Every class is a teacher. Six Lessons From My Visit To IIM Nagpur

I recently had the pleasure of spending time at the IIM Nagpur campus, introducing 240 students to reputation management, public relations, and personal branding. They in turn taught me quite a few lessons. I had four sessions with these students in groups of 60. Each class I taught was a completely different experience even though they were all from the same batch and I was teaching the same subjects.

What did I learn from this experience? Here are my 6 lessons from the IIM Nagpur visit.

1)Attention to detail is an always-on requirement. I always test my videos before a session and I did that for the first two classes. The classrooms were in different blocks and it made sense to me to double-check. Then complacency set in. If it worked in the last two classrooms it should work in the next one too is what I told myself. How wrong I was! Try as I might I could not get any volume going on my video. I wasted a few minutes of mine and many of the class before I decided to play the video without sound.

2)Be flexible and adapt. The learning must go on. How to use what you have and make it work. A video with no sound has some lessons to unearth in a classroom on communication and we found them and carried on. We explored the growing trend of video consumption without sound and what that could mean for communicators. An audio malfunction turned into an opportunity to learn.

3)The importance of being present. My content was canned but the delivery had to be customised to each class and what presented itself as an opportunity to create a meaningful learning experience. At the end of the first class, I sought feedback from the professor who was hosting me and tweaked the delivery of my next lecture.

4)A classroom is no longer a place to share information. It’s a place of shared experiences. Getting each student in touch with their dreams and aspirations proved to be a winning formula. A short exercise I did with each class to help them discover their core life purpose, their values, and their skills created the maximum engagement. This was a catalyst to get class participation going and open up the dialogue around how corporate Reputation and investing in building one’s personal brand was very similar. An individual’s reputation is one of the building blocks toward success when placement season approaches. A reminder that it’s not just about the marks one scores but a more holistic approach that makes a student’s candidature appealing to a prospective employer.

5)Travel is a great teacher. It was my first trip to Nagpur and I learnt that it’s not just the orange capital of India but also the tiger capital of the country. It claims this name because the city serves as a gateway to 8 Tiger Reserves, 17 wildlife sanctuaries, and 4 national parks. All of these are in a 200 km radius. India has 70% of the world’s tiger population (4239), and 2967 of those Tigers are in India.

6)Read books and talk to strangers. A chance conversation at the airport with a fellow traveller also got me to understand that the city is focussing on medical tourism in a big way. My love for reading got me chatting with a very knowledgeable and friendly gentleman who was reading a book titled ‘The Courage to Be Disliked’: How to Free Yourself, Change your Life and Achieve Real Happiness by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. Having recently read the book myself, we got to exchanging our views on it and much more. When I was heading to Nagpur, I had thought to myself, “I do not have any friends in this city.” I now have a dinner invitation from my new airport friend for my next visit.

As the saying goes, travel is a wonderful teacher. On this particular occasion, I went to Nagpur as a teacher and the journey and the classroom made me a student and found me a new friend. If you are curious and open, learning never stops.

The views and opinions published here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the publisher.

Nikhil Dey

Nikhil Dey is Executive Director, Adfactors PR.

A trusted coaching and communications professional, Nikhil Dey is a certified life and leadership coach (International Coach Federation - ICF). Nurturing talent and helping clients achieve their goals is what makes him happy. He loves learning from students of communication, teaching courses and guest lecturing at various educational institutions. When he is not working you will find him on the tennis court or out for long walks with his family and four legged friends.

Previously he has held senior leadership positions at Weber Shandwick and Genesis BCW.

He can be reached on twitter @deydreaming