Below is a writeup from XL Future Leaders Batch 3 student, Claristy, about Pecha Kucha Workshop. This workshop is aim at developing students’ effective communication and managing change.

“Is everyone here?”

After finishing my exchange semester, it was the first time I got that message coming from a newly-created chatgroup. It consisted of six members including me. Scanning through who the members are, I knew that this must be related to XL Future Leaders. “It should be XLFL new group assignment. Better say hello,” I said to myself before sending an immediate reply.

“I think so. Hello all! I am so glad to be back!”

Soon after that, the other five members; Deka, Ahmad, Ita, Myra, and Hana, greeted me cheerfully. Deka, as our team leader, continued by explaining the main rules of Pecha Kucha, including the main theme “Inspirational Historical Leader” in our chatroom. So basically in this Pecha Kucha assignment, we should present one leadership value from historical leaders in a presentation consisting of 10 slides in 7 minutes sharp. It should be concise, creative, inspiring, and critical. Besides, we were not allowed to look at the slides when we presented, but to focus only on delivering substantive speech to the audience.

Knowing that this XLFL Pecha Kucha will be much more challenging as Tidar (our program facilitator) would invite executives of XL to judge our presentation, I got so pumped up. I said to myself, “I should do my best.”

The road to success comes with challenges, boundaries, and hardships. Fortunately, my teammates were actively trying to find a period of time in when we could discuss further on the value, figure, and distribution of the workforce. Everybody was so cooperative and spiritful in doing the assignments, and that triggered the flame that was once in me. We synchronized our vision, goal, and structure. Some of the teammates actively asked another XLFL members from another workshop to get insights. We shared our findings and opinions before engaging ourselves in deliberation.

However, there were frictions because we had two devil’s advocates in the team (fyi: Devil’s Advocate is the person who takes position to  argue new ideas/opinions). While everybody was immersed in Ita’s suggestion on bringing A as historical leader, I would appear as devil’s advocate that questioned the feasibility of idea by bringing the possible counter-remarks audience would bring up. But I was not the only one. If anybody’s suggestion was up, Ita could act as the devil’s advocate too. With us as the devil’s advocates, I should say there were times that Ita and I could be the one intensely debating on whether we should focus on a particular thing or not. But because other members were actively involved, our team was so dynamic and the idea flow was fantastic. I was so blessed to be in this team.

“Yes! We are ready to meet Tidar for mentoring then!”

Our team finally decided to meet Tidar for mentoring to get review on our ongoing process and vision. And there was how another breathtaking moment for the team happened. Our presentation was said to be classic, mainstream, and so-so. That was certainly not how we want our hardwork to be valued. We wanted to be inspiring, different, and critical. I should say meeting Tidar enlightened me, and my team. Deka came out with brilliant ideas that contribute greatly to our presentation. Ita came out with another exceptional closing that we could use to be creative. And that was when Ahmad gave us constructive opinions regarding those ideas. Hana and Myra was engaged in the discussion too. Finally, we did something entirely different from the other teams – we was then appointed as the best team by Simeon Iheukumere, Head of IT Service Build in XL Axiata.

After countless restructurations, meetings, reviews, idea flows; our hardwork paid off. We found out that we were the team that practiced the most among other teams, and we also did mentoring twice to ensure that our presentation will not only be good enough, but excellent.

Pratice never betrays you.

While other people believe in practice makes perfect, I don’t think it applies to our situation. In our presentation, some of our team members forgot their lines and ended up improvising. So it was not entirely perfect, but I would say that the countless practice that we continuously did had resulted in the deep understanding on the issue that we brought. Thus, we presented not because we memorized the content, but because we understood what we were saying.

The other essential key learning I acquired of Pecha Kucha assignment is about critical thinking – the way to think of something that was entirely different from the way majority will think of, something that had never crossed people’s minds. Bring out another perspective and see it through that angle to find something new, and that is how people will notice and listen to you.

In the Pecha Kucha assignment, I learnt not only how to deliver substantive speech in a short period of time, how to align everyone’s perspective into one same goal, but also how to build the teamwork and have fun but deep relationships with the people I worked along. And the sweet result is addictive!

It generates the fiery motivation in me – I want to always make the best, out of myself.