teach communication as a formal subject.

The Business Communication course is a ½ credit (10hrs) program that aims to provide ISB students the
ability to communicate, both verbally and in writing, in a way that inspires trust and credibility in
others, and to effectively co-ordinate actions to produce high performance.

Learning Goals
The learning goals of the Business Communication course are to develop the ability to:

1. Analyze issues and present report recommendations in a structured manner

2. Write clear succinct action oriented best practice emails
3. Listen critically and empathetically to understand other people’s perspectives, constraints and
objectives.
4. Share opinions and feedback in a way that is seen by others as direct, respectful and honest
rather than abrasive or sugar coated.
5. Ask questions in a skillful way that identifies key issues and their solutions and creates
ownership and clarity of action in others
6. Employ best practice in how to set unambiguous expectations, get clear commitments and
hold people accountable to those commitments.
7. Understand the key principles of effective communication that determine people’s perceptions
8. Get feedback from others on how you come across – both strengths and weaknesses
9. Make impactful and memorable presentations.

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Course Description
The course is composed of five 2hr sessions.

The teaching methodology is experiential with relatively less focus on theory and more focus
on practice, feedback and practical application on top of the basic frameworks.

Session 1: Sharp writing

Lecture: Assignments:
- Participants are introduced to the - Group assignment: Write a Consulting
Pyramid Principle, a technique for report with recommendations
analysing issues and structuring
consulting reports used at McKinsey. (Weightage: 25%)
- Brief linkage on how to use the Pyramid
Principle to write clear actionable Optional book:
emails. - Pyramid principle by Barbara Minto
(recommended for those who would like
Post lecture: to apply for Management Consulting)
- Course pack article on the MECE
principle (Mutually Exclusive
Cumulatively Exhaustive) used for
writing crisp reports
- Course pack examples of good reports
and bad reports.

Session 2: Crucial conversations

Lecture:
- Listening skills
Picking up the underlying emotions of
the speaker, and how to respond to the
non-verbal messages
- Sharing
How to communicate one’s own point of
view in a way that is direct, honest,
straight, sensitive without being
rude/blunt on one side or tentative/sugar
coated on the other.
Optional book:
- ‘Crucial conversations’ by Kerry
Patterson or ‘Fierce conversations’ by
Susan Scott
(recommended for those who find
difficult conversations emotionally
trying)
- ‘Getting to Yes’ or ‘The Power of a
Positive No’ by William Ury
(recommended for those who would like
to develop their skills in influencing)

- Questioning skills
How to ask questions skilfully to
understand the situation, explore
options, narrow to solutions, and move
forward to clearly defined action steps.

- Requests and agreements

How to make clear requests, get
unambiguous agreements, and hold
people accountable to them.

- How to say no
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 Saying no in a way that honours
priorities and yet builds alignment and
relationship with the person whose
request is refused.

Post lecture:
- Course pack articles on best practice on
writing emails with examples
- Course pack article on how to run an
effective and useful meeting
Session 3: Executive presence and personal branding
Lecture: Optional book:
- Understanding the difference between - ‘The Game of Life’ by Kanishka Sinha,
taking ownership and blaming Girish Manimaran & Avantika Sinha
self/others and the impact this makes on (recommended for those who want to
leadership brand in the long term. understand at a deeper level the
- Classroom exercise where two students distorting personal beliefs that get in the
volunteer to answer a series of way of our relationships and adversely
challenging questions and get feedback impact perceptions of us)
on the perceptions they created with the
class during the exercise

Post lecture:
- Participants work in Small groups (1hr
exercise) where they ask each other the
same set of questions that were used in
class and give each other feedback on
perceptions they created – what is their
leadership brand.
- Range psychometric test to identify their
own Leadership brand (10mins) and a
series of videos that explains how to
interpret their reports (30mins)
Session 4: Practice makes perfect
Lecture: Optional book:
- Workshop session designed to practice - ‘Talk like TED’ by Carmine Gallo
the skills developed over the previous (recommended for those who need to
three sessions proselytize an idea impactfully)
- Fishbowl exercise in which two
volunteers role play in front of the class - ‘Made to Stick’ by Chip & Dan Heath.
a typical difficult conversation in the (recommended for those who would like
workplace and this is debriefed by the to learn how to make memorable
class communication in the areas of
- Class is divided into groups of three and marketing, advertising, etc.)
three rounds of role plays are conducted
with feedback for all participants on
their strengths and areas of development
provided by their triad partners. Debrief
with Prof on how to handle different
scenarios.

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 Post lecture:
- Course pack article on how to make
communication differentiated and
therefore memorable using the
SUCCESs model (Simple, Unexpected,
Credible, Concrete, Emotional, Stories)
- Course pack article on Do’s and don’ts
on Ppt technique
- Participants prepare ppt in Small Groups
for presentation in the next session.
- Participants are asked to bring a draft
CV in for the next class
Session 5: Impactful presentations and interviews (+ Creating value from conflict)
Lecture: Assignments:
- Two small groups are selected to present - Group assignment: Polish ppt used in the
their ppt to the class after which the class and upload onto Youtube for
class asks them questions. This is public consumption. Each small group
followed by a debrief of what worked would have been allocated one of the
and didn’t work in the presentation. core course subjects and that will be the
- Four volunteers debate a topic chosen by ppt topic. The aim should be to provide
the class and answer questions put by the fascinating summaries of various
class on their stance and the learnings from ISB to non ISB public to
effectiveness of the arguments is spread the learnings in India as well to
debriefed reinforce the capabilities of ISB students
- One mock interview at the front of the in the public perception. Ppt will be
class that is debriefed with the class marked for each small group.
along with final tips to think of for the
interview (Weightage: 25%)

Post lecture:
- Optional online video TEDx talk by
Kanishka on how to sustain/deepen
behavioural skills over a longer term
period after a lecture/workshop series

Required text books

There are no mandatory textbooks in this course. Optional text books are recommended in the session by session flow above for
those students who would like more depth in a certain area.

Software requirements for the course

Participants will need to learn how to create a 10 min video of a group presentation and upload it online to Youtube.

Course Pack Distribution to students

The lecture slides used in the class will be uploaded on LMS. The coursepack will also be uploaded on LMS. Hard copies are
not used for the sake of the environment.

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Evaluation Components

Group consulting report 25%

Group presentation (uploaded on YouTube) 25%
Class participation 25%
Multiple choice paper 25%

Assignment Schedule
Name of the Date of Take-home Group Instructions to students on Coding
Component Submission or in-class Assignment (Y/N) word limit/format of Scheme
/ Deadline submission etc.
Group Sunday 9th Take home Y See instructions on page 14 2n-b
consulting October
report midnight

Group Sunday 9th Take home Y 10 min presentation by group 2n-b

presentation October uploaded on YouTube.
midnight
Term 3 End of term In-class N 4N
online quiz

Coding scheme for ALL course work

What kinds of collaborative activities are

What material can be referred to?[1]
allowed?
References/Coding Can I discuss general Can I discuss Can I refer to Can I refer to the
Scheme concepts and ideas specific issues external case-study
relevant to the associated with the material?[2] solutions or
assignment with assignment with problem set
others? others? solutions?
4N N N N N
3N- a Y N N N
3N-b N N Y N
2N-a Y Y N N
2N-b Y N Y N
2N-c N N Y Y
1N Y Y Y N
0N Y Y Y Y

As a general rule students are responsible for submitting original work that reflects their own effort and interpretation.
Remember that any submission should be your own work and should not be copied in part or verbatim from any other
source whether external or internal.

 An honour code violation is an honour code violation. A violation under coding scheme 0N is not less severe than
others. A 0N coding scheme submission is judged against a 0N coding scheme, and a 4N coding scheme submission
is judged against a 4N coding scheme; therefore, any honour code violation is equally severe irrespective of the
coding scheme of the submission.
 Students can discuss cases and assignments with the course instructor and the Academic Associate for the course.
 Required and recommended textbooks for the course and the course pack can be used to answer any individual
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 or group assignment.
 Although not all submissions may be subject to academic plagiarism checker (e.g. turn-it-in), in
retrospect, if the Honour Code committee feels the need, any of the previous submissions of an individual
or a group can be subjected to turn-it-in or any other academic plagiarism checker technology.
 When in doubt, the student should contact the instructor for clarifications.

[1]
Any referencing needs to be accompanied with appropriate citations
[2]
A non-exhaustive list includes journal articles, news items, databases, industry reports, open courseware

Attendance & Punctuality

Keeping agreements and punctuality is the foundation of building credibility. All business
communication is built on top of this foundation.
With this in mind, Professors may lower CP marks for those who walk in to class late or after the lecture
has already started. The Professors will not be keeping a rigorous track of this and so they may not
apply this standard consistently (i.e. you may be marked down on CP for being late but another student
may get away with it. It is therefore advisable to be on time which is defined as ‘being seated in your
chair to the second as per the classroom clock’)

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 Report writing

SCQR format (Situation, Complication, Question, Recommendation)

Formal reports should start with an SCQ (Situation, Complication, Question).

Example:
XYZ Ltd has recently doubled its employee strength from 50 to 600 in the last two years
(situation). As a result of this expansion the original founders have found it difficult having face to
face communications with the new employees and they are concerned that short term sales driven
decisions are being taken that are not in line with the ethical values of the company
(complication). XYZ has requested Stillwater Consulting to provide recommendations regarding
how the values of the company can be defined clearly, communicated effectively through the
organization, as well as how the adherence to these values can be measured and evaluated
(question).

The SCQ is to provide a summary of the brief that was provided to the consultants. Its purpose is to
demonstrate a succinct understanding of the brief and also to start from ‘common ground’ that both the
client and consultant have agreed on. The length of the SCQ can vary from a paragraph to a few pages
depending on the size of the report and the context. In emails, for an example, an SCQ could simply be
as short as ‘With respect to our conversation last evening…’

Immediately after the SCQ we have the R (Recommendation). The recommendation comes up front in
formal communication to prevent wasting time of busy clients who may just want the bottom line and
who may not want to wade through all the details.

Example:
“Our recommendation is that we adopt the following measures with respect to the culture
dissemination initiative:
1. A two day facilitated discussion for the executive committee in which the values are decided
2. Three leadership + coaching workshops for the next sixty managers (3 batches of 20)
3. An internal communication campaign to raise awareness of XYZ values
4. Measurement of progress on key metrics decided (customer retention, NPS score, etc.)
5. A two-day retreat six months later to review progress on metrics and finalize next steps

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The Pyramid Principle

Clients will have questions regarding the recommendations and so the next step is to anticipate the
questions they will ask, and then to answer them. To each answer there will be further client questions and
they also need to be anticipated and answered.

This can be mapped diagrammatically using a pyramid structure with the recommendation at the top of
the pyramid and the expanding list of questions and their answers forming the rest of the pyramid below.
This diagram can then be used to structure the final written report. Please refer to the lecture slides for
examples on how to structure the questions and answers in the form of a diagram.

The diagram needs to be prepared before the writing. If the thinking is clear, the writing will be clear.

As your level of familiarity with the approach becomes internalized, you may not need to prepare
the diagram. Your thinking itself will be automatically be ‘pyramided’. Practicing writing all
reports this way for the rest of the year is therefore a great way to prepare for interviews
(especially Consulting interviews) that look to examine your ability to think analytically.

The key to clear writing is to:

1. Slot your ideas into the pyramid form
2. Test them against the rules below before you begin to write
3. If any of the rules is broken, find the flaw in your thinking.

