August 14, 2007

Bangkok Post - On Aug 5, I had an opportunity to coach 140 students from AIESEC Thailand. The world's largest student organisation (http://www.aiesec.org), it is an international platform for young people to discover and develop their potential to po...

These students are studying at five local universities: Assumption, Bangkok, Chulalongkorn, Kasetsart and Thammasat.

I start by informing them that the session is not a lecture since most people only retain 5% of what they heard 24 hours after a lecture. However, they retain 90% if the structure involves real interactive teaching and learning. So, I ask them to pair up and each pair became "learning buddies".

Every five minutes, I ask a question to summarise the key learning points - each learning buddy teaches the other.

My objective is to inspire them and prepare them to enter the workplace. I begin by showing them the path from university to the workplace. Once they start working, what are the problems that most organisations experience with newly graduated employees? We follow up with what causes these problems. In the final section, they work in groups to brainstorm how to prepare themselves to minimise those problems.

Here are the problems most organisations experience from new staff who have just graduated:

• waiting to be told what to do;
• waiting to be trained;
• impatience for promotion: 'I want to be a manager after six months';
• slack attitude: 'I quit, this is too difficult for me';
• lack of discipline;
• taking the easy way out instead of doing the best.

Then I share with the students the likely causes of these problems. They include the way parents raise their children, how schools teach us, our hierarchical culture and the sabai sabai attitude that has evolved in our resource-rich country. A more recent phenomenon is the Google era - we expect to being able to find anything in a few seconds.

I show two clips from the Thai movie, Final Score 365 Days. This reality film follows four young people through their final year of high school as they prepare for entrance to university.

In the first clip, a mother and son are having dinner at home. The son starts off with some light-hearted banter. "Mom, do I look healthier?" he asks. Mom nods her head.

"I quit drugs," he says.

Mother exclaims with disappointment. Then she starts criticising him - "When you eat, don't bow your head so low. Sit up straight. There's an old saying about dinner manners."

"Who said, mom? Who said that old saying?"

Now mom starts to get angry. "They say that people should eat with good manners. What kind of animal puts his head in the bowl?"

"Who is this old person - what's his name?" the son asks sarcastically.

"Nai Thongdee," she says, her voice getting louder. "You have to realise when to say what. Don't joke all the time."

"I always tease all the time," he says.

"That will make you a bad person. In my office, there are a few people like this. They're grown up but they still speak like children," she says.

"I'm sincere. I'm honest. I say what I think," he responds.

"That's nonsense. This is mindless talk," she says.

"Ouch! That hurts, mom," he says sarcastically.

Then, I ask the students to discuss their observations with their learning partners. We conclude that many parents, instead of coaching or encouraging their children to think, just lecture, instruct and discourage initiative and creativity.

I show another clip of a Thai language teacher. Her students are sleepy and one has already nodded off. The teacher wakes him up and punishes him by assigning him to do some exercise. She complains to the boy that he is not paying attention. In fact it's her fault that she could not make the session more interesting.

Later, I divide the students into eight groups. Each works on how to prepare for the real world. I walk around coaching each group. I notice that in the beginning only a few speak, so I talk to the class again.

"I want you to practise thinking and brainstorming. I don't care what the answers are. There are no 'right' answers in this exercise. This exercise is designed for you to think. You can see that our parents, our schools, our culture do not prepare us to think. So this is a thinking session."

Now the class is more energised. They come up with lot of good ideas - more than I could have imagined.

These are wonderful young people. They are quick, smart and full of energy. It's just a matter of knowing how to unleash their potential.

Kriengsak Niratpattanasai provides executive coaching in leadership and diversity management under the brand TheCoach. He can be reached at coachkriengsak@yahoo.com. Copies of previous columns are available at http://www.thaicoach.com

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