The Art Of Motivating People !!!

Selco Labs, Ujire is in 4th floor of SDMIT college. Though I am not a student of this college, I am literally living a college life here; interacting with students, having fun attending their hostel day, DJ night etc etc. It's full on masti. But it's not just fun here with the college students. Recently I had gone to Mrs Divya Mahendran, the one in-charge of placement activities and expressed my desire to give a presentation on Jagriti Yatra to the students of the college to give them some exposure on the event and motivate them to go on the Yatra and to also to enlighten them on few exceptional personalities who are doing few exceptional things in their life. According to the plan I was to do the presentation in each class everyday with her. But somehow it didn't work out and one fine evening I was in Selco Labs and I was suddenly called for the presentation. I went with my laptop to give the talk to a crowd of 100 students. Well this was my first talk on Jagriti Yatra and Twenty19; and an intended motivational talk. As I started my presentation with enthusiasm, there was pin drop silence and students were keenly listening to me from start to the end. I could make out that they enjoyed my presentation from their reaction. I was appreciated by students and madam for a half an hour talk which did motivate few students who came up to me and registered for Jagriti Yatra. I was happy with myself as I was able to give back to Jagriti Yatra and Twenty19 in which ever way that was possible for me.

                                                I am interning under Mr. Anand Narayan in Selco Labs, who was kind enough to put me in contact with a professor at SDM arts college to help me give the same talk to arts students. I went with the same enthusiasm to motivate as many as possible. I was treated like a Chief Guest at the college. I was humbled by their respect and love. I was suppose to address the NSS students of the college. Nearly 60 students had gathered and I started the presentation with a hitch as the computer had virus and it was giving me problems with the presentation. There was a chaos in the crowd. Few were talking and that really got me irritated. I asked those who are not interested to leave. I did maintain my calm and gained back the momentum to continue with the talk. But as I was talking few were dozing right in front of me, few were pretending to listen and few were indeed listening. As I went through the presentation I realized that there is something missing. Why am I not able to connect with them - Is it the fact that I was not conversing in kannada that didn't allow me to connect with them, or is it that the students had exams and they were not interested in my talk??? As I head back to Selco Labs,  I keep pondering what is it that didn't let me connect to them - was it the mere circumstances of that particular day or was it the way I was handling it. But I did learn few things from the talk - how to keep your clam even when people seem uninterested while you make your best efforts to make it as interesting as possible and that every crowd will need a different approach for their motivation. Oh wait - This what I learnt in my 7th semester 'Management - Principles and Practices' ? It's just that it was in theory and now I did the practicals !!!