Pyramid Rules

1. Ideas at any level must be summaries of the ideas grouped below them

o The point at the top summarizes its sections

o The point of a section summarizes the points of its paragraphs
o The point of a paragraph summarizes its sentences

2. Ideas in each grouping must be logically the same

o All steps in the same process

 Ex: If making the value chain more streamlined is the main point, sub points
might relate to - Sourcing, Manufacturing, Marketing, Distribution, Post-sales
support)

o All reasons for the same thing

 Ex: If poor customer care is the main point, sub points might relate to – High
attrition of experienced staff, poor training of new staff, change in metrics that
focus on sales rather than customer service.
 Ex: A sub point related to economic slowdown would be out of place. It would
be better placed in a section on ‘Sales slowdown’ where the sub points could
include ‘Poor customer care’ and ‘Economic slowdown’

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3. Ideas in each grouping of sub points must be in logical order

o It must be clearly apparent to the reader why the first item comes before the second
item and why the second item comes before the third, etc.

o Typically, sensible orders are Time order, structural order, degree order, and logic
order
 Example of time order: Step 1; Step 2; Step 3
 Example of structural order: London office; New York office; Rio office
 Example of degree order: Most important problem; Second most important
problem; etc.
 Example of logic order: The first choice of degree for many in India is
Engineering; Engineers sometimes forget holistic thinking; There is a lack of
new ideas in products; Diversity students from non-engineering backgrounds
have improved the number of innovative products in the divisions they are in;
etc.

MECE (Mutually exclusive, Cumulatively exhaustive)

MECE.is a way of structuring your thinking and communication in a way that ensures that all the
issues have been covered (cumulatively exhaustive) and that there is no repetition (mutually
exclusive). This ensures crispness and clarity.

Example of MECE communication:

We will explore the chances of the teams competing in this year’s football world cup:
 European teams
 South American teams
 Rest of the world

Example of non MECE communication:

We will explore the chances of the teams competing in this year’s football world cup:
 European teams
 Possession football teams
 Popular teams

We can see that the MECE example will cover all the teams in the world under its categories and
that no team will be repeated under two different categories. However, in the non MECE example
there could be repetition (Spain could be regarded as a European team, possession football team,
and a popular team) and there could also be teams that are completely left out (Brazil might be a
popular possession football team that does not fit under any category).

Non MECE communication can come across as lacking in rigour because it misses important
details or rambling because it is repetitive.

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Basics of formatting

o Structure your writing to mirror the same logic as your pyramid

o Too much dense text is hard to read and assimilate. Ensure there is plenty of white space between
paragraphs so that the content can ‘breathe’

o Use the structure and headings to give a ‘skimmer’ an immediate overview of what is being
discussed. Then they can ‘zoom’ into the details of the text on those parts they want more
information on. (Note the difference between the sample group reports that scored high marks and
those that scored low marks)

o Use headings, fonts, italics, indents, etc. consistently throughout your document

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 Group report assignment
Your study group is required to submit your recommendations regarding what should be done to increase
the number of medals that India wins in future Olympics to a (hypothetical) governmental think tank
taking inputs from MBA students in response to high levels of public debate regarding this issue.

This assignment carries a weightage of 25% of the Business Communication grade and the deadline for
submission is midnight on Sunday 9th October

Cover page (one page)

Have a clear title and the names of the members of the study group with PGP id. Any presentational
touches that make it look more professional would be noted. Think about what the right balance is between
plain/boring and tacky/over the top. It is a professional document.

Main report (Max two pages)

Your report should be maximum two pages long. Please make your recommendations as specific and
granular as possible, with clear choices – not vague broad level clichés. Please read the material in this
course pack with respect to report writing (SCQR, Pyramid principle, MECE, and review the sample group
reports)

Appendix 1 – Values (2 paragraphs of max three lines each)

Your report will most likely be marked by Avantika Sinha but assume she has the same values as your
Prof (Girish or Kanishka). As such your report would need to be structured in such a way that it anticipates
the questions that they might ask based on their value systems.

To ensure that you have considered this before preparing your pyramid, please write max three lines
summarizing what you think your Prof’s key values might be (Girish or Kanishka). The point of this
appendix is not to get their values ‘right’, it’s to think about who the consumer of the report is.

Please note… THE POINT IS NOT TO WRITE WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR. The point of the
exercise is to say what your group truly believes, but to anticipate the questions, objections, concerns, that
they might have given their value systems so you can address them (without necessarily agreeing with
what their views on the subject might be).

Appendix 2 – Pyramid (1 page)

Please construct a one-page pyramid diagram showing the structure of your argument, with your
recommendation at the top, clearly spelling out what the anticipated questions are, and the answers you
have provided (in summary form) to those questions. The format for this pyramid diagram is identical to
the ones covered in the Jon Stewart/ Bill O’Reilly first lecture on Sharp writing (Lecture ppt will be on
LMS). We would recommend you draw this pyramid in rough before you actually start typing your main
report. We will be evaluating the neatness of the diagram as part of our grading scheme (the grading
scheme is not explicit as is often the case in life and we would recommend that your group discuss it –
what do you think the Profs are looking for?).

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We would recommend that members of your group independently read up on the subject and then after
forming your own individual views, meet up to debate your views (using the critical thinking skills learned
in the Bill O Reilley/ Jon Stewart video debriefs till you agree as a group.

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 Sample group report that got high marks
Topic: Recommendations to hypothetical governmental think tank on free speech laws

The preamble of the Indian constitution ensures to all its citizens the liberty of expression. The right to freedom in
Article 19 guarantees the freedom of speech and expression as one of its six freedoms. Under Indian law, the
freedom of speech and of the press does not confer an absolute right to express one’s thoughts freely. Clause (2) of
article 19 of the Indian constitution enables the legislature to impose certain restrictions on free speech under
following heads:
i) Security of the state
ii) Friendly relations with foreign states
iii) Public order
iv) Decency and morality
v) Contempt of court
vi) Defamation
vii) Incitement to an offence
viii) Sovereignty and integrity of India

However, reasonable restrictions on these grounds can be imposed only by a duly enacted law and not by executive
action.

Upon closely studying the freedom of speech laws, we have come up with 3 major gaps which, if addressed,
can strengthen the laws to make them more fair and open:

Current Gap #1: Hate speech laws (Sedition law) in India:

End goal
To safeguard citizens’ rights to raise their voice against anything that they perceive to be unfair or wrong by
strengthening the Sedition law.

Underlying Principle
Common people should not have to face dire consequences for voicing out their opinions and should be able
to fight back against the powerful.

Recommendation
Sedition law intends to prohibit any words or representation that can cause hatred or contempt, or excite or
attempt to excite disaffection toward the government. This law has often been misused. The sedition law
was drafted during the colonial British era is very vague and this may lead in authorities exercising it
succumbing to political pressures. In a landmark ruling in 1962, the Supreme Court said criticism or
comment on government action was protected under the fundamental freedoms of speech and expression
unless there was incitement to violence.

However, there have been instances where common citizens have faced dire consequences for voicing their
opinions. Thousands of farmers and fisherman in Tamil Nadu were questioned by the police for protesting
against the construction of a nuclear plant citing environmental concerns. On many occasions, authorities,
instead of defending the constitutional right to freedom of expression have complied with the demands to
block the screening of films, deletion of cartoons from textbooks and bans of books just because they were
offended.

Democracy should not only tolerate criticism but should also encourage it. Which results in better policies
and better government functioning. Therefore, we propose the following changes to the colonial sedition
law:

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 i) Protection of citizens booked under sedition law from abuse and human rights violations
ii) Failure by the accuser to provide substantial evidence within the specified time frame should
result in the accuser(s) being charged.
iii) Compensation under defamation should be provided to the acquitted person which should be
paid by the accuser(s)

Current Gap #2: “Decency and Morality” clause in Article 19

End goal
To protect citizens against institutions exploiting the current “Decency and Morality” clause to limit their
freedom of speech

Underlying Principles
Every citizen has a right to express his opinion, and it is not up to the government or large institutions to
judge whether it is indecent or immoral. The law should take a firm stance as to what is indecent or
immoral, so as to make it transparent as to what is legal and what is not.

Recommendation
The clause “Decency and morality” in Article 19(2), is very difficult to judge, as there is no fixed standard is
laid down till now as to what is moral and decent. Sections 292 to 294 of the Indian Penal Code provide
instances of restrictions on the freedom of speech and expression in the interest of decency or morality.
These sections prohibit the sale or distribution or exhibition of obscene words, etc. in public places.
However, the standard of morality varies from time to time and from place to place and, at best, can only be
speculative. To be accused under this head, the “intention” and “result” of the acts of the accused are
crucial.

This weakens Article 19(2) as it leaves it open to interpretation, leading to a lot of misplaced litigation and
laws. This clause leaves a lot of scope for the government and other powerful entities to indulge in moral
policing, and enforce its own brand of morality on the nation. The most recent example was the ban on 857
pornographic websites in August 2015. After a huge outcry, the government had to hastily withdraw the
ban. This shows how fragile the current law is, and is open to interpretation on multiple levels.

The clause should follow certain standards with regard to the ‘intention’ and ‘results’ of a person’s actions.

If we were to clearly define the term, we would limit “decency and morality” to the following:
i) Speech inside the privacy of one’s home should not be included in this clause, as there is no
plausible result of his action on the public.
ii) If participants have expressed mutual consent, and if there is no tangible influence on the public,
then this clause should not be applicable.
iii) Archaic moral standards should not be. Taboo topics like sex, homosexuality should be allowed
to be publicly discussed and debated.
iv) To dissuade misuse of the law, failure by the accuser to provide substantial evidence within the
specified time frame should result in the accuser(s) being penalized.

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Current Gap #3: Freedom of Media in India

End Goals
Restricting the media’s freedom of speech, only to an extent that ensures that the media is held accountable
to its actions.

Underlying principles
To ensure that the ordinary citizen actually gets the right to free information. The freedom of speech carries
with it the right of a citizen to gather information and to exchange thought and expression—the fundamental
principle of effective democracy. Such a right cannot be denied to them for commercial reasons.

Recommendation
Media is the primary source of information and helps shapes views of citizens. Article 19 (1) (g) covers the
right of a person engaged in the media business. However, Article 19(1) (a) also covers the right of the
general public to freedom of speech and expression. Therefore, often confusion regarding the classification
of the news media arises. Is it a 'business' under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution of India, or an activity
deserving protection under Article 19(1)(a) as a right to freedom of speech and expression? Thus media
enjoys a dual protection, which gives it a free reign.

We recommend that:
i) A law protecting against “Invasion of privacy” by the media should be established so as to
establish boundaries to the media
ii) Propagation of news without substantial evidence/court order should result in penalties to the
media house
iii) Media houses should come under the Right to information act so that regulation of the industry
is effective and an independent body reporting to the judiciary to regulate the industry should be
established.

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Appendix 1: Avantika’s and Girish’s values

Avantika
Avantika initially worked in corporate, but transitioned to a Non-profit which shows her commitment to society.
She later transitioned to a startup to do what she is passionate about and in a way that her time is devoted to her
family. This shows that Family is of fundamental importance to her and maintaining a healthy work/life
balance is quintessential to her living.

Girish
In spite of having a family business, Girish decided to take up a job and has worked in a variety of top companies.
That indicates an attitude of self-reliance and independence. Girish values self-development and is one who
constantly strives to improve himself, rather than being settled in a comfort zone. He would be against
complacency or comfort. Optimism is one of Girish’s core values; he has a positive world view and likes to see the
good in people.

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Appendix 2: Pyramid

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 Sample group report that got low marks
Topic: Recommendations to hypothetical governmental think tank on free speech laws

“Freedom of Speech”, a phrase that we hear so often and with such passion day in and day out, but to actually
define and contain it within any measurable boundary is very difficult. In an ideal world where everyone wins, this
battle of defining freedom of speech will have a few on the other side. Although most of the people share a
common bigger picture the means of achieving the same is quite different for everyone. In the following write up
we plan to express our clear-cut discrete views, keeping them limited to the current Indian perspective.

The current state of affairs in our country is very dynamic. There is a lot of change that all of us are a part of. The
changes are through all the relevant aspects of the society: political, social, economic, demographic and all these
aspects are intertwined i.e. have a direct or indirect co-relation with each other. The reason of expressing this fact
is that “Freedom of Speech” is one of the central topics of constant discussion, majorly on the social front but has
relevant connection with shaping of the social structure. As mentioned earlier the underlying result that the
governing body has in mind is along the same lines as with most of the people of the country which is for the
country and the people to be economically and socially better off. The question here is how is FOS (Freedom of
Speech), playing a role in all this. FOS is the liberty that is both perceived and practiced by the people. It is a social
norm that one enjoys to express their views and opinions without fear. In an ideal world where people are
intrinsically compassionate and tolerant, there should be no reason to have discussions on deciding the boundaries
for this, but unfortunately we have not yet reached that ideal stature. Especially in a country like ours where the
beauty lies in the unity of diversity such rights become very sensitive.
We believe in the vision of living in the Indian society of absolute freedom of all kinds, including speech. However,
we understand that from a governing point of view this will be difficult to bring on all of a sudden. As stated earlier
the diverse mix that we have needs to be catered to and made sure that larger issues are not raised in order to
pursue the ideal structure. The change has to be brought in gradually, but has to be definitely brought in. To be
more candid in our views, it will be right to put that sensitive topics like these are more than often used as mere
means of fulfilling political agendas. The task of achieving absolute freedom over years is difficult but not
impossible.

