The Power of Spoken Words

Thanks to the six months internship in our MBA curriculum we end up doing effectively two semesters in the final semester. Along with the usual subjects in final semester we have to submit our dissertation report and give presentations of our project work in the fourth semester. Also our faculty expects us to write a paper of ‘Harvard Standard’ on our internship for publication purpose amidst recession when many people are yet to be recruited.

My final presentation to the panel of external examiner and selected list of faculty was scheduled on 24th January 2009 in the first slot. We already had given one presentation to panel comprising of our faculty members only in December first week. The purpose was to improve and be well prepared before the D-Day.

I being eternally lazy didn’t worked on the cosmetic changes suggested by the experts and started working on final report which also needs to be submitted by second week of January. Now I had this beautiful relationship with my faculty guide whom I never bothered to disturb before the deadline and who also never cared to call me. However, taking clues from my batch mates I decided to meet him a day before the presentation to just to seek his approval. He suggested many radical changes which I felt will change the whole flow of my presentation.

Now I knew well in advance that my faculty guide was not in the panel which will be reviewing me, despite it, I made almost all the changes suggested by him. My friends asked why bother when he will not be in the panel and you can show whatever you want to. I replied, “I don’t know but I have this creepy feeling that he might end up in tomorrow’s panel and will screw me.”

I repeated this sentence many a time to different audience and sometime to even myself because I was worried about him being there. His presence is a cause of concern for me because he has his own opinions about my project work and knew even those things about my project which even I wasn’t aware off.

24th January, Morning: I was supposed to reach 9:00 A.M (according to presentation co-ordinator) but reported there at 9:15 A.M (as per timeline mentioned in the official communication). I got royally reprimanded for trying to justify my case and after apologies & many requests was allowed to appear for the presentation. I loaded my presentation on the computer and started waiting along with other batch mates for panel to arrive. Guess what, first person to arrive was our honorary panellist was my faculty guide. Soon every one also joined in and presentation process started. Everyone was assigned fifteen minutes for presentation and five minutes for Q&A. First guy winded his presentation in 25 minutes and I was slotted next. I soon realised everyone had opinion about Xerox, company I interned with and my presentation lasted for 55 minutes. Of course the most curious one happened to be my own project guide who was full of interesting questions and remarks. Many legendary questions were asked and notable points observed during the presentation like:

1) Prof 1: Are you making all these things up here or you really know the answer? This question was asked when I was bombarded with queries from all corner of the room & was coming up with answers instantly.

2) Prof 2: Can you please explain it to layman what this division of Xerox actually does without going into any jargon. This question was asked after 50 minutes of presentation inclusive of 35 minutes of Q&A.

I felt so much relived after it was over and when I pondered over what happened during the process, I felt like power of spoken words worked (though unconciously)against me.

This phenomenon of power of spoken words, I heard from Skip Ross in his exemplary work called, ‘Dynamic Living Seminar’. It states, Choose your words carefully for what you say might become a reality. Haven’t we all noticed that many a time things turn out to be exactly the way we spoke? I repeated oft times about my fear that my faculty guide will appear in the presentation and he actually did. He was the replacement of some other Prof who fell ill at the eleventh hour. This is one of the many incidences when the phenomenon of power of spoken words worked either to my advantage or disadvantage.

Skip Ross suggests a simple remedy as more often than not we ended up being on the wrong side of phenomenon. After every sentence you utter, ask yourself, “Is this REALLY what I WANT, If No, then why say it?”