MY WILDEST DREAMS

In the room was Luke, an American. Alex, a Singaporean, Allan a Briton, Wenfei a Chinese by birth and Simon Nigerian (like myself) All of us engaging in meaningful conversations about our backgrounds, passion, and career paths.

Luke’s smile seemed to be the biggest. he had a welcoming demeanor, wenfei was enthusiastic, he wanted to go with everything, Alex was beaming and simon was in the mood for bonding.

As I listened to the team talk about their, goals, drive, and aspirations, a part of me was elated. It suddenly felt like I was introduced to a whole new world. I never thought I would be talking to four people from different continents in a way that was so profound. Despite the different backgrounds, culture and environment. we bonded on a very unique level. It was indeed a day of beautiful discoveries.

TWO MONTHS AGO 

I received a mail-in my LBS account asking me to join the global virtual team course spearheaded by Eugene Ohu. I didn’t think twice. Although I did not have a total overview of the course, I had an impression that it would revolve around effective communication with global counterparts in business.

Eugene taught management communication; my first impression of him was that he was an introvert with great communication skills. He spoke very softly and would seldom raise his voice. Yet his lectures were effective.  

THE OCEANWIDE DEAL

Our next assignment was to make a deal with a shipping company on service delivery and products taking into consideration KPIs and targets. 

It was a tough deal and I wasn’t particularly happy with the outcome as I thought we were shortchanged. 

The process of evaluating the product’s importance, Company financial goals, and integral policies kept us on our toes. Amidst the process, I was bitter with Wenfei (a departmental colleague) over issues like cooperation, trust, and standard operation issues. I wasn’t happy till I summoned up the courage to confront wenfei with my doubts. i needed to clear things up.

CHINESE SHOCKER

To my greatest surprise, Wenfei was humble enough to clarify a whole lot of underlying issues after which he admitted his mistakes and pointed out mine as well. We talked about some major changes we would make as a team going forward and ended the call on a very nice note.

EUREKA !

I observed that effective communication is not only about giving feedback, it’s also about eliminating internal noise. Being open to constructive criticism is a big step to making great and positive changes in every result-oriented process.

GREATFUL

Thank you to my LBS lecturer Eugene Ohu and other Yale facilitators for making this a worthwhile experience . Thank you wenfei I hope we can keep this friendship for a very long time to come. Thank you to Luke, Allan, Alex and Simon for bringing yourselves, your ideals , passion and experience to GVT 66.

Thank you GVT 66 for bringing my wildest dreams to pass.