July 10, 2013

Fall, Fail, Fire...

Role play activity- Customer at a Bank

This Sunday, five of us- Rahul, Dnyanesh, Sankalp, Rajan and I met looking forward to yet another fun-filled SHG meeting. Today, the meeting was also attended by Mr. Rajesh Kenkre. Rajesh Kenkre is a renowned architect and an interior designer with his own enterprise in the capital city Panaji. A PWS himself, Rajesh was keen in attending the meeting to share his experiences, his fears and apprehensions and how he tackles the same.

Rajesh shared his story and how he considers stammering as not a problem, but as a gift. He spoke of acceptance and then briefly about his journey from being scared of speaking to heading the local chapter of a networking group of entrepreneurs called BNI, to being the president of Toastmasters Club!

The three important nuggets of wisdom which Rajesh shared with us were-
1.      Fall into it.
2.      Fail again and again.
3.      Have the fire of passion burning within you.

We all were inspired and thanked Mr. Rajesh for coming and invited him again to our meetings.

We then had two group activities-

1.      Group Discussion.

·         A topic was selected (Corruption in India)
·         Every member states the problem and their opinion
·         Every member gives one or more solution
·         Others comment and group discussion starts
·         Group should derive a conclusion
·         One member volunteer to give a presentation of what was discussed

Sankalp and Rahul volunteered and presented a report on what was discussed as the part of this activity.

2.      On-the-spot situation

·         A situation given to all the participants. (A Customer’s Loan rejected by Bank)
·         One person plays the customer.
·         All participants create their own conversations, characters etc on the spot for the situation.
·         No preparation

Dnyanesh played the customer who’s loan application was rejected, and we all played the Bank Staff. (Thanks to Rajesh for his online SHG ideas, from which we got this activity)


In the end, we had a casual discussion, watched some videos, shared some a few PDFs and resources, and amidst the heavy rains, parted off with smiles.  

7 comments:

Satyendra said...

Dear Harish- thank Rajesh Kenkre on my behalf too! He deserves a write up about himself in Samwad or on TISA website.. Couldn't agree more with his conclusions and approach.

Manimaran said...

TISA is very grateful to Rajesh Kenkre for attending the SHG meeting and narrated about his achievement in spite of stammering. We need only real role models like him for more infuse more inspiration.

I want to know at what mode of speech that so many activities were conducted in this meeting. What I am trying to say is, SHG is the best place for accepting and stammering freely. It would be more useful if in the 50% time of meeting, the members should speak slowly to their choice like prolongation, bouncing, long pausing etc. The important thing is the mode of speech should left to the individual choice and should not force that all of them should speech in a particular mode of speech only.Because from my experience,each one is more comfortable in one mode of speech only.

You can try this in the next meeting, feel the difference and share your experience here.

Harish Usgaonker said...

@Dr. Sachin and Mr. Manimaran,

Yes, Rajesh's approach and attitude towards stammering is much about acceptance... We all can learn a lot from him.

@Mani Sir,

We did not decide any particular style / technique before starting these activities. We decided to give everybody a free-hand to use any technique they feel comfortable with while speaking.

Thanks a lot for your suggestions. We will certainly try it in our next meeting.

vinit said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Manimaran said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Manimaran said...

Harsh, Even in the next meeting do not force anyone to speak in a particular way. Rather give them freedom to speak in their own style, but have to speak slowly throughout the session and ask their feedback. It will be amazing.

Harish Usgaonker said...

Thanks Mani Sir,
We will do this in the next meeting.