It’s very interesting to see in any training or class room period what moves the people best is least available in the industry. As a result most of the faculty ends up any lecture as pure theoretical or academic discussion whenever touches upon any subject. The problem becomes more acute when the audiences are not any post graduate or undergraduate students, rather a group of adult, matured, and veteran from the filed. The whole style of teaching just fails to keep awake these adult pupils , while captivating or incepting is far away let alone making them hooked in the class for a while. So where is problem? Is it that the faculty does not have grasp over the subject? Most of the time not true , as usually any faculty is supposed to know his subject very much, even he might have researched on any particular topic, intellectually stimulates the topic and can put it on a theoretical framework, packaging it with lot of updates of statistics, facts and figures. Then is that failure to be blamed on the adult student who lacks the patience to be attentive enough to any lecture, or else lags the academic updates happened to any of the subject of their interest? No it may be partially true as there is very least people available who does not feel charged whenever any topic of their own domain of work been raised in any discussion or class room lecture because that contradicts the fact that they got up the social or organizational ladder by only excelling in those work to the highest of its pick. Then where is the problem lies , where is the mismatch? What is missing link between the above two i.e. the faculty’s authority on the theory and subject and the participants’ work experience on the same is the way the whole information being packaged in story telling skill with precision and perfection? In coal mines specially where the executives keeps always in charge of every unprecedented eventuality or incidence due to its intrinsic nature of jobs and mining process itself( remind those US Marine as close comparison) , lot of management cases are everyday getting created and documented(tacit or explicitly)in abandon. Now in the world people gets afraid of unseen , unpredictable , but people get dreaded for other things , its not for the thing not predicted but because of the predicted one which is not stoppable or controllable(the mortality or death is one of the most dreaded fact in the world). And here comes the struggle or survival for existence which lies in a story not in boring or banal statistics or yawning details of power point. So the basic fact of all stories lies in the dark side rather than brighter side of any fact or thing. The truth lies in articulation of any fact in the form of a story creates trust which breeds conviction and then confidence in somebody in charge. In glorifying , self aggrandizing presentation , lousy figures and rosy facts just appear to be too deceptive to the audience who either gets hooked to preoccupation or lateral thinking at the time of presentation or else keeps discounting the presenter’s projection as a half truth both of which just decouples the confidence from the whole picturisation. In a mine its so natural that most of the time a colliery manager or engineer keeps on toes to fight the adversity(by nature and the ruggedness of attitude of coal people) , he keeps his regiment appraised of harsh realty rather than rosy lies of go getting . And this keeps people alert to their full and more prepared for the situation which ultimately embeds the confidence in the leadership of their head. It’s like this instead of telling how complacent they should be with the way everything is moving you better challenge the status quo not invoking or inciting but painting the externalities which may impact the future, you keep their thinking challenged to unsettle the complacency and they will listen to you more attentively, with apt attention. For our coal companies talking about the uncertainty lies ahead due to the uprising of land activist , political complexity, the nay saying activists , environmentalist, regulatory juggernaut on the eco friendly process may be more absorbing for the listeners than the rosy picture how much we are profiting (suppressing the nature of market where we still can skim the price) , how much we are producing compared to the upcoming small coal companies( ignoring the comparative advantages we are enjoying on the long ownership of blocks, acquiring technology long back, owning high skilled workforce due to being earliest mining companies in coal in the nation). The former caveats (not the skepticism) are the small components of a story teller while later’s success stories are the rhetoric of a power point presenter. The former will keep the follower on a constant zeal and gasping for innovation and growth while the latter will make the listens a complacent, lethargic, self aggrandizing workforce too unprepared to take on any disruption or diversion of business environment. In Coal mines we can see these story telling skills in abandon. It’s the different stories of bravery, tough and decisive moments and some of the legend leadership exhibitions by the different executives in different crisis which are round the corner in every mine. In fact these are the most effective driving force to acclimatize any new comer or any new trainee in a mine as well as incumbent’s officials or workers who have been given any new assignment to tackle any impending hurdle. The best part of these stories are that all these have enough ingredients of its own (without any single improvisation) to captivate the audience with its emotional and contagious part too inspiring as well as heroic to be missed by any listener who normally emulates the hero of the story in his own way (keeping himself in a protagonist of the story) and design his activity accordingly onwards. Its very true in my two decades in field and subsidiary, I have hit upon hundreds of such stories enriched and accrued with my own experiences (and stories) as well. Now count on big regiments of CIL which keeps managing different projects , mines and machines , its huge databases of top stories of leadership, management , case history showcasing the mine managers’ natural instinct of delivering in crisis and chaos , their strong resilience to fight back any adversity(natural or organizational) as well as performing under high pressure. As any lead story teller, these protagonists are true to themselves while opening up his own contribution to the facts or figures. They are true to his audience(here of course his employees) sharing and allowing them to get engaged with their own innovation of tackling such situation , true to the moment as they never repeat or blow the story out of context or out of proportion while support them with true evidence. And lastly they are true to their mission as they are very much focused on their objective in the back of their mind where the job may be to lead the whole mine out of crisis or to control an unruly mob to get them back to their rhythm everywhere these story telling leadership exhibits their hard earned skill by putting the whole team on an emotional journey, a satisfying, inspiring bondage and togetherness to lead the team
