The PGDM-HR students of TAPMI had an opportunity to interact with Ms. Deepali Ghosh, who heads the Learning and Development function at SPAR India – Landmark Group in a guest lecture organized by the HR Forum. The topic of discussion was “The Emotional Quotient Factor” and the interaction focused on emotional intelligence and the role it plays in our lives as employees, employers and HR Managers.

The session was very engaging and interactive, and included various video clips, real life examples, and activities to identify, develop and focus on EQ in our day to day lives. Ms. Ghosh shared her own experiences at SPAR and spoke about how important it is for the organization to consider all employees not just as money-making machines but as human beings. She also spoke about many other instances of support, empathy and consideration extended by other organizations like Vistara, IndiGo Airlines and many more towards their employees. This was followed by a discussion on essential qualities for developing leadership and focused on self-awareness as one of the most important aspects, citing examples of the leadership development program carried out at SPAR India following a similar ideology.

The students were encouraged to share their experiences and other instances where they observed emotional intelligence being displayed and how it affected the situation. The students enthusiastically participated and discussed their personal experiences at work, college and other circumstances. A very interesting activity was also carried out wherein a few students shared a story that was emotionally important to them while the others had to carefully observe and interpret various verbal and non-verbal signals including – facial expressions, body language and speech. This activity made the students more aware and attentive towards such subtle cues while interacting with people on a day to day basis, and develop an understanding of others’ emotions as well.

The students were delighted to learn so much out of the ordinary things that is generally overlooked by many. It was an insightful experience to understand how even one action done from your end can make somebody else’s day much better. The interaction also went on about effectively communicating the ideas in an organization using EQ and changing the narrative in a positive manner. Ms. Deepali Ghosh inspired the students to be emotionally intelligent HR professionals and not lose the human spirit amidst all the technology taking away the limelight. At the end of the day, only human beings are capable of offering empathy, understanding, humanity and those emotions are the ones that stay with the employees and build a strong loyalty and commitment towards any organization. Students expressed their gratitude to Ms. Ghosh for stating that one does not have to put on a façade while going to work. It is always a great experience to have such thought-provoking interactions with industry professionals and have them share their perspectives by offering something new to think about. The student community at TAPMI never runs out of these opportunities to learn and expand their horizons by interacting with leaders from various industries throughout the year.

“As Human Resource students, we are asked to guard our emotions and not involve them in our decision making. Ms. Deepali was the first person who taught us that the best way to get through to your employees is by being expressive about our real emotions.” – Rizwana Razak, PGDM-HR Student

“In this era of digitization where everybody says that AI is taking over, Ma’am taught us that emotions, showing care for the people in the workplace is of more importance than ever before. A simple connection between an employee and a company is based on how the employee was treated there, and she told us to look back on areas where we felt good or bad and why we distinctively remember those memories, to drive the message home” – Kanika Deshpande, PGDM-HR Student