Program Recruitment Talk at Choa Chu Kang Primary School

I conducted a 20minute assembly talk at Choa Chu Kang Primary School last week. Choa Chu Kang Primary is a strong advocate in Innovation and they have taken several initiatives in bringing innovation to the students. It is really an honour to have been given such an opportunity to work with them.

Like any other assembly talk, the school required a minimum of 40 students to commit to a 14 week Innovation and Enterprise Program. Results are not yet known as students are required to seek their parents' approval before being allowed to join this program. Unlike the session before, I think I did better than before, more prepared and I was able to engage the students better.

Do your best and hope for the best.

Program Recruitment Talk at Maha Bodhi School

Maha Bodhi is a huge school located in the east. It was a wet Wednesday morning and the school has requested my team and I to conduct an assembly talk to spark interest to the kids and hoping that they signed up for the YES! program.

For that session, I planned to to something different from my previous talks. As we were given only 15minutes, I removed a few elements from my talk and hope that I can hit the mark within that 15minutes. Cutting corners has never yield results.

There and then, it happened. It happened one of those days where everything do not seem to work. The videos in the slides were not functioning(and it's the same set of slides that i used previously) and my wireless presenter was not functioning, resulting in me going back and forth to the computer to move the slides.

I was honestly disappointed with myself after that talk. My colleague told me that it was good. Deep down, I knew I have not given my all.Apart from the technical matters, I felt that I did not do more to engage the crowd like i usually did. I broke one of my training commandments; Rapport is the bridge to acceptance of information. I made a conscious mistake of discounting the rapport building part and forced information through and through.

The school was targeting 40 students and they hoped that the talk will help them get that numbers. A few days later, my colleague said that there were 50 students and now the school is trying to filter the numbers down to 40. Was that a success? I don't know. Personally, I think I doubt my assembly talk made any impact.

20 MINUTES TO A TOP PERFORMER by Alan Vengel

What is a top performer? Are they born with that attitude or are they nurtured? Like many things in life, attitudes and good, positive behaviors are nurtured by the environment. I found this book while scouting the Yishun Branch National Library. I think it is rather timely that I found this book.



Those in the management are always busy. Busy maintaining service quality, developing new businesses, taking care of resources and manpower, etc. A lot of these responsibilities are easy, if compared to coaching and developing reporting employees.

We blame the employees for not having the right working attitude, not taking initiative and for not taking ownership of their respective tasks.
This book is an easy read. It has several scenarios that helps facilitate understanding of some of the tools.

This book has made a strong emphasis on proper communication and making the necessary preparations before a dialogue with an employee. I had my fair share of experience while I was managing Prince George's Park Residence. We assume that our employees understand or interpret information the way we expect it to be interpreted. Communicating to the employees what we want them to do and actually getting them to do it is one of the largest challenges. To close that gap, we will need to know how to apply the following 3 types of conversations;
1. Conversations that change performance
2. Conversation that keep people interested and satisfied with their work
3. Conversations that keep people learning and be ready for the future.

Before engaging with the employee, Alan recommends the Five-Minute Positive Preparation using a simple 3-step model;
1. Identify - purpose of this conversation.
2. Involve - How to seek improvement or create a solution.
3. Initiate - steps forward.

I really do recommend this book to those in supervisory and leadership positions. If I had this knowledge earlier on, I strongly believe that things could have turned out very differently