How about sharing your opinion!

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Data Collection Woes of Scholars

Having been a doctoral student for the last 30 months, I figured out data collection is indeed the toughest job in all the work I am set to do. Blame the kind of rotten surveys that  fly around which present senseless questions with insane options; our people have grown intolerant of responding to junk. I am hoping that my survey doesn’t fit in there! However bad the situation is for me to enter and pull you into, I still need to request your opinion in my study too. Honestly, I would have preferred talking to you to learn more, but am limited in options when it comes to submitting my thesis.

Unlike most other surveys, at least I have taken precautions: discussed this with a few of my smart students who nitpicked certain things and had let me refine the survey. Also, I am asking for your suggestions if you find a part (or the whole) of it can be improved. Also, unlike surveys that eat away tens of minutes in reading and understanding, this one I have designed for my study takes roughly around 3 minutes to respond to. You can participate in the study here.

Am I presenting reasons why you should consider responding to my survey? Yes!

My study is on communication style (not skill). I seem to be of the opinion that lots of trainers and irate managers out there lay unnecessary emphasis on the word communication skill, where as they actually refer to possessing good english. Even otherwise, I do not see communication as a skill that people can be trained for, because if at all, it is communication that separates one from another; so, training people and prescribing the right skill wouldn’t always work. The notion of skill is not apt for something like communication, unless we can be more specific of the communication act we are referring to. For example, if you talk about being able to deliver bad news to a client, probably I would say it is a specific communication act for which someone can be prepared (made a scapegoat/trained/whatever!?). Alternatively, I stumbled on a long forgotten theory of communication style which seems more pragmatic in its argument and conclusions. While we all have the language necessary for communication, it is style that gives us a unique identity. And the study of styles is appreciated in diverse fields such as psychology too. Putting all that allegedly scholarly stuff aside, it is still common sense; that calling someone as having lesser skill may not really make sense, when you can alternatively think of the candidate as not having appropriately spoken in a given situation. Appropriate here refers to the style match between you and the one talking to you. Just think of it; how often would we want to talk to someone (anyone) if they are passive, unfriendly, and frowning, however logical and intelligent that person is.

So, here I am. I have reviewed literature (which means I read about 300 published articles, 20 different books). I have gone through the rubbish that people could write, and found pearls of wisdom in between (hoping I had the eyes to catch them rightly). And then I have carefully designed my survey to keep it straight, simple and short. You can participate here.

If differentiating my survey from others’ is not a reason sufficient, let me share with you what some of my study participants have shared in their comments.

The study is very impressive as it tries to find out how good a communicator you are and also how you would like to communicate with others and try to improve or change it. Moreover it was interesting. cheers!!!

~ Software Professional

Thanks for making me understand my communication style. I had not thought about it before! Best of luck.

~ Teacher

To think that I am changing my communication depending on who I am speaking to is uncomfortable, but at the same time I can also think of the efforts others have put in to adapt their communication style to suit mine. This survey made me reflect into how we converse.

~ Sales Manager

And there are more comments which said, ‘good study‘, ‘nice research‘, ‘looking forward for the results‘ and so on. There is hope that such comments and responses are building in, while there is also fear that I may not be able to reach my data collection targets. I am looking for a really big sample to make my study more credible. Every response I get is now treasured. I appeal to you to see if you can find three minutes to respond to my survey here, at least.

Have I done enough to convince you to respond to my survey? I do not know. But if you are participating, I must have done something reasonably good. And thanks for being my friend in the study. :)

My Intimate Opposite

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We are friends. We think we think, we feel we feel. The only thing that bound us together or made us deliberately stay different was how we wanted to be. He explains himself as nature’s most manifested anomaly, while I am described as Confucius, the confused. Both of us love reading, both of us agree to disagree, and both of us understand the love and pain we have, of exercising our hearts and minds in sync to build up the most irrefutable argument, yet acknowledging that nothing is.  I would like to think that he thinks the same, but I feel he would not. That is how we stay together!