The underlying principle that we have to support this absolute freedom is the fact that intrinsically everyone has a
common end goal. It is with such freedom that we can expect our society mature and grow and possess rich
literary works amongst various forms of social art. It is the aspiration of having a country where one is sensitive
enough to understand and freely choose not to hurt or hate others, rather than a law forcing one not to. Now by
the sound of it, it looks right in having a law not to hurt someone else but in the process we fail to draw a line
between being hurtful and expressing a genuine opinion, of course we take away the beauty of choice. For e.g. we
have recently witnessed huge discussions and debates on the homosexual rights in the country. Banning ones
sexual preference is an outright shame to a progressive country like ours. It is an act involving two consenting
adults, keeping to themselves, no one what so ever should have a right to forcefully stop them from exercising
their fundamental human rights where they are not in any relation to any one else. Of course people can have
their opinion on the matter, which they can practice to try and convince anyone they want to but absolutely
cannot force anything on anyone. There are numerous examples like these that violate basic human principles,
which we witness currently in our country. Also, we cannot outright reject the opinion of many and grant an
absolute freedom of expression that will bring more chaos than harmony.

To counter the above we can only think of a recommendation to let the change go through a transition period.
First we have to establish that this change is absolutely needed for a better, stronger and prosperous society. It can
be brought in by dividing the issues in different buckets as per the urgency of the matter. For e.g. an issue like gay
rights and literary freedom goes in the maximum priority bucket. These changes are to be introduced right away,
even of it means upsetting a few. We say this as the few who would be upset by this will not be directly effected by
21
this, it is just their strong-headed ideas and ego that will take a thrash. The other bucket is of issues that can be put
in to be brought in over time. Such as the issues we witnessed where in Maharashtra, the police and some political
workers harassed couples in the name of decency. Issues like these have to be dealt with making people realize
that most of these are usually only cheap political thrills and have no value to it. The third and the final bucket is
when we go for absolute freedom. This has to be given time and sensitivity training.
This entire transition has to be smoothly paced out to ensure that we do not land up in unwanted agitation and
unrest by upsetting anyone. Stressing on the point of diversity again, it is very easy in our country to unknowingly
cross the realm of various sensitivities we have from religious, to ethnic, to the language people speak. It is the
prerogative of the government, first to whole-heartedly agree and put forth an honest effort in this regard.
Having said all that there have to be a clear cut restriction on misuse of the freedom for example trade secrets,
pornography, sovereignty of the country, international affairs which may directly have a negative effect on society.
This can again be an area of confusion, where one decides what is a negative effect. That discussion needs to be
laid out in a much broader way, but to just put our thoughts in place, we sincerely believe any statement or
expression falling in the realm of lies and is beyond mere opinion can be considered in the restricted zone.
This discussion is too wide to contain in a brief report but there has to be an individual start somewhere. Hoping to
see the progress we all aim for.

22
Appendix 1:
With deep roots in law, human development and her experience in a non-profit organization, Avantika has seen all
facets of the working environment: right from a corporate life at Kelly, Drye and Warren LLP to an NGO, Akanksha.
Also, given her passion and her close connection to art- a form of expression, she is most likely to value absolute
freedom of expression, especially, freedom of speech. She might believe that accountability of this freedom is
something that the society develops intrinsically and hence, requires no intervention by law. Hence she would ask
questions such as:
- Why let government decide the extent of expression an individual of this country can have? What has
history witnessed on this front?
- India is a developing country, and to address its progressive nature, one needs to re-look at the current
restrictions on the freedom of speech.
- By no means, are we against values, however, the market forces will strike its own equilibrium of intrinsic
responsibility and accountability of voice.
Having interacted with Girish on a one on one through the two terms, and given his background, he is most likely
to believe in Freedom of Speech as long as there is a strong sense of social responsibility and accountability.
Hence, he will believe that Indian law would have to enforce these priorities on the people of India.
Hence he will have questions such as:
- Yes, freedom of speech is a must. But at what cost?
- Is India ready for absolute freedom of speech? Is your audience ready to consume freedom of media and
information?
- Revisiting restrictions would be a good idea. But what is the problem with the status quo?

23
Appendix 2:

Freedom of
Speech

What went Yes, but at what cost?

wrong?
How?
Avoid clashes with
Will help India
other basic rights/
Progress
Democracy/ Religion

Rich
Literature
History has witnessed
the negative effects Major
of "Voice without Population is Restrictions
Accountability” Clashes and fights youth will not be
not good misused

24
 Crucial conversations

Sharing vs Judgement & Advice

Sharing is a way of communicating your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, points of views, information, etc.

The point of using the ‘sharing’ technique is to increase the chances that you will be perceived as
confident, honest, grounded, and open and reduce the chances that you will come across as arrogant or
abrasive on the one hand or tentative and sugar coated on the other.

The critical distinction in sharing is that the speaker ‘owns’ their own thoughts and experience. They
are not embarrassed for thinking or feeling what they do, nor do they imply that it is the only way to see
things and there are no other legitimate perspectives.

Usually sharing uses the words ‘I’ or ‘my’ or ‘me’, etc.

Examples of ‘sharing’
I notice, I observe
I conclude, I think
I feel, the impact on me, etc.

Judgement is when someone assume assumes that their subjective experience of something is the way
everyone sees it or the way everyone should see it. When someone reaches a judgement they are not
very open to seeing things from other perspectives. The advantage of judgement is that can lead to
decisiveness and action. The disadvantage is that it can come across as closed, arrogant, or judgemental.

Often judgement laden phrases use words like ‘You are’ or ‘it is’ or ‘it will’ or ‘it won’t’

Advice is usually any statement which includes ‘you should’ or ‘you shouldn’t’. Again it implies that
there is one right way to do something and the speaker knows what that right way is and the listener
doesn’t.

Advice is effective when both the following conditions are fulfilled:

1. the speaker actually does know more than the listener

2. when the listener acknowledges that the speaker has more knowledge.

If the above conditions are not fulfilled, then the advice given may come across as condescending or
arrogant.

Examples of Judgement vs. Feedback:

Judgement: That is a stupid idea

Sharing: I don’t think that idea will work because…

Judgement: You are a terrible listener

Sharing: I feel like you’re not listening to me
25
 Judgement: You don’t spend any time with me
Sharing: I would like to spend more time with you

Judgement: That was a great performance (note: judgement can be positive or negative)
Sharing: I really enjoyed your performance

Judgement: That project is going to fail

Sharing: My concern is that the clients will reject this initiative because…

Another advantage of sharing is that you can express yourself more directly and confidently because
your focus is on honesty rather than being right. If you are concerned about whether what you are
saying is right or wrong, you can second guess yourself and wonder if you should speak. But if you
focus on honestly sharing what you think and feel, you can’t be wrong because you’re not saying how
the world is, but what you’re thinking and feeling… and you can’t be wrong about that.

So for example if you make the judgemental statement ‘That project is going to fail’, you could be
proved right or wrong because you’re stating it as if that’s a fact. But if you share ‘My concern is that
the clients will reject this initiative because…’ you CAN’T be wrong because that IS your concern and
you’re simply sharing what your concern is. You can only be honest or dishonest about what you think
and feel.

Examples of Advice vs. Sharing

Advice: You should do an MBA

Sharing: I think that an MBA would be the best option for you

Advice: You shouldn’t tell your boss that you’re applying for an MBA
Sharing: I wouldn’t tell my boss that I was applying for an MBA if I were you

Sharing doesn’t presume that you have the right answer and know better than the listener like advice
does. Sharing communicates your perspective on an issue but leaves the choice for the listener to make. It
is less prescriptive.

Feedback

Feedback is a specific form of Sharing. Sharing communicates your perspective and Feedback
communicates your perspective specifically related to what you think is working or not working from a
point of view of effectiveness of somebody or something.

Example of sharing: ‘I am feeling happy’

Example of feedback: ‘I feel your presentation would have been better if it had been shorter’

The two important points to note about feedback are:

1. Feedback is neither positive, nor negative. It is neutral information

2. Feedback doesn’t aim to label a person or thing. It is information regarding its effectiveness or
ineffectiveness in achieving its targeted results (usually about actions).

26
‘Your zip is open’ is an example of neutral information. The listener could get angry or embarrassed or
laugh, but the information itself is neutral. Even ‘I don’t like your shirt’ is neutral information. The
listener could get angry or embarrassed or laugh or ignore it but it is just information about how someone
else experiences the shirt. In itself it is neither good news or bad news. It could be labelled by the listener
as good news (my friend is telling me what would look good on me) or bad news (he is trying to destroy
my confidence) based on their belief systems but the information is neutral, for them to decide what to do
with.

If you think of feedback as positive or negative, then you will feel comfortable giving positive feedback
but shy away from giving what you have decided is negative feedback. Similarly, you may enjoy getting
what you call positive feedback but get angry at getting what you call negative feedback.

Our point of view is that it is most productive to simply see feedback as neutral information that the
listener can use to make decisions based on their priorities and goals. That will help us listen to feedback
with greater openness and also to give it with less trepidation.

Listening (interpretations)

Another skill of communication is how to translate what other people are saying into neutral information
that can be used for decision making. Other people may often use judgement and advice or even abuse but
that doesn’t mean we can’t use the neutral information embedded in it to create value for ourselves.

Examples of effective and ineffective interpretations

Boss: ‘This is the crappiest report I’ve ever seen. What are you? Stupid?’

Effective interpretation: ‘This report does not meet my expectations’

Effective response: ‘What needs to be changed?

Boss: ‘How many times do I have to explain before you get it?’

Effective interpretation: ‘I feel like I’ve explained the requirements before and you
didn’t listen and I’m feeling very frustrated about that’

Effective response: ‘I’m sorry boss, I’ll write it down this time and make sure I get
it corrected and back to you in the next 45 minutes’

Boss: ‘Fine, but please don’t goof up this time’

Effective interpretation: ‘I’ll forgive you if you correct it in 45 minutes’

Effective response: ‘I’ll make sure it’s exactly what you’re looking for this time’

Keeping your composure in the face of such abusive behavior is not easy and we are not recommending
you put up with it in the long term of course, but re-interpreting what people are saying in such a way that
you can hear the underlying neutral information hidden in the communication allows you to respond with
a depth and maturity to situations that other people would not be able to handle. It is a higher order
27
leadership skill that will allow you to bring focused effectiveness to your professional (and personal life)
and create a high degree of credibility and respect.

The question that a great communicator asks himself or herself (unconsciously once the skill has been
internalized) is ‘what is the most useful way to interpret this communication that would allow me to build
relationships and make good decisions to produce the results I’m looking to achieve’).

Questions

Asking great questions is one of the most important skills for a senior executive. The information that a
CEO receives comes through many layers of hierarchy and the CEO is often removed from ground level
data and shop floor realities. He or she will need to therefore ask questions that cut to key issues and lay
bare problems and generate solutions that are not apparent to others with more data.

Obama does not have more knowledge than his generals with respect to military strategy or a better grasp
of economics than his economic advisors. His ability to make good policy decisions that he will ultimately
be held responsible for depends on his skill in asking his advisors the right questions.

There are different types of questions:

Open questions
These are questions that could have a very wide range of possible answers. For example, ‘What do
we need to do to improve sales?’ or ‘Tell me a little about yourself’. Open ended questions are
useful in exploring issues and options at the beginning of a conversation. Often time pressed
managers rush into trying to find solutions without asking a sufficient number of open ended
questions to understand the situation comprehensively enough.

