MDP Code: PKT-MDP-09
Director: Prof. Kuruvilla Pandikattu & Team
Managers communicate all day. They write emails, conduct meetings, give feedback, negotiate deadlines, manage conflict, speak to teams, handle rumours, and represent the organisation before stakeholders.
Yet communication is rarely neutral.
A word can clarify or confuse.
A silence can protect or manipulate.
A meeting can build trust or deepen fear.
A message can persuade with respect, or pressure people into compliance.
This MDP helps leaders and managers understand communication as a moral and managerial practice. It is not only about speaking well. It is about speaking responsibly.
The programme focuses on persuasion, clarity, disagreement, feedback, difficult conversations, and trust. Participants learn how to communicate firmly without humiliation, persuade without manipulation, disagree without drama, and correct without cruelty.
The central concern is simple:
How can managers communicate in ways that are effective, truthful, respectful, and institutionally useful?
Many organisational problems are communication problems before they become performance problems.
Teams suffer when managers:
Communicate vaguely
Avoid difficult conversations
Use threats instead of clarity
Allow rumours to grow
Give feedback too late
Hide information unnecessarily
Speak harshly under pressure
Confuse authority with volume
Use half-truths to manage people
Over time, these habits damage trust.
Employees begin to guess what leaders really mean. Meetings become performative. Silence replaces honesty. People protect themselves instead of solving problems.
This programme helps participants recognise that communication is not merely a soft skill. It is a culture-making force.
In Indian organisational settings, where hierarchy, indirect speech, face-saving, and fear of offending seniors often shape conversations, communication competence becomes especially important.
Managers need to learn how to be clear without being rude, respectful without being vague, and persuasive without becoming manipulative.
The vision of this programme is to build communicators who can combine clarity, dignity, and effectiveness.
The programme invites participants to examine their own everyday communication habits:
Do I speak clearly enough?
Do I avoid necessary conversations?
Do I use pressure when I should use reason?
Do people feel safe enough to disagree with me?
Do my meetings reduce confusion or increase it?
Do my words build trust or merely secure compliance?
The deeper goal is to help organisations create communication cultures where truth can travel without fear.
The central claim is:
Good communication is not just polished expression. It is responsible influence.
Ideal for:
Mid-level managers
Senior leadership teams
HR leaders
Team leaders
Project heads
Client-facing professionals
Academic administrators
Professionals responsible for people, performance, persuasion, and conflict resolution
1โ5 Day Format
This MDP can be tailored according to organisational need:
1-Day Format
Focused exposure to communication ethics, difficult conversations, and practical scripts.
3-Day Format
Deeper work on persuasion, feedback, conflict, meetings, rumours, and stakeholder communication.
5-Day Format
Intensive immersion with simulations, role plays, communication labs, case analysis, and personal communication coaching.
By the end of the programme, participants will be able to:
Reduce ambiguity, mixed signals, and unnecessary confusion in managerial communication.
Influence others through reason, trust, and shared purpose rather than fear, flattery, or pressure.
Use practical scripts for feedback, disagreement, rumours, poor performance, conflict, and emotional situations.
Learn how to challenge ideas, decisions, and behaviour without creating personal hostility.
Understand how tone, timing, transparency, and follow-through affect credibility.
Design and conduct meetings that reduce confusion, encourage participation, and lead to clear decisions.
Create communication conditions where people can share concerns without theatre, fear, or retaliation.
Themes may include:
Why every managerial message carries power, consequence, and responsibility.
How to say difficult things directly without humiliating people.
Where influence becomes ethically problematic.
Feedback, correction, disagreement, underperformance, exits, and conflict.
How distorted communication damages trust and what managers can do about it.
Designing conversations that produce clarity, participation, and accountability.
Why managers often listen too late, too defensively, or only to the powerful.
How to speak when emotions, deadlines, conflict, or public scrutiny are high.
Email, WhatsApp, Teams, and the ethics of speed, tone, escalation, and documentation.
The programme uses an interactive and practice-oriented approach, including:
Conceptual inputs
Communication self-assessment
Role plays
Realistic workplace scenarios
Difficult-conversation scripts
Email and message rewriting exercises
Meeting simulations
Group dialogue
Feedback practice
Personal communication action planning
Participants work with actual communication challenges: unclear instructions, tense meetings, angry stakeholders, defensive employees, rumours, escalation emails, and sensitive feedback moments.
The focus is practical and behavioural. Participants learn not only what good communication means, but how to practise it under pressure.
Participants will leave with:
A clearer understanding of communication as responsible influence
Practical scripts for difficult conversations
Tools for giving feedback with dignity
Better ability to persuade without manipulation
Methods for reducing rumours and confusion
Meeting practices that support clarity and accountability
Greater confidence in handling disagreement and conflict
A personal communication improvement plan
For organisations, this MDP can:
Improve managerial clarity
Reduce conflict caused by poor communication
Strengthen trust between leaders and teams
Improve meeting quality and decision follow-through
Reduce rumours, gossip, and informal distortion
Support healthier feedback cultures
Improve stakeholder communication under pressure
It is especially relevant where organisations struggle with:
Ambiguous instructions
Fear of speaking up
Defensive meetings
Rumour-driven culture
Harsh feedback styles
Passive resistance
Poor cross-functional communication
Escalations caused by avoidable misunderstanding
The programme helps institutions move beyond the idea that communication is merely presentation skill.
It asks a deeper question:
Do our words create clarity, dignity, and trustโor do they quietly produce fear, confusion, and distance?
Its deeper institutional value lies in forming managers who can speak with courage, listen with humility, and persuade without violating respect.
Date: Negotiable
Cost: Negotiable
Venue: Negotiable
Duration: Suggested 1โ5 days
MDP Code: PKT-MDP-09