One Day Workshop on “The WINNING EDGE: STRATEGIES FOR THE EFFECTIVE MANAGER” organized by the FINANCE AND ACCOUNTS DIRECTORATE, RDSO on 31^st JANUARY, 2003

DG/RDSO inaugurating the workshop. EDF/RDSO is at extreme left.

The Finance Directorate of RDSO, Ministry of Railways, Lucknow conducted a one-day workshop on “The Winning Edge-Strategies for the Effective Manager” on Friday January 31^st, 2003 at the New Auditorium of RDSO. Director General, RDSO Shri G.K. Wadhwa was the Chief Guest on the occasion.

The workshop was conducted with the basic objective of providing managers/ officers strategy for equipping themselves with the right managerial attitudes for effectiveness and for personal and professional satisfaction.

At the beginning of the workshop, in his inaugural address, the Director General, RDSO Shri G.K. Wadhwa stressed upon the importance of conducting such workshops, which highlight very useful and pertinent interpersonal issues applicable to organizations highly specialized in nature like RDSO or simple multi-tasked organizations. He further stated that the two core areas proposed to be covered in the workshop viz. “Winning Attitudes for the Effective Manager” were very significant and had great potential to enhance managerial effectiveness through better interpersonal relationships and communication skills, which needed to be developed by managers at all levels.

Further he spoke about the importance of non-verbal communication and how effectively it was used by Mahatma Gandhi through his attire, his method of fasting and observing silence and how well these non-verbal symbolic messages of peace, truth and non-violence were effectively communicated to the masses.

The workshop was conducted in two sessions:

The theme of the first session as stated above was “Winning Attitudes for the Effective Manager”, for which the keynote speaker was Professor Renu Luthra, Professor Jaipuria Institute of Management, Lucknow. This session was highly interactive and the speaker focused on the core issues facing Indian managers in their personal and professional lives. Amongst other things, the importance of some basic attributes/ attitudes was discussed such as making out a personal mission statement, getting into the habit of forming positive thoughts and eliminating negative and harmful thought patterns. The importance of emotional attributes such as effective appreciation, “wearing your best smile” and the necessity of laughter in day-to-day work situations was also highlighted. The importance of learning atleast one new skill every year and deliberately cultivating the attitudes for transcending day-to-day difficulties in order to live a healthier and happier life was also deliberated upon. The session had audio-visual presentations and a quiz was also conducted in order to enable the audience to assess their major personality traits and attributes.

The second session of the workshop was on “Non Verbal Communication (NVC) as an Effective Tool for Managerial Effectiveness”, which was conducted by two speakers. The first speaker was Dr. Roshan Lal Raina, Professor Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow and second speaker was Dr. Ritu Narang, Lecturer, Department of Business Administration, Lucknow University.

In this session, the basic issue highlighted was that out of total communication, only 7% is verbal or is through words, 55% is through facial expressions and 38% is through verbal tone: NVC has a number of components such as body movement, facial expression, eye contact, etc. Areas of non-verbal communication such as Kinesics (messages sent by body movement, gesture etc.), Semiotics (the study of implied messages, dress, décor, address etc.) and Haptics (the study of touch such as handshakes, hugs, etc.) was explained through powerful audio-visual aids, projected on the big screen of the auditorium.

The workshop was very well received by the target audience which included several SAG/JAG officers of RDSO and had outside participants from the Defence Services, the Revenue Services, the Financial sector such as banks, etc. and representatives of the media both from the press as well as Doordarshan.

The workshop was widely covered in the local press as well as the Doordarshan evening news. In the morning the AIR FM, Lucknow channel also conducted a live interview with Mrs. Sushma Pande, Executive Director Finance to highlight the core issues to be discussed in the workshop along with the nature of activities being undertaken by RDSO.