Closed ended questions

These are questions with a very narrow range of possible answers. For example, ‘How old are
you?’ or ‘How much will the project cost’ or What is the earliest date that you can commit to
completing this by?’. Closed ended questions are useful for getting specific information during the
conversation and also towards the end of a conversation when you want to move towards next
action steps and clear unambiguous agreements.

Leading questions
These are questions where the asker has already decided what the answer is that the listener should
give. It can be useful as a teaching tool to encourage students to reach a conclusion for themselves
but can be manipulative and a dominating power strategy. For example, ‘Don’t you think this is
impractical?’ really means ‘I don’t think this will work’ and ‘Do you think that your recent
performance is really up to the mark’ really means ‘I am not satisfied with your recent work’.

Direct communication is often seen as far more transparent and honest rather than manipulative
leading questions but people stay away from direct communication because they haven’t learnt the
art of giving feedback. Instead of giving feedback they often give judgement or advice and then
when that doesn’t work, they conclude feedback doesn’t work (not realizing that they weren’t
actually giving feedback) and then they end up trying leading questions instead, which are
probably even worse than judgement/ advice because in addition to coming across as
condescending, it can seem dishonest as well.
28
 Why questions
Why questions can be useful in getting to the root cause of a problem. However, we need to be
careful that we don’t overuse it, especially with more sensitive people because they can be
experienced by some as ‘grilling’. For example, ‘Why is the project behind schedule?’ or ‘Why
didn’t you call me when the client sent that email to you?’ may be a neutral request for information
that will help you understand a situation more fully but the listener may feel attacked and start
coming up with excuses. Why questions are often directed at the past, the problem, and can sound
accusing. Often it is advisable to use ‘What, How, Who, When, Where’ questions.

What, How, Who, When, Where questions

These questions, unlike Why questions, are usually focused on the future, the solution, and have a
less accusatory feel. For example, ‘What do you think is the best way forward?’ or ‘How can we
ensure that this doesn’t happen again? Or ‘Who is the best person to assign the task to?’ or ‘When
will the project be completed’, etc. are questions that are often perceived as less threatening than
Why questions and are also more forward moving.

The advantages of asking questions rather than simply giving an information or instruction download are:

1. When people come up with their own solutions they are more committed to them and take more
ownership for ensuring their successful implementation than when they are just ‘following orders’
2. People learn to think for themselves and that creates a higher level of capability in the team
3. New ideas may emerge that fully leverage the skills of the team
4. Questions are a great way to get more information and understand the situation better. Quite often
people lower down in the organization have a better understanding of ground level realities and
questions allow this wisdom to seep up to the top of the organization.

The biggest short term disadvantage of asking a number of questions compared to downloading
information is that it takes a longer time initially. However, as the benefits above accrue, the team
becomes more efficient and capable and the investment in time pays off.

Learning how to ask good questions is a critical skill that takes managers from being micro-managers to
true leaders.

Requests

A leader is someone who inspires followers towards a mission. A coach is someone who develops the
capability of a person. A manager is someone who organizes resources to achieve organizational result
(often, in a specific role, a person may need to be all three at different times).

The key skills of a manager are to make clear requests of others, get unambiguous commitments and hold
people accountable to those commitments.

The format of a request is ‘Would you please do X for me by time Y?’

If someone says ‘yes’, then they have now given a commitment.

Feedback is different from a request in that feedback is for the receiver’s benefit while a request is for the
29
maker’s benefit. The other difference is that people are under no obligation to act on feedback. If I give
feedback to someone ‘I don’t like your shirt’, there are under no obligation to change their shirt. It is
completely up to them what they do with that information. However, if I make a request ‘Would you
please wear formal clothes for her wedding reception?’ and the other person says ‘yes’, now they have an
obligation to do so because they have made a commitment.

Sometimes managers get upset and say things like ‘I have given the person the feedback so many times
and they keep doing the same thing’. Well they don’t have to do anything on receiving feedback. If you
actually want someone to do something different then you need to make an explicit request and get a
commitment.

There are seven elements to a complete request:

1. Explicit request rather than an unspoken expectation

Sometimes we expect people to behave in certain ways and when they do not meet our
expectations in this regard we get angry as if they have broken a commitment, but they
haven’t because we never made the explicit request. The usual reason that we don’t make an
explicit request is because we think ‘I shouldn’t have to tell them this, they should already
know’ or we’re afraid of rejection or because we think it’ll come across as too picky or pushy.
But then we are setting ourselves up for failure. Great managers convert unspoken
expectations into explicit agreements so that everyone is on the same page.

Example: ‘Guys, could you make sure you’re there by 9am at the latest please? I’d like to
start the meeting on time because we have a lot to get covered before our client arrives for
lunch’.

2. Committed listener rather than a distracted listener

In order for the request to be effective we need to make sure that the target has actually
received the message. If we send an email and we don’t get a confirmation, we need to call up
and check if they’ve received it (for important messages only), otherwise our assumption that
they have might create a breakdown.

Similarly, in verbal communications if people have objections or problems that we have not
addressed then they may not be fully listening to us when we are asking them to do
something. We need to ensure we have their full attention before making a request.

3. Context
Explaining why you need something means that an agreement is far more likely to be
honoured than a simple instruction.

Example: ‘Can you send me the ppt by Wednesday end of day please? I have a meeting with
the CEO on Thursday morning and I’d like to review it on Wednesday before I present it to
him.’ is much more likely to be effective than ‘Please send the ppt to me by Wednesday, end
of day’.

4. Clear conditions of satisfaction vs. ambiguous request

If the request is not clear, then the ambiguity means that people are likely to argue about
whether the request was met or not and the debate will make it harder to hold people
30
 accountable.

Example: ‘Can you send me the comparison of last year’s costs to this year’s costs. If there
are any costs that have gone up by more than 30% or increased by more than Rs 1 Crore,
could you provide a note on why. Thanks’ is much better than ‘Can you send me the cost
comparisons please. Thanks’

5. Specific time rather than ASAP

The structure of a request includes a deadline. If there is no time element, it is not a request
by definition because at the other person can always say ‘I was just about to do it’ and there
would be no point in time where they had actually broken a commitment. So a request
without a deadline is empty and you cannot hold anyone accountable to it. A clear deadline
also allows the other person to manage their time more effectively given their other
commitments, rather than constantly wondering when you’re going to get angry at the fact
that your ‘request’ has not yet been honoured.

Example: ‘Could you please send me the report by Wednesday 5pm please?’ is much better
than ‘Can you please send me the report ASAP?’

6. Check understanding / competence

Sometimes people will say yes to a request even if they haven’t understood what you want
from them. If a manager ever finds himself or herself saying ‘This was not what I expected’,
then the problem is not with the person who did not deliver. The problem is that the manager
had not checked whether the other person had understood the requirements and that is the sign
of a mediocre manager.

The best way to check understanding/ competence is to ask a series of questions about how
the person will handle the task that will provide some reassurance that they have understood
it. In some cases explicitly asking them to repeat back what they have understood may be the
easiest mechanism to ensure they have understood. Sometimes this can seem like you’re
insulting the other person’s intelligence so you can ‘declare yourself a beginner’

Example: ‘Could you repeat back once how you’re going to handle this please? I’m sorry to
sound so anal about it, but this is my first project with this client and I’m a little nervous so I
want to make extra sure that nothing goes wrong’.

By declaring yourself a beginner, you reduce the chances that they think you’re questioning
their ability or intelligence.

7. Option of declining request rather than threatening/ begging

If you force someone to say ‘yes’ to a request you may have extracted a ‘yes’ but that doesn’t
mean they have given you a commitment. They will simply say ‘yes’ and then fail to deliver.
If you can’t hear a ‘no’ then you can never rely on a ‘yes’ because… well what else could
they have said if you weren’t willing to hear a no?

Sometimes we can force a person to say ‘yes’ using threats or we can force a person into
saying ‘yes’ by pleading and begging, but in either case, the ‘yes’ was extracted under
compulsion and it’s not a commitment.
31
 If the person is not willing to give a free ‘yes’ then you, need to find a solution that works for
both parties if you are to get a genuine commitment

Example: ‘I know you have a lot on your plate and this is quite a stretch that I’ve asked of
you, what do you think is the probability that you won’t be able to finish by the deadline and
what can I do to help you if it’s too hard?’ is usually (though not always) better than ‘I want
this by the deadline and I don’t want to hear any excuses about why it can’t happen so don’t
even try them’.

In some exceptional cases, you may want to be uncompromising, if you’re convinced that
they actually can achieve the target and are just building in buffers but beware of using this as
a regular tactic. It’s better to figure out what is getting in the way of open and honest
communication and to handle the trust issues that are at the bottom of the hedging on their
part. A lot of energy, friction, and wasted time can go into this game of you trying to see
through their fake excuses and they coming up with fake excuses. Far better to handle the
underlying trust deficit.

Commitments are not usually broken on non-deliverance of an agreement. They are usually compromised
in the request conversation upfront because one of the seven elements were missing. We only get to find
out that they were compromised on non-deliverance. Any time somebody breaks a commitment to you,
you would probably need to revisit the initial conversation and figure out which of the seven elements
you missed out on.

Most of us will probably get 5 to 6 elements of a complete request right (not every element is required in
every single request) but each of us is probably a little weak on one or two of them. To get a sense of
which one you might miss out on, a good exercise would be to go through your email sent box and look
at your last 10-15 mails and see which elements you have covered and which ones you have missed. By
consciously making sure that you include the missing element in your future requests you are likely to
sharpen up your managerial effectiveness considerably.

How to say ‘No’

“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful
people say no to almost everything.”

Warren Buffet

Average managers automatically say ‘yes’ to every request that comes their way because they are afraid if
they say ‘no’ then people will think they are lazy, overwhelmed, incapable, inconsiderate, not
collaborative, etc. But in saying ‘yes’ to all the requests they get diverted from focusing on the most
important critical factors and get sucked towards mediocrity.

Think of this example…. A client asks you to complete an assignment by Wednesday. You know it will
take till Thursday but in trying to please your client you end up saying ‘yes’. But you actually only deliver
the work by Thursday. Now the client is upset because you broke a commitment and figures that since you
deliver the work one day late, if they want it by Wednesday they should actually ask for it to be delivered
on Tuesday. Your confidence is low because you broke your commitment and you’re on the back foot so
32
to try and make up you say ‘yes’ again under pressure. Again, you break your commitment and deliver on
Thursday. Your client is even more upset and figure that since you gave the work two days after you had
committed, in order for them to get the work on Wednesday they need to ask you to deliver on Monday.
They start building in buffers because they lose their trust in you, you start losing confidence in yourself
and feel stressed out, you start setting unrealistic targets for your subordinates and will not listen to their
protests leading to them thinking you’re a task master and attrition rises. You end up doing more work
yourself and spending later hours at work putting your spouse, kids, health and hobbies on the backburner,
etc, etc.

All because you didn’t know how to say ‘no’.

Saying ‘no’ is a critical skill for a great manager and there is a best practice technique from the book by
Harvard Business Professor William Ury in his book ‘The power of a positive no’.

The technique can be summarized as the Yes – No – Yes technique

Yes
Anytime you say no to something you are also saying yes to something else. The first step is being
clear what you are saying yes to. For example, if it’s your mother’s birthday part on Saturday and
your client asks you to work on the weekend, when you say no, you’ve got to be clear on what
you’re saying yes to that is more important – letting your mother know that you care about her and
appreciate everything she’s done for you. If you’re not clear on this then you will sound apologetic
and defensive instead of clear and assertive.

No
When you do say no, it needs to be said unambiguously. ‘Let’s see’ or ‘I’ll try’ or ‘I’ll do my best’
is going to lead to expectations being set. You may not have said yes explicitly, but the listener
will hear what is convenient for them to hear and try to hold you accountable to that. You will
spend a lot of time trying to explain that you never really made a real commitment. Everybody will
be upset.

Yes
The final yes is where the genius of the model comes in. You say no the initial request but you say
yes to what you’re actually willing to do.