I do not know if I want to call him my opposite, because he is an intimate too. Now that he is active on the blogdom, he gives me the opportunity to add him here as ‘My Intimate Opposite‘; for that is how  I would like to invite him. It is now of his choice to read through me here, and see if we are opposites, or intimates or still the same old intimate opposites. :)

The Problem with Devil’s Advocate

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Devil’s Advocate, my understanding of that word comes after watching the show my Karan Thapar’s show on IBN. The appeal to the show comes from not just the kind of preparedness that people come with, but the care with which the argument is driven in a specific and conceivable direction. The ones who play devil’s advocate, I thought, were the ones who were richly informed and intelligent in questioning. From that perspective, I thought I had found someone at my workplace who often tends to play devil’s advocate–and I did not mind that till now. But, when playing a role does not translate into something tangible, then I don’t have a choice but to question the utility of that role in a team. And now I am doing it!

Firstly, I wanted to have a clearer understanding of the word, devil’s advocate; because, that is where my perceptions formed and deformed. A brief read on wiki tells me that its origin was as a part of a religious process called canonization (recognizing a deceased christian as saint) where ‘promoter of faith’ plays devil’s advocate trying to resist canonization, ‘promoter of cause’ plays god’s advocate trying to argue for canonization, and ‘promoter of justice’ evaluates the argument on both sides and comes up with a decision. Good! I think I have a better understanding of that word now. Let me sketch my understanding here. There are two distinct things in the origin of the word: one, it is a part of the process, and two, the role exists at a decision-making point. And as I read and infer deeply into who can be these advocates, I see that the skills they should have is fundamentally that of argumentation which further inherently possesses the qualities such as ‘being richly informed’ and ‘being able to ask intelligent questions’. Hmm! Now I know that my initial understanding of the word was not complete. I am much better after reading some history.

Secondly, coming back to what people around me do, I see now, that they are playing devil’s advocate at a point where ideas are still in discussion mode (not a decision-making point), and the role they took up has certainly become more a part of their attitude than as a part of the process. Wow! Those are serious problems. This small misunderstanding of the role has made the one who is supposed to be a devil’s advocate into someone who is a relentless critic with no purpose, no outcomes, but a rotten attitude in the impressions of others around.

Not having a correct understanding of the word itself was a problem big enough for me. Devil’s advocates not playing the role rightly, I am sure, must be a bigger problem for the institution. Now, this is the challenge for you readers with me:

How do you tell someone that they are not really being a devil’s advocate, but are being something else?

What Philosophy?

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There would be at least one instance in life where everyone would question the meaning of life.

That should be a sufficient argument to claim that each one of us, whether we like it or not, becomes a philosopher; one who questions the fundamentals. It is a different matter if we stay that way or not, because people tend to quickly fall out being unable to cope up with the depths (or emotional/mental highs) that philosophy can take us to.

There was a time I read a fabulous book that introduced philosophy, scientifically. It just reduced the notion that philosophy is a higher discipline to make it a discipline worth a scientific pursuit. However, to think of it that the author had his own way of thinking (philosophy) and that I filtered his thoughts through mine to give my understanding a different colour…all that gets me back to the question: have I understood what philosophy means? or is the subject so volatile that each one gives his own meaning and gets away with it? or is it the nature of the subject, like hindutva, to be accommodating diverseness?

A close friend once told me, I am a reductionist. I think of myself as a pragmatist. There was a person who called me pessimist, and someone else made me believe that a pessimist is an optimist with just more information. I thought that it was all a game of words, semantics; and someone else confirmed it that philosophy too is manacled by language constructions. But then how different is it from socially constructed reality?

Why am I writing all this? Why, all of a sudden, my mind talks philosophy?

Sorry guys! It is just that I am not appropriately loaded on a Monday morning, but am still having to suck it up at the workplace. I have no other place to vent that would stay quiet in response. Hope you could tolerate, you would forgive my Monday morning philosophy howls. And I wish you have a great day ahead! ;)

PS: I guess I have just given an idea to make Monday mornings more thrilling. :P

Feeling hibernated

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Blogging is one love I have sustained over the last 28 months or so. The frequency of posting has always been variable but since February this year, I am feeling like my love went into a hibernation. Except for the random post here and there, I haven’t been writing anything. But at the same time, the number of stories I could have shared are on an all time high! Probably, this is one phase of my fascinating life–I am struggling to put any story into words, because by the time I think of it, there is another story dropping in my ears or staring into my eyes. I am on a vacation for the next couple of weeks ( I wish that can literally mean what it is supposed to mean!), so I should be able to jot down my fleeting thoughts, capture moments that stick, and post them here. Thanks for sustaining your readership in this time!

Mom’s Birthday

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