With time, life has become very hectic. Trying to meet ends, has become the sole objective and schedule of life. Quality of life and thus, an inner happiness and peace of mind is seldom achieved despite all the wealth amassed. An empire is built but unfortunately it stands on very a weak foundation; the foundation that has fundamental elements like a life mission, a vision, values and ethics. Be it a working person or a businessman; I believe that one feels truly successful only when a person’s personal values coincide with professional / work values that eventually brings out excellent performance. Undoubtedly, most organisations reserve large budgets for employee training purpose and invest a lot in training their employees. Why then are the desired results not achieved? Is it the lack of skills on the trainer’s part or lack of involvement on the trainees’ part? Being a trainer myself, I believe that the onus lies on the trainer to kindle the fire in the participants. It is not enough for a trainer to instill new thoughts and solutions in the minds of the participants but create a fire in the heart and rejuvenate the lost spirit in a person. Although a trainer has a very brief intervention in the participant’s life, he/she should be able to add value to the latter’s life in that brief a period. Having conducted hundreds of behavioural training programs over a cross section of industries and hierarchies, I have conviction when I say that irrespective of the topic of training, it must somewhere help a person introspect and identify his life mission, vision and values. The art in training is then to create a link in the current subject of training with a larger picture. As an example, a training program on ‘Communication Skills’ to me is not merely indulging into the elements of a communication process such as a sender, a receiver, a message, noise, etc. but a skill of conveying a message to another person in a way that fulfils your need with mutual concurrence. Another case in point is training on ‘Time Management’. Time Management should not merely include topics like Goal Setting on the SMART principle and priority setting but should intervene with the participant’s life at a much deeper level. i.e. make him wonder – Why should I prioritize? What should my priorities be? What will I achieve by better time management? What is my mission? How should I realign my life and my activities in order to realise my mission at any given point of time? Are all my activities in a day aligned with my mission? …. This is ideally to me the level of interaction that a trainer must have with his/her participants. When a training is taken to this level, can one expect not mere short term ecstasy at the end of the training program but a long lasting impact on the participant’s life.
To me, my mission is to add value to people’s life and which is exactly what I set to achieve in every single training that I undertake.