Examples of Yes-No-Yes

o ‘I can’t come in on Saturday because it’s my mother’s birthday but how about I come in on
Monday morning 8am and have the report to you by 12pm? Does that work for you?’

o ‘I can’t come in on Saturday because it’s my mother’s birthday but how about I get Anil to
send you the report directly. I’ll have a quick conversation with him to just check it’s in the
right overall area and then I’ll give you the final version on Monday by the end of day’
Does that work for you?’

o ‘I can’t come in on Saturday because it’s my mother’s birthday but how about I give you a
summary of the main points on Friday that you can discuss in your Sunday meeting and I’ll
give you the full report on Monday by the end of the day? Does that work for you?’
33
What happens when you apply the Yes-No-Yes technique is that you communicate clarity of
priorities that people respect and you also show that you are willing to be co-operative and flexible
to find a solution that works with all parties. By consistently practicing this technique, you can
soon learn to say no in an effective way that builds respect and trust in the relationship and allows
you to work on your most important priorities.

There is another technique of saying no and it is called the Yes-But technique.

Example of Yes-But technique:

Boss: ‘I need that project delivered one month early’
Manager: ‘Sure boss. But I’ll need two more men transferred to the project’

Effectively the manager presents his boss with a choice:

You can:
a) not provide me the men and have the project on original schedule
b) provide me two men and have the project delivered one-month forward
c) which of these two options would you prefer?

The manager has said No to the boss’ original request but it sounds like a Yes.

Sometimes of course you just need to be willing to say No. There may be short term prices but in
the long term your credibility and performance and career depends on your willingness to pay
those short term prices.

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Managing agreements

If you make a request and someone says yes, then they have now given you a commitment (or vice versa).

You will not be able to keep all your commitments because if you deliver on all your commitments people
will keep giving you harder targets until at some point you break a commitment. The only person who
consistently delivers on every single commitment is someone who plays safe with the commitments they
make, which may work in the short term, but in the short term can lead to mediocrity. Not only that but
sometimes unexpected events will happen that make it impossible to keep your commitments. Sometimes
you will need to break commitments consciously in order to focus on something else that has now taken a
greater priority (for example missing a meeting if you find out that your father has been admitted to
hospital after an accident).

Keeping all your commitments is going to be impossible however what great managers and their teams do
extremely well is they ‘manage their agreements’.

Managing your agreements means the following:

1. If you realize that the request being made is impossible to honour, instead of saying ‘yes’

a. Say ‘no’ using the Yes-No-Yes technique

b. Negotiate using win-win principles to find a solution that works for both parties
c. Tell them you’ll need to check if it’s possible and definitely give them a time when you
will get back to them.

35
 2. If you realize that you are going to break an agreement you have made
a. Inform the other party immediately
b. Renegotiate or cancel the deadline or agreement
c. Make amends that you feel are appropriate
d. Move on and don’t feel guilty if you’ve done the above steps.
e. If someone tries to make you feel guilty, even after you’ve done the above steps, then
that is manipulative and you need to be stand your ground firmly rather than keep
apologizing forever and get taken advantage of.

Holding someone accountable for broken commitments

Often managers don’t have a clear definition of what it actually means to ‘hold someone accountable’.
They think it means ‘shouting’ at someone or firing them or making them feel guilty or uncomfortable or
giving them a low rating.

This is our definition of holding someone accountable:

1. Check if you actually have a broken commitment. There may be a misunderstanding

2. Understand why the commitment was broken
3. Understand why the fact that commitment was going to be broken was not communicated to
you in time
4. If the answers to 1-3 are reasonable, simply create a new agreement
5. If the answers to 1-3 are not reasonable, point out that a commitment was broken and explain
the consequences it has had. Make a request for reparations if required.
6. Make a new request and have a deeper discussion to ensure that between the two of you, you
have found a solution that gives you both confidence that the factors that prevented the
previous agreement from being kept have been addressed and that the next one will be met.
7. If you do not get the assurance you are looking for and breaking commitments without due
care occurs repeatedly even after these conversations, it means you cannot rely on them. Our
recommendation in this case would be to end the relationship. It may have a short term impact
but in the long term it’s faster and more efficient working with people you can trust. Based on
their commitment to you, you are giving your word to other people and putting your long term
credibility in jeopardy.

Note: All these skills are as relevant in the areas of personal relationships as they are in professional ones.

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 The Ten Commandments of Emails
1. Thou shalt not overuse emails
2. Thou shalt check if other mails have been sent by a sender before replying
3. Thou shalt use the subject field intelligently
4. Thou shalt spell names correctly
5. Thou shalt reply fast and keep it crisp
6. Thou shalt highlight the action required
7. Thou shalt structure your emails professionally
8. Thou shalt proof read (3As)
9. Thou shalt add the address last
10. Thou shalt check if your email reached the recipient (for important emails)

1. Thou shalt not overuse emails

Don’t use email where other types of communication are more effective. Specific situations to
consider:

Complex discussions required:

Emails are better for arranging a meeting or conference call than trying to force a decision over
email.

Confidential conversations:
If any discussion is likely to be better kept confidential, it is far better to have a verbal conversation
than discuss it over email.

Example: “Hey Amar, the auditors called and it looks like they found the FG account. We
need to figure out what our story is”

Of course we’re hoping that ISB graduates will not be involved in nefarious creative accounting
activities!!! But consider how you would feel if the email you’re about to send somehow became
public or reached certain individuals that you’d rather it not. Either have the conversation in person
or write down in email only those things you’d be comfortable with it they became public.

Emotionally tense:
If the conversation you’re about to have is an emotionally difficult one (sacking, holding someone
accountable, any conversation involving anger, hurt, blame, etc.) ask yourself if it would be better
to have the conversation verbally. A long ranting emotional mail very rarely convinces anyone
you’re right. It more often communicates you’ve lost it.

Make your email short. Take a coffee break and a few hours away from it. Read it again after a
break or best of all, get a friend to give you feedback.

‘Insurance’
If you’re cc’ing your recipient’s boss in the mail to ensure that they do their work, then do it very,
very consciously.

It is an indication that your underlying relation with the recipient is not working and that’s where
37
 you’d be better off directing your effort rather than a not to subtle effort at manipulative
intimidation. It’s better to send an email directly to the boss and cc the recipient if you’ve decided
to get the boss involved.

Otherwise build the relationship with the recipient and get the work done through good old
influencing and charm rather than threats. Cc as a motivational strategy may work in the very short
term. In the long term they’re toxic to relationships, credibility, and ultimately results.

Proof
Don’t use emails as ‘proof’ that someone else has committed something or that you made a request
of someone. This CYA (‘cover your arse’ technique) is just annoying and bureaucratic. If you want
to keep a reminder of when someone said what, keep a note of it in your diary or on a project note
or even an email to yourself. “Could you send me an email please?” is just a waste of the other
person’s time, documenting stuff you’ve already agreed after a conversation has already happened.

Only use emails for ‘proof’ if you’re actually actively building a case for something.

2. Thou shalt check if other emails have been sent by a sender before replying

Sometimes you reply to an email so quickly, you don’t realize till you go back to your inbox that the
sender has sent further emails after the mail that you replied to.

This creates a mess sometimes of multiple mails replying to the same initial mail.

Better to just take a second and see if the mail you’re replying to is the most recent one from the sender
in your inbox.

3. Thou shalt use the subject field intelligently

A cardinal sin of emails is leaving the ‘subject’ field blank. It’s an arrogant message you send when
you assume that the recipient’s biggest reason for opening the email is that it’s from you.

The subject field gives a very clear idea of what the email is about and leaves it to the recipient to
decide its importance.

Example: ‘Can we change today’s call to Friday 2pm?’ is far better than ‘Sorry’.

Also, ideally you don’t want to put in a subject line that is ‘Important! Data for collation’. It may be
important to you, let the recipient decide whether it is important for them. You will make more friends
if you have a subject line ‘Halp! Need data for boss by Thursday. Pleeease!’

If you have two separate points that the recipient is likely to see as different projects, send two
different emails with individualized headings. This will help them categorize the mails in a way that
works for them.

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4. Thou shalt spell names correctly

The worst possible start to make to an email, especially to a client or someone you’re pitching to is to
spell their name wrong.

It shows carelessness, incompetence, and insensitivity even before you’ve started your message.

Don’t do it.

5. Thou shalt reply fast and keep it crisp

Snapchat CEO Even Spiegel tweeted some of the first emails he’d traded with Mark Zuckerberg before
turning down a reported $3 billion takeover offer. Most interesting from these is how short and fast
these introductory messages were.

Zuckerberg's first 46-word email came at 6:23 p.m.; Spiegel replied a half hour later with 19 words
(plus an emoticon). Zuckerberg replied again with 14 words just three hours later. Even though the
deal didn't come together in the end, there's a clear lesson: When something is important, reply fast

6. Thou shalt highlight the action required

Be clear on the outcome you want from the mail.

- Are you simply informing the recipient and need no revert?

- Do you want a reply?
- Do you want an action?
- Do you simply want to continue an open conversation?

It should be immediately clear to the reader what you need from him/her.

Ensure that you do not ‘bury’ your required outcome in dense text.

Example:
The board meeting has been preponed to Thursday. Apologies for the sudden stress this will put on
your deadlines!

Could you get 17 copies of the P&L, BS, and Cash flow printed out by tomorrow morning?

If it’s not, could you call me straight away please so we can figure out how we’ll handle it.

Thanks.

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7. Structure your emails professionally

Use the same guidelines that you would use for a consulting report to structure your emails (SCQR,
pyramid principle, MECE, etc.) Use the elements of a request to ensure the request is clear.

Use clear paragraphs. For most emails you really don’t want more than 3 paragraphs. Short and sweet.

If you are going to have a slightly long email, use bullet points to help your recipients comprehend it
more easily

Example:

‘We’re going to have a great offsite guys. Could you please ensure that you bring the following:

o Your presentations for your division’s annual plans

o Copies of your last 360 feedback
o Your Gallup team engagement scores
o Swimming costume, flashlights, and Odomos (it’s a surprise)

8. Thou shalt proofread (3As)

When you proof read your emails, look for the three As

- Action:
Is it immediately clear, almost on first glance of your email, what you need?

- Attitude:
What is your tone? Is it too curt, too demanding, too ‘blaming’, too informal, too formal? When
we write quick emails, the first thing we forget is the tone.

- Attachments:
Self-help Gurus may tell you that the way to happiness is to let go of all your attachments, but
doing so in the business world is a quick trip to looking silly. Check to see you’ve attached
your files before hitting that send button.

9. Thou shalt add the address last

To ensure that you don’t accidentally send a half written, ill prepared email before you’re ready…
make sure that you first write your email, proof read, and only then add the email addresses to the ‘To’
field.

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10. Thou shalt check if your email reached the recipient (for important emails)

For important and urgent emails, you may want to call up the intended recipient and check that
they’ve actually received the email.

Obviously, you don’t want to do this for every email because that would double your work. But for
critical communication where there is little margin for error, don’t take the chance.

Check the communication loop is complete.

Recommended (but optional) Homework

Go through your last 20 emails in your outbox and review them with someone in your study group to see
which of these 10 commandments you have kept and which ones you break.

Return the favour and do the same for them.

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 How to run meetings that
do not destroy souls
There are two kinds of meetings:

1. Those that lead to clarity, aligned decision making, and create value
2. Those that destroy souls and create untold misery

The following are platinum rules on the basis of which you can ensure that yours fall into the former
category.

1. Do not send a detailed agenda in advance or tell people to prepare extensively

2. Instead concentrate on making sure that participants can be fully present
3. Set a time for each agenda session and define the outcome to be reached in that time
4. Assign a person to chair the meeting who is not the team leader
5. Don’t beat around the bush
6. Include everyone occasionally
7. Seek to understand when results don’t happen and to find solutions rather than put pressure
8. End on time

Let’s look at each point in greater granularity:

1. Do not send a detailed agenda in advance or tell people to prepare extensively

This is the opposite to what almost every single article on running effective meetings says
so don’t take this recommendation at face value. Make your own mind up.

Our own experience has been that nobody EVER reads the meeting agenda before coming
to the meeting, nor do they do the pre-work, nor do they seem especially enlightened if they
do, nor is that valuable because hardly anyone has. The most common outcome is just that
the person who told everyone to come prepared loses their rag and rages at the
unprofessionalism of everyone else.

