I find it incredibly fascinating how certain moments, seemingly ordinary and often innocuous while we live through them, end up having such a profound impact on our lives. 

I had one such moment during my second to last term at the Indian School of Business, while I was sitting with a bunch of friends, scanning through electives for the coming term.  As we browsed through the 20-odd courses on offer, we came across the Arts of Communication course outline, and I looked at my friends with certain trepidation, trying to gauge from their facial expressions what they thought about the course. 

Honestly, the very idea of delivering a four-minute speech, which happened to be a mandatory course requirement, scared me beyond my wits. Public speaking was not my thing. Never had been. But we discussed and deliberated nonetheless, and I heard their arguments:

“It’s only 4 minutes. You can just wing it”

“No better place than an MBA classroom to get out of your comfort zone”

“Good business leaders must be good orators”

So after half an hour of back and forth, I signed-up for the course.

*

It was a pleasant January evening and I was sitting in the first session of Professor Mihir’s class. We were supposed to do 30-second personal introductions that day but the nervous wreck that I was, I barely managed to fill the time. 

In each and every class, however, the Professor kept on reiterating that no matter where one started, they would improve through this course, if only they put in the effort. That the art of communication was not just a natural skill bestowed to a lucky few, but something that could be nurtured over time through sheer force of will and practice.

He went on to the specifics and I learnt a few nuances of what makes great speeches. It’s about knowing the audience. It’s about appealing to their logic and/or emotions. It’s about working on your content so that each word, each phrase and each sentence is worth its weight in gold. Most importantly, I learnt, it’s about bringing your authenticity on stage.

At this point, do not for a moment believe that I was confident about my own speech. But four minutes seemed a lot shorter than they did a week ago. And I had started to think that maybe, just maybe, there was a method to this madness after all.

*

Three weeks went by in a blur. It was the sixth session of the course and I had just delivered my four-minute speech. 

As soon as I finished speaking, I noticed a fleeting silence. Followed by a rumbling of chairs as people began to stand up. And within a few seconds, an applause so deafening that I could barely hear my own thoughts which were floating in and out of mind at a million miles per hour. 

Expectedly, I felt great because I knew I had delivered a quality end-product to meet the course requirements.  But in that moment, it felt so much bigger than that, because a standing ovation from my peers was not just a personal triumph. 

You see, by allowing myself to be vulnerable and sharing a deeply personal story, I had found an indescribable, almost magical, connection with my audience for those four minutes. As they lived through my failures. And my heartbreaks. And my resolve. Just like they were their own.

And right in that moment I realized that I was not alone. That we were all in this together. And that it was only through the process of communicating our true and authentic selves, could we inspire and be inspired by our fellow peers, colleagues and humans. This, in essence, has been the biggest learning I have had from this course.  

[Indian School of Business, Winter 2020]