A course on ‘The Art of Communication for Leaders’ is being hosted once a year by the Office of Communications (OoC), Indian Institute of Science (IISc). The course was conducted for the second time this year (2023) during February–April, with financial support from the Kotak IISc AI-ML Centre (KIAC), IISc.
The need for such a course has been felt for a long time in IISc as students find it difficult to communicate their research, whether it is to a peer group or a general audience. However, it has been difficult to find an instructor for the course. According to Professor Kaushal Verma (Chair, OoC), “Teaching soft skills, especially communications, is not a textbook style job. It requires a different skill set on the part of the instructor and the ability to engage with a diverse audience, provide individual feedback, and prepare a meaningful set of modules that the student can learn from.”
In 2022, IISc signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the School of Meaningful Experiences (SoME) Pvt. Ltd, to conduct ‘The Art of Communication for Leaders’ programme developed by SoME. Accordingly, the first course was conducted by Rakesh Godhwani, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of SoME during the January–April semester, with excellent feedback from the 93 participants. Rakesh Godhwani has completed Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science, Post Graduate Programme in Software Enterprise Management, and Doctor of Philosophy in Leadership Communication. His research interests focus on how a leader uses oral communication to influence and transform their audiences. Rakesh worked at Wipro, Intel, and Qualcomm in various profiles ranging from product marketing, sales and business development before he took the plunge to pursue his passion in teaching and writing.
As Rakesh Godhwani explains, “The whole objective of the course was to make IISc students who are very good in their scientific research work understand the importance of communicating their research with their audiences.” Godhwani uses the six Cs framework—confidence, communication, curiosity, creativity, collaboration, and competence—to help the students learn how to communicate with confidence, achieve the desired impact on the audience, and convince job recruiters to give them jobs! The aim of the course was to prepare the students for the next stage after IISc, whether they plan to join the industry or pursue higher studies.
The course had a mix of in-person and online sessions topics such as understanding confidence, self-esteem, and self-doubt; overcoming glossophobia; understanding audiences; persuasion; depth of an argument and conveying a point of view; speech writing; managing social interactions; and job interviews. The students were also given three assignments.
Students from various programmes – undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral – were encouraged to enrol for the two-credits course, to enable them to break barriers and talk to each other. A total of 84 students completed the course this year. Feedback from two of them are showcased below:
- Pavan Kumar Reddy Mittapalli, Master of Management, Department of Management Studies (DoMS),
“The course content was well-structured and covered relevant topics for effective communication. The instructor was knowledgeable and engaging, making the sessions interactive and interesting. The practical exercises (impromptu speech) allowed for the hands-on application of communication techniques that were taught in the class.I got an understanding of what exactly effective communication is, and also I got to learn a few strategies to implement in day-to-day interactions for better communication.” - Vaibhav Ranjan, Bachelor of Science (Research), Undergraduate Programme
“Basically, I am very happy and satisfied with this course. It was a very beneficial course, specially for me. It gave me confidence to communicate with people, for speech and for presentation. I am thankful for such a course.”