Instead, our recommendation would be to just give a crisp and concise explanation of why
you’re having the meeting and what you aim to achieve. Any pre-reading or pre-work
should not be more than 15mins.

Plan your session to take into account of the fact that people would come in with little
preparation and use the first ten minutes to explain your draft agenda and get inputs on what
others would like covered before finalizing the flow for the day.

2. Instead concentrate on making sure that participants can be fully present

The death blow to meetings is usually not lack of preparation but lack of engagement. The
biggest time waster is usually a meeting scheduled by the boss where all the team members
update him or her one by one on their progress while everyone else switches off. This is a
lazy alternative to scheduling separate one on one meetings with each participant and an
42
 unforgivable waste of the team’s time.

A good question for the team to agree on is how frequently and for how long should the
team meet. Usually there will be some initial surprise but once they agree on something that
works for everyone, a lot of resentment that is involved in team meetings dissipates.

An actual meeting is one where all team members contribute to all points on the agenda.
The Finance person should be asking questions and sharing perspectives when the
Marketing person is sharing, and vice versa.

To ensure that the team is paying attention to all the parts of the meeting and not just the
parts that they think are relevant to them, banning technology and distractions is a more
important step than forcing participants to do lots of preparation.

Example:
‘Team, we’re having our first meeting to discuss how we can build an employer
brand on campuses at 9:30am at Marriot, Ruby Room. Breakfast starts at 9am and I
can confirm there will be pancakes 

The objective is to share what other companies are doing on campuses, get your
inputs, and decide what we need to do to be in the top 20 most wanted employers on
campus in 2 years.

There is no preparation required but please bring your laptops. We will be doing
some breakout sessions with small groups and we might need the groups to do some
analysis on their laptops.

We will be confiscating phones during sessions and have a ‘shut laptop’ rule so
please let your stakeholders that you will be kidnapped for the day. We really want
to hear your views 

We will finish latest by 4:30pm (that’s a promise) so see you there 

3. Set a time for each agenda session and define the outcome to be reached in that time

At the beginning of the meeting, agree on the agenda items and time allocated (you should
present the agenda as you see it and then get inputs from other participants and adjust
accordingly if required. Give enough room in your meeting plan to allow for this flexibility.

There are three kinds of outcome for each agenda item – for information, for decision, for
discussion:

For information:
These are quick updates from certain members followed by questions by other team
mates on progress. This is just to ensure all team members know what others are
doing and where they are. Updates should not be more than 3mins per member.

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 For discussion:
These are brainstorming discussions that may or may not result in any decision or
output. For example, discussion on the progress of management trainees who have
been hired by the company and the feedback they have provided on the quality of
tutors. These should be tightly monitored with respect to time as they can meander.
If it looks like specific decisions need to be made or more detailed discussion is
required, these may need to be parked and covered in a more focused meeting.

For decision:
This is why people come to meetings. Agenda items should be stated in the form of
a question that needs to be answered by the end of the meeting. At the end of the
meeting the questions and answers are read out again. This provides clarity and
alignment to the team and provides a sense of completion to the discussion.

Example:
Agenda item: Should we hire a new CTO from outside or promote Arjun?
Decision: The CHRO will approach three executive search firms in the next
week to find an external candidate for the role of CTO. Arjun will report to
him but will be given a pay increase of 20% starting at the beginning of the
next calendar year’.

4. Assign a person to chair the meeting who is not the team leader

When the team leader chairs the meeting he or she can sometimes make decision too
unilaterally and this leaves the team feeling unheard and frustrated. When the team leader
plays a lighter role, letting someone else structure the discussion, the team moves from a
one-to-many conversation towards a many-to-many conversation that leads to genuine team
decisions.

The team leader may have veto but should use it very sparingly because it could dampen
the willingness of the team to contribute and ultimately buy into the decisions. The team
leader plays more of a strategic/ mentor role as he/she listens more and controls less.

The chair person’s role is to facilitate the meeting and make it flow as per the agenda. The
ideal personality should be someone who is impulsive but someone who is known for not
bearing a grudge. This sort of person gets impatient when time is wasted but at the same
time is not resented when he/she interrupts to get the conversation on track because he/she
is not seen as political.

There should be another person assigned to take minutes of the meeting, who is more
structured and conscientious in their approach.

5. Don’t beat around the bush

This is the hardest part of running good meeting and very few teams have the trust required
to do this.

Meetings should rarely last longer than 1.5hrs and anything above 2 hrs. usually indicates
44
 that either the team has not clearly defined the questions they want answers to with enough
precision or that they are beating around the bush.

Push people to be specific about people, divisions, problems, incidents rather than speak in
vague generalities.

Example:
‘Arun’s sales department forecasted 100 tonnes of sales last quarter and we only
sold 60% of that leading to high inventories. I’m not confident in the forecast your
team is making at the moment’

This is much, much better than:

‘I think one of the things we need to work on is communication between different
divisions. That’s very important’

In fact, if someone does speak in vague terms and you get the sense they are blaming
someone for something but not getting into specifics because the conversation could
become heated or uncomfortable then push them to get into details immediately and
directly.

Example:
‘You mentioned that communication between divisions needs to improve. Which
division are you experiencing the largest gap with and what is the issue that’s
getting in the way’

Do not accept it if they back away from their statement to maintain the peace. The
conversation needs to be had and the faster the better. Be direct and to the point in your
questions. You must not be rude or sarcastic but directness is hugely appreciated in the long
term by everyone on the team.

Example:
‘Arun, how confident are you on a scale of 1-100 that your prediction for this
quarter’s sale will fall within 10% of your estimate?’

Sometimes people can take the conversation off topic to focus on a specific problem they
want to highlight in their division. A good chairperson will get the conversation back on
track with directness.

Example:
‘I think you guys have a separate discussion with Sanjay to explain the process of
forecasting and why you feel you’ve fixed it this time. It’ll take us too far off our
scheduled time if we discuss it with the entire team here. Will you guys have that
conversation before Monday?’

6. Involve everyone occasionally

Usually 30% of the participants will take around 70% of the airtime and that’s normal and ok.
The important thing is to make sure that the more silent members are given the chance to speak
45
 from time to time to ensure that there is nothing they had to say that gets lost. Going around the
room once every 30 minutes to just hear each person share one sentence on what they are
thinking ensures that this is taken care of.

When getting the involvement of the quieter members it is sometimes counterproductive to put
pressure on them. Just asking them a relevant question and listening to their answers carefully
often gives them the confidence to start opening up unprompted over a period of time.

Example: ‘I’d like to hear your views on this Sachin You did some work in this area at your
previous company. What do you think of this?’ is much better than ‘You haven’t spoken
much Sachin. I want to hear you speak more’

Hear from everyone at the end of the meeting what they felt was addressed and what wasn’t
and hear their feedback about how the meeting was conducted so you can keep improving the
way you have conversations.

Example: ‘I thought what was really useful was having the finance team also here. It helped
me understand what we need to do to sort out the miscommunication between us related to
the inventory forecasting. But I think we haven’t really addressed the hiring decisions we
wanted to and we got a little political when we were speaking about that’

7. Seek to understand when results don’t happen and to find solutions rather than put pressure

Honesty is important in conversations but it shouldn’t be to put pressure on other team

members. If they are not self-motivated they shouldn’t be on the team. The honesty should be
aimed at understanding the challenges that members are facing if they have not delivered on a
commitment and finding a solution.

The question is always ‘What happened’ and ‘What do we need to do’ rather than ‘whose fault
is it?’ and ‘Why it’s not mine’.

See the section on Questions to understand the difference between ‘Why’ questions and ‘What,
Who, When, Where, How’ questions. In meetings the latter should be employed with disarming
frankness.

Starting every meeting with a review of whether commitments from the previous meeting were
delivered is really an untrusting approach to ‘auditing’ team members. Whether it happened or
not will emerge when the specific action item is discussed.

8. End on time

The one thing that you simply must do in a meeting is end on time.

The one thing that a team can have full control over is the finish time of a meeting between the
members. If they can’t, how are they going to deliver on commitments in the face of
competitors and dynamic industry and economic factors?

The lack of clarity, honesty, ownership, teamwork, commitment, discipline, and respect for
46
each other’s time that results in meetings that go beyond the scheduled finish time is exactly
what is causing the team to miss targets in the first place.

End on time.

47
 Executive Presence and
Personal branding

Principles of Leadership Effectiveness

Leadership, as we define it, is showing up in a way that builds trust and credibility in people such that
they want to follow you. Leadership is not about being right – you can be right, but if no one is
following you, then it’s not leadership. Leadership is also not about authority. Anyone can be a leader
irrespective of their position. For example, people followed Gandhi for the Dandi march not because he
had any authority over them but there was something about Gandhi that people trusted.

Effectiveness is about producing results. There are two things which determine if you’re going to be
effective at producing your results: one is all the things that are internal to you like your capability,
strengths, personality etc. and the other is all the external factors like competition, policies, market etc.
that determine the level of challenge you will face while producing your results. If your internal
capability is higher than the external challenge you will be effective, if not you will fail.

There are five principles of leadership effectiveness in the Stillwater model – Clarity, Honesty,
Ownership, Win-Win, Commitment:

1. Clarity:

Clarity is being clear on four things:

 what do I want to achieve?

 why is it important to me?
 the prices I need to be willing to pay?
 by when I want to achieve it?

Example, ‘I want to be fitter’ is not clarity. Clarity would be ‘I want to run 5km in 30 minutes
by 31st December 2016. It’s important to me because I’ve lost many people in my family due to
ill health and I want to live healthily and be able to enjoy going on holidays. The prices I’m
willing to pay are spending an hour and a half less with my wife and kids three times a week.

When people have not reached Clarity they will use words like:

 ‘I should’
which actually means ‘intellectually it makes sense but I’m not going to do it’

 ‘I have to’
which actually means ‘I’ll do it but grudgingly’

 ‘I can’t’
which actually means ‘I’m not willing to take ownership for not doing it’

48
 When people have weighed up the prices and benefits and made a decision they will use the
phrases:

 ‘I will’
if the benefits are more than the prices

 ‘I won’t’.
if the benefits are less than the prices.

These words indicate the person has probably got Clarity.

2. Honesty:

Clarity is knowing what I want to happen and honesty is looking at what is actually happening.
It’s looking at the situation in an unbiased way: neither overreacting nor underreacting.

Example, if I get a B minus on my report, an overreaction would be feeling like this a disaster
and an under reaction would be telling yourself it doesn’t matter. Honesty would be saying
‘I’ve got B minus on my report’.

3. Ownership:

If there’s a gap between what I want to achieve and what’s actually happening, under pressure
people sometimes attribute it to external factors. However, ownership is focusing on the
choices within my control instead of focusing on things outside my control and blaming other
people, situation or even myself.

It’s a blameless focus on my choice of action and interpretation.

I may or may not have control over the results. But I always have choices and at the very
minimum, I can choose my attitude.

Examples of Helpless vs. Ownership

Helpless: You’re not understanding what I’m saying

Ownership: I don’t think I’ve explained myself clearly

Helpless: He broke my heart

Ownership: I felt hurt

Helpless: I’m unable to find time to exercise

Ownership: I haven’t been creating the time to exercise

Helpless: The downturn in the economy was the reason my startup failed
Ownership: My lack of planning for the possibility of a downturn in the economy
contributed to the failure of my startup

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4. Win-win:

This principle is about understanding your stakeholders’ considerations and reaching a deal that
works for both of you. It’s not about being a martyr and giving up things that you want to
achieve. It’s also not about taking advantage of people. It’s understanding that people will only
give you what you want if you give them what they want.

Example, if I want to go for a run after coming back from work in the evening, but my family
wants to spend time with me, win-win would be looking at options such that you can achieve
both – some options may be to go for a run early in the morning instead of evening or it could
be involving the family in the exercise routine.

5. Commitment:

Commitment is about doing whatever it takes to produce the result you say you want. Phrases
such as ‘I’ll try’ or ‘I’ll try my best’ are not considered as commitment as per this definition
because, if I say ‘I’ll try to get the report on Monday morning’ and I don’t succeed I can simply
say I tried.

So you could put in a lot of effort and not produce the result and as per this definition of
commitment, that would not be commitment. Or you could put in hardly any effort and produce
the result and that would fulfill this definition of commitment.

A commitment is “I’ll do it”

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Self-Awareness

Self-awareness can have various definitions. In this course, when we use the term, what we are referring
to is an understanding of how the way we look at the world influences our results, relationships,
perceptions people have of us, and our experience of life itself. In the paragraphs below, we will define
these terms and clarify the links between each of them.

Beliefs:

We form beliefs from our past experiences – through our direct personal experiences, from the
information we have received or things we have absorbed from our surroundings. Since all of us have a
slightly different past, all of us also have slightly different beliefs.

The function of beliefs is to make quick decisions. For example, if you were to buy a carton of milk
from a super market, some of the beliefs you would have to make when you buy it might be that it’s not
expired, the expiry date you do check is the right date, the price is right, the milk is good for you, the
quality is good, it hasn’t gone bad etc. Now if you were to check each belief every single time you
wanted to purchase a single item, it would just take a whole lot of time. So beliefs allow you to make
quick decisions in the face of uncertainty based on your past experiences.

That’s the advantage but the disadvantage is that the past experience may not be a good guide. The
current situation may be slightly different from the past experience or the beliefs we may have formed
from early experiences may be poor conclusions. And therefore, when we interpret reality through the
lens of our beliefs, our interpretations may not be an accurate map of the reality.

Therefore, the advantage of beliefs is that they allow you to make quick decisions and the disadvantage
51
of relying on them blindly is that they might, on occasions, lead to suboptimal results.

Reality and Interpretations.

There are certain statements of objective reality and certain statements are about subjective
interpretation. So if I said the outside temperature is 28 degrees Celsius, that is a statement of reality.
It’s a statement of fact and I’m either right about this or I am wrong which I can check by using a
thermometer.

But supposing someone from London comes here and I say 28 degrees is a normal day in Mumbai and
he says it’s really hot here, those are both statements of interpretation and we both are right about our
interpretations. In fact, you can’t be right or wrong about interpretations. He’s got some beliefs based on
his past experience, he’s grown up in London and he has different beliefs about what is a hot day or
normal day. I’ve grown up here and I have different beliefs about what’s a hot day. We have the same
objective reality and we have slightly different interpretations of that reality. And both of them are
legitimate. Neither of them is right or wrong but both are legitimate. I can’t say to him no you cannot be
feeling hot. But I can say it’s 28 degrees or that the average temperature in Mumbai is 28 so for this
standard it’s not an unusually warm day or that I’m not feeling hot.

The reason this distinction is important because quite often the arguments we have are when we mistake
our interpretations for reality. Most of the arguments we have are not about statements of reality. People
don’t usually argue about whether you’ve achieved 95% of your target or 103% of your target, that’s a
statement of objective reality. But if someone says to me ‘you’re not a team player’ - that’s a statement
of interpretation, which is neither right or wrong, that’s just how I am coming across to him based on
that person’s belief of what a team player is. You’re assertive. That person has potential. These are all
statements of interpretation. But when somebody shares his statement of interpretation that mismatches
our interpretation, we get angry and start having arguments.

To illustrate the diagram above with an example, suppose your experience with the first few bosses you
had was really bad. They didn’t give you any guidance, they blamed you for everything, they made you
work crazy hours, had no consideration for anything about you, took all the credit themselves, the belief
you might form about them is bosses are terrible. If now (reality) a new boss comes in and says he needs
you to work on the weekend and deliver the report on Monday, based on your belief that bosses are
terrible, your first few thoughts (interpretation) might be - here we go again, he’s the same etc. Our
interpretations have an impact on our experience – emotions, thoughts and body sensations. Given your
first thoughts, you are likely to generate further similar thoughts and feel anger, frustration and low
motivation and your muscles might become tight and tensed. Our experience has a further impact on our
actions and conversations. If you’re experiencing all those negative emotions and thoughts, you’re
unlikely to put in a lot of effort or speak respectfully to your boss, which has a further impact on your
results and relationships. If you put in less effort you’re unlikely to achieve the results, the boss is not
going to trust you next time, he’s going to micro manage you further and that’s going to reinforce your
belief that bosses are terrible.

However, supposing the first few bosses you had are really friendly, helpful, look after you, care about
your work life balance, mentor you, guide you, give you all the credit, you’re might form an
interpretation that bosses are great. Now supposing the reality is a new boss comes in and he says I need
you to work on the weekend and deliver the report on Monday. Your interpretation might be ‘it must be
important work’, which leads to further thoughts like ‘he must trust me’, ‘this might be urgent’, etc. and
52
you are more likely to feel trusted, determined, motivated and therefore you’ll have more rigour in your
actions and you will be more likely to produce the results which will have your boss trust you and give
you more important work and that’s going to reinforce your belief that bosses are great.

So whatever beliefs you form with your initial experiences is likely to set off a chain of events that
reinforces your beliefs and this cycle keeps reinforcing itself whether it’s a virtuous cycle or a vicious
cycle until you stop seeing your beliefs as just beliefs and start seeing them as reality.

Difference between beliefs and reality.

Gravity is reality. So when I drop a pen, it’s going to drop. It doesn’t matter what your belief is, this is
going to happen because gravity is reality. So, the one thing you can do with beliefs that you cannot do
with reality is change them. But if you think your beliefs are reality, you can’t change your beliefs and
you end up going in the same cycle over and over again, even if it’s not working for you. We think it’s
the reality that’s causing the result but actually the way we’re looking at the situation also contributes to
it.

So Honesty in the way it is defined in this course, is four things:

a) understanding the difference between reality and interpretation

b) acknowledging the results without justifying them away or pretending they don’t exist
c) listening to feedback and acknowledging different interpretations, not saying they are right or
wrong
d) listening to your own emotions and understanding the messages embedded in them.

Once we are honest we can see the links and become aware of this cycle – this is what we call self-
awareness.

Distorting beliefs create unhelpful interpretations, negative experiences, criticism of actions and
unwanted results. Questioning all our beliefs will paralyze us because they do help us take quick
decisions but we might want to question our beliefs in the following four situations:

a) when the reality we face is very evidently different from the past experiences we’ve had
b) we are consistently having negative experiences
c) we are getting feedback that our actions or conversations are not effective
d) we are consistently not producing the results that we say we want to produce.

Once we become aware of this cycle and we see our beliefs as just beliefs and not reality, we realize
there is nothing we can do about reality but we can do something about beliefs, it gives us a choice. So
for example, when we notice our negative experiences or unwanted results or criticism of actions,
instead of automatically going and doing what we do and producing the results that we produce, we can
do something different.

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Range model of leadership development

The range model looks at how we can work on our development areas without losing our own authentic
leadership style.

We recommend you review your Range report and watch the associated videos before you do the
Leadership effectiveness check with your study group

To get your own Range report that will help you identify and hone your ‘personal brand’:

1. Go to www.stillwater.co.in and click on ‘Range’ next to the ‘Home’ tab on the top left
2. Use the password ‘Nbsdi’ (case sensitive) and fill out the questionnaire (10-15mins)
3. Download the report and watch the three explanatory videos at http://tinyurl.com/gojm2db

Leadership effectiveness check

The leadership effectiveness check can be done in study groups. Each member of the group answers the
following ten questions. Group members ask questions and give feedback until they feel their team
member has reached a place of Clarity, Honesty, Ownership, Commitment, and Win-Win in their
understanding of the situation.

At the end of the questions each group member shares their feedback related to the speaker’s
communication so that the speaker can see how his or her thinking is interpreted through the lens of
other people’s belief systems.

The ten questions are:

Clarity
1. What I want to create…

Honesty
2. The natural strengths I have that I can use…
3. The areas that I have not been effective…

Ownership
4. The ineffective choice I have been making in these areas…
5. The distorting belief that tricked me into making this choice…
6. A more empowering belief I could adopt is…
7. What I notice about how I have been communicating (in this exercise)…

Commitment
8. The strength I’m committed to consciously developing in this year at ISB is…
9. The prices I’m willing to pay in the coming year are…

Win-Win
10. The support I would like from you is…

54
 Impactful presentations

Presentation do’s and don’ts

Do Pyramid your flow before you start

The most important part of making a presentation is getting your thinking straight. Get
clear on what you want to communicate, anticipate the questions of the audience and use
the pyramid principle to structure your talk in diagrammatic form before you even start
compiling your actual presentation.

If your thinking is clear, the communication will be clear.

If your thinking is not clear, the communication will be jumbled.

Do not make the audience read text or numbers

The less text you have on the slide, the better. Some experts suggest that a slide should
have no more than six words. Some suggest no more than one word!

Similarly, where you can replace tables of numbers with visual graphs, or infographics, do
that. Put tables of numbers in the appendix if the presentation will be emailed to
participants.

You do not want the audience reading. You want them listening to you.

Good Bad Ugly

Use charts or infographics instead of tables of numbers

(Image Source: http://www.garrreynolds.com/preso-tips/design/)

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56
Do use high quality images and sounds

Do use high quality images and sounds and videos. Using cheap graphics is a crime against
humanity. Using clip art rightly carries the death sentence in certain circles.

Acceptable Crime against humanity

(Image Source: http://www.garrreynolds.com/preso-tips/design/)

Do not focus on jazzing up the presentation

If you are wondering whether you should do a crossover fade between slides or some other
garish transition, snap out of it.

The graphics are there to make the message come alive. Not to distract from it.

If you are focusing on transitions and sound effects to bring life to your presentation, it’s
because you’ve forgotten what’s actually exciting about what you’re presenting.

The pictures should highlight the message not distract from it

(Image source; Blair Harkness, Slide by Aaron Weyenberg)

Do practice without your presentation

The presentation slides are just a tool to launch your own communication. The audience
should be focused on you rather than your slides. You might want to practice delivering the
presentation as if there were no slides so that you are comfortable speaking directly to your
audience rather than both of you spending the time looking at the slide deck.

Many of the best presentations don’t have any slides at all.

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Do not get stuck into a rut

You can get inspiration for your presentations by google searching ‘killer slide decks’ and
similar search terms and go through great presentations for inspiration.

What you’re not looking for is ‘pretty presentations’. What you’re looking for is how
people have made their ideas come alive.

Do consider becoming very, very good at presentations

Very few people are better than competent at making presentations and so the few people
who really do invest time in making great presentations stand out.

Do not shy away from taking a full week out to do a course in presentation skills or
Photoshop or design so that you can make really outstanding presentations.

A leader like Steve Jobs built the most valuable company in the history of mankind and his
ability to make his ideas come alive was part of the mix that created that. The time he
invested in learning calligraphy was invaluable in creating the multiple fonts of the initial
mac computers that made them standout.

Analysis may be a core skill of MBAs but the greatest leaders are artists.

But remember, it’s not about being gimmicky.

It’s always about how to get the idea across with impact.

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Making communication ‘sticky’
Chip and Dan Heath have written a book called ‘Made to stick’ about how to make communication
memorable and ‘sticky’. They use the SUCCESs acronym that is easy to remember. The points below
are largely taken from their excellent book, which is a recommended read for this course.
SUCCESs = Simple, Unexpected, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions, Stories

S – Simple

To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. If you say three things,
you’ve said nothing.

Example: During Bill Clinton’s successful campaign, his political advisor James
Carville came up with the phrase that would become the core message – ‘It’s the
Economy stupid’. Every other campaign issue was subordinated to this one
message that was communicated to the electorate with devastating clarity.

U – Unexpected

In order to be interesting, an idea must be counterintuitive. Otherwise it can come across as

clichéd.

Example: Nordstrom is a department store that is famed for customer service. One
of the examples that the customer service team used to tell their staff about proudly
was of the employee who refunded money to a client for a set of tire chains even
though Nordstrom doesn’t sell tire chains. Another example was of a ‘Nordie’ who
gift wrapped for free a product that a customer had bought from a rival store
Macey’s.

These examples created surprise and consternation in the people being taught…
were these really examples of sensible behavior? Well perhaps not… but they were
examples of how ‘Nordies’ went to extreme lengths to provide service to their
clients that nobody else would even contemplate.

The inductees would leave the training with a completely different level of
understanding of the culture than any regular lectures on ‘we must be nice to our
customers’ ever would have.

C – Concreteness

We must explain our ideas in terms of human actions, in terms of sensory information.
This is where so much business communication goes awry. Mission statements, synergies,
strategies, visions – they are often ambiguous to the point of being meaningless. Naturally
sticky ideas are full of concrete images – ice filled bathtubs, apples with razors – because
our brains are wired to remember concrete data.

Example: The vision for NASA was not ‘To be the premier space exploration
agency in the world and to set the benchmark for excellence in the field of scientific

59
 achievement’. It was ‘Put a man on the moon by the end of the decade’. That
provided a startling clarity to all the employees working in the organization. ‘Put a
man’, ‘on the moon’, ‘by the end of the decade’ were all concrete things that
everyone from top to bottom could visualize and feel.

C - Credibility

In certain cases, credibility can come from data and sources of authority. But in other cases
the opposite is true. In 1980 Ronald Reagan asked voters the question “Before you vote, ask
yourself if you are better off today than you were four years ago”. The voter’s own
experience in this case was more powerfully credible than any statistics Reagan could have
presented to them. We need to ask what would be credible for our audience if we want our
communication to be sticky.

E – Emotions

In order to get people to care about our ideas we must get them to feel something. Feelings
are usually far more compelling than abstract numbers and rational arguments. Sometimes
we also need to figure out which emotion is the one to focus on. For example, it’s difficult to
get teenagers to quit smoking by instilling in them a fear of the consequences, but it’s easier
to get them to quit by tapping into their resentment of the duplicity of Big Tobacco.

Advertisements will often focus on emotions rather than functional benefits. An ad for a
telephone network like Hutch might have a dog that follows the owner everywhere (our
network follows you everywhere), a Cadbury’s chocolate ad may focus on sibling love on
Raksha bandhan, an ad for a washing machine powder might focus on the child’s
achievement in school that has high salience for the mothers who buy the product.

The question that you need to ask as you look at your communication is whether it elicits
any emotion at all and if so, is the right one for the message you’re trying to spread.

S – Stories

Often stories are more effective at creating memorability than data. Numbers of dead in
Syria may or may not strike everyone. But the picture of a dead infant, Alan Kurdi, washed
up on a beach is hard to forget.

Obviously, not all of these elements will be relevant for every communication. But when you prepare an
impactful presentation, by going through the SUCCESs checklist, you will boost your chances of making
your communication sticky and reduce your chances of making your communication clichéd and
forgettable.

60
Presentation homework for Lecture 5

Please prepare a PowerPoint presentation with your study group on one of the subjects from your core term.
If your TA has not intimated you as to which subject your group has been assigned, please check with him
or her.

Your study group presentation should be for a maximum of ten minutes (you will be stopped exactly at the
ten-minute mark). Your presentation will be followed by 10 minutes of questions and answers by the
audience.

Your presentation should summarize the key learnings of the subject and be aimed for delivery to a smart
audience that does not have MBAs but might be considering getting one. Your role is to make the topic
interesting and relevant to your audience so that they are tempted into doing an MBA because of the quality
of your presentation of the subject matter.

Only two groups will be selected to actually deliver the presentation. Your presentation will not be marked
(so it does not need to be world class, there is only a short time to prepare it). However, if your study group
has NOT prepared a presentation and your group is picked by your Professor to deliver the presentation,
then all members of your study group will get 0 for CP for the course. This is to prevent groups free riding
on the effort of other groups who have actually done the homework.

Post-delivery of presentation in the class and the debrief, all the groups will work on their actual graded
assignments that they will submit. The details of the Group presentation assignment are in the next section.

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 Group presentation assignment
Your study group is required to upload a presentation of maximum length of 10mins on YouTube that
summarizes one of your courses from Terms 1-4. The subject will be assigned to you by your TA.
This assignment carries a weightage of 25% of the Business Communication grade and the deadline for
submission is midnight on Sunday 9th October.
The audience can be assumed to be a smart audience that is thinking about doing an MBA but hasn’t yet
decided if it’s worth it and if so, which b-school they would like to do it from.
The aim of your presentation is:
- To summarize the most important learnings of the course
- To explain why the learnings are a big deal and where they are/ can be applied in the real world
- To speak in a way that is clear to non MBA students and inspires them to do an MBA
- To serve as a marketing tool for the quality of people at ISB and the quality of learning – both
for potential recruiters, and for potential students
The format for the video is left up to you to decide. You can use a PowerPoint or dispense with it. You can
use any method of presentation of the material in the video (PowerPoint, lecturettes, cartoons, acting, etc.)
that you believe will most powerfully deliver the above objectives. Feel free to make it creative, but be
careful that it doesn’t become gimmicky as it easily can when people try too hard to make something stand
out.
Remember it is the idea or the message or the learning that is the star, not the gimmick. And it is meant to
look professional, even if it is informal in tone.
If you use PowerPoint, then you would be expected to use the guidance in the section on ‘Presentation do’s
and don’ts’. You would be expected to use the guidance on the section on ‘Making communication sticky’
whatever format you choose. You would also be expected to have thought of questions that might be asked
by the audience as they watch your video and to have anticipated them using the Pyramid principle.
The quality of video and audio and general professionalism of the video would also be taken into account
in grading. You are expected to learn how to create a video and upload it to YouTube by yourself in your
study groups.
You can choose to upload your video to YouTube under the ‘Public’ setting (shows up on public search
results) or the ‘Unlisted’ setting (does not show up on public search results but can be accessed by anyone
who has the url link). Please put the name of your group and members with PGP id in the ‘Description’
field under ‘Basic info’ when you are uploading your video.
Please upload your url (Public or Unlisted) to LMS by the deadline.
Note: Important guidance
1. If you are not satisfied/ proud of your video, our recommendation is to upload it as ‘Unlisted’
rather than ‘Public’. The image of ISB will be either improved or worsened based on the quality of
public videos made by our students. A good public video will have the effect of teaching our fellow
Indians about interesting subjects that will expand their knowledge base and enhance our brand. A
bad public video will achieve the opposite.
2. Please be conscious of copy right issues when you summarize the courses. Do not include any
slides in your presentation that have been prepared by your Professors or share any details of cases,
etc. that would violate copy right. Share the learnings in your own words in your own style, in a
way that you think will be interesting for a non MBA student. If you are uncertain about whether
you are violating copy right, then be safe and upload your video under ‘Unlisted’ instead of
‘Public’.
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 Placements and Interviews

Dear ISB batch of 2017,

It's interview time and, since it can be a stressful process, I thought I'd say a few words regarding
my own experiences on the off chance that some of you might find it useful.

I had wanted to join McKinsey as a management consultant and was fairly confident of landing the
job. Most of my friends seemed to see me as a certainty and one or two even jokingly called me Mr
McKinsey. I had never even considered not getting in. You can sense where this is going...

I didn't even get an interview call.

Not only did I not get a shortlist for McKinsey, but I also didn't get a shortlist for any job in the
first week. In confusion and disorientation, I did something I had never done before.

I asked for help.

I asked for help from my batch mates with respect to giving me feedback on my CV, and the
perspective that they offered was that I had been too modest and that my CV was dry compared to
my personality. When I reworked it, I got shortlisted for every job I applied for.

The lesson for me was to seek feedback instead of hiding from it.

The first interview I went for was HUL and I got in. It was a very sought after job, and I was so
relieved that I immediately took it. I dropped out of placements instead of going for interviews for
BCG, etc. that would happen later. I told everyone that since I was in Placom, I had a responsibility
to not 'use up offers' that could go to the rest of the batch. But the truth is I was scared.

I was scared that I would get more rejections.

HUL worked out great and it was absolutely the perfect place for me. I have no doubt about that,
but I do have some learnings from the experience, looking back with the distance of time.

The first thing is to not let events determine your self-worth. Not rejection, not failure, not
criticism.

I think we compare ourselves too much to other people when we're younger and, especially for
those who didn't get jobs in the first few weeks, it played on their confidence and made it even
harder to present themselves at their best. But everyone eventually got jobs, and most people
worked their way to exactly the roles they wanted in the few years after ISB.

A one-time event does not determine your future.

I promise you that. I'm sure that Satya Nadella was disappointed at not getting into an IIT and
going to Manipal Institute of Technology. It didn't stop him from becoming the CEO of Microsoft.

63
So believe in yourself. Long term.

Tendulkar can score a double century or he could get out for a duck. the question is who is
Tendulkar when he gets out for a duck? Is he Tendulkar or is he the duck? Short term fluctuations
will always exist.

Believe in yourself. Long term.

I have worked with a lot of people on their careers as a leadership trainer and an executive coach
and Professor. I used to be on the PlaCom in my batch, have interviewed for ISB every year for the
last ten years and even did a workshop on interview skills at ISB a few years ago. I believe the
single most important advice I can give to anyone is this:

Believe in what you have to offer and focus on how to present that in the interview. Do not worry
about what you don't have or what is out of your control.

People worry - "I don't have a high CGPA", or "I don't have marketing experience" or "I only have
two years’ experience" or "My English isn't perfect because I had a vernacular education"

Honestly… what a $%# waste of time. It's over. It’s out of your control. Screw it. You don't need
to apologize to anyone for any decision of your life and certainly not to the interviewer. There is
nothing to be defensive about.

Ask yourself what you're proud of, what people like about you, what you have to offer. Look at
every line in your CV and ask yourself not 'what will look good?' but 'what am I proud of and
why?' If someone asks you about what you don’t have, acknowledge it, and then tell them about
how what you bring to the table more than compensates for it.

Do your research. Ask yourself what the company needs. What skills you have to offer that'll serve
their needs and then go in there and tell them. Don't wait for them to ask the questions that'll lead
them to their conclusions. Tell them.

And have fun.

You don't need to have all the right answers. You don't need to say exactly what you think the
interviewer wants to hear. Tell them your answer. Tell them what you think. If you don't know say
"I don't know". Don't try to impress. Be real. Laugh.

Believe in yourself. Long term.

If you don't, who will?

Kanishka Sinha (Alum, batch of 2003)

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 Appendix 1
List of technical terms used in Business Communication Course

Many of the words and phrases used in the Business Communication course are used in everyday language
and mean different things to different people. Everybody will have their own ideas of what leadership or
self-awareness is for example.

However, when teaching technical subject matter, we define certain words to have specifically one
meaning and no other, ensuring that all of us have a shared understanding of what a term means when we
use it in class. This allows us to communicate our ideas clearly and consistently throughout the program.
This does not mean that the definition of a term we have used is the ‘right’ one. It’s simply the one we are
using for the purposes of the class.

In the multiple choice exam, we will be asking questions that will test your understanding of various
technical concepts and when we do so we will expect you to interpret those words using the course
definitions rather than how they are commonly used in everyday language.

The list of technical words we would expect you to know for this course exam are below. Please refer to
the relevant section of the course pack to understand their technical usage for the purpose of this course.

List of technical terms:

 Situation (from SCQR)

 Complication (from SCQR)
 Question (from SCQR)
 Recommendation (from SCQR)
 Pyramid principle
 MECE (Mutually exclusive, Cumulatively exhaustive)
 Sharing
 Judgement
 Advice
 Feedback
 Request
 Agreement
 Holding accountable
 Leadership (from section on requests)
 Coaching (from section on requests)
 Managing (from section on requests)
 Self-awareness (from section on Self-awareness)
 Reality (from section on Self-awareness)
 Beliefs (from section on Self-awareness)
 Interpretation (from section on Self-awareness)

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 Experience (from section on Self-awareness)
 Results (from section on Self-awareness)
 Clarity (from principles of leadership effectiveness)
 Honesty (from principles of leadership effectiveness)
 Ownership (from principles of leadership effectiveness)
 Commitment (from principles of leadership effectiveness)
 Win-Win (from principles of leadership effectiveness)
 Range model (from Range model of leadership development)
 Light (from Range model of leadership development)
 Burn (from Range model of leadership development)
 Shade (from Range model of leadership development)
 Shadow (from Range model of leadership development)
 Simple (from Making communication sticky)
 Unexpected (from Making communication sticky)
 Concreteness (from Making communication sticky)
 Credibility (from Making communication sticky)

66