Drop 01 · Communication skills · Tinglish
You know the answer in the meeting and you say nothing. That is not a vocabulary problem, and no amount of better English fixes it.
Recognition
How many of those six did you recognise?
That is the number this is for.
Drop 01 · the first one ever
Because a lecture gets written before it gets delivered. Somebody decides what you need to know, writes it down, and reads it at you. Every awkward part gets removed in the draft. That is the teacher getting comfortable. It is not you getting better.
I did not write it. I sat down and got asked. When my answer was vague, I got asked again. What survived is what I actually believe, including the parts where the popular advice is wrong.
It plays like a podcast, because it is one. Eight-minute pieces on a phone, on a commute, without a desk. You do not need to sit down to learn this. You need to keep going.
I am not going to give you any frameworks. Any gimmickry frameworks.
Who is answering
First day in an office. Somebody asked me to introduce myself to the room.
I knew what to say. I said nothing.
I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t talk — although I was good at communicating. But you’re being judged.
Eight thousand rupees a month, selling for HP.
I had an engineering degree I had already quit in my head, and I was a backbencher before that.
So I gave myself homework nobody assigned. Five people a day, from departments that were not mine. Finance. HR. Logistics. Procurement.
Not networking. Practice.
At twenty-five I quit and started something of my own.
It died.
Not the market. Not the money. I could not back myself in a room.
I thought every god was against me.
Business schools would not consider me. I did not meet the eligibility criteria.
Before that there had been an interview at SAP, for a job I was punching well above my weight for. He asked what I do outside work. I said I read books. He asked which one. I named a book I had read half of. I read everything half.
He never said anything.
I got to know that he got to know that I didn’t read the book fully.
I kept at it and got in anyway. Manila. Then a whole market to run with nobody under me, and five hundred campaigns to get through.
Now I am the one on the other side of the table. I hire. I decide.
And I decide on how you carry yourself long before I get to what is on your CV.
I have my own metrics. I have my own meter.
AIM Manila. Regional Director, Luxury Escapes. Founder, Nerige Story and Social Hippi. Bootstrapped, no outside money.
The eight
01
You stop treating this as an English problem and start treating it as a clarity problem, which is the only version of it you can fix.
If you explain a task to someone today, then ask them to say it back to you before they start.
02
You find out that listening is doing most of the work, and that you have spent your whole life practising the one part that matters least.
If you are in a meeting this week, then ask three questions before you offer one opinion.
03
You can walk into a room with four lines — context, objective, strategy, what you need — instead of talking until something lands.
If you have something to ask your manager, then write those four lines first and send nothing longer.
04
Your work becomes visible to the person who decides, without you becoming the person everyone can hear selling themselves.
If you finish something worth reporting, then report it in three sentences with one number in it.
05
You learn which room wants evidence and which room wants the story, and stop bringing the wrong one to each.
If you catch yourself starting with “basically we just…”, then stop and tell it as what changed, for whom, by how much.
06
“I am an introvert, this is just how I am” stops being an explanation you are allowed to use on yourself.
If somebody corrects you in front of other people, then say “you’re right” out loud and stop talking.
07
You can open a conversation with someone you have never met, and keep your voice steady while you do it.
If you are at an event this month, then talk to two people before you go anywhere near the food.
08
You answer the question everybody rehearses and nobody answers — and you can say no to your boss without apologising for it.
If somebody asks you that this week, then answer in sixty seconds without listing where you have worked.
Why the reps
Not a worksheet. Not a quiz. One specific public action within 48 hours, because that is the only part of any of this that changes anything. You can watch all eight and do none of them, and nothing will happen. Agree?
Look like a fool. Look like a bloody fool. It’s okay.
Fair warning
Drop 01 · Communication Skills · Tinglish
₹499
The way people actually talk in an office. Telugu, English, whatever the sentence needs. We call it Tinglish because that is honestly what it is. A course about communicating clearly should not start by performing a language at you.
Eight modules, cut into pieces you can finish on a commute. I am not going to quote you a total runtime until the final cut is timed, because a number I have not checked is exactly the kind of thing this course is about not doing.
Maybe not. If you speak up in meetings, ask for what you want, and say no without rehearsing it — you are past this. Fair warning rather than a sales line.
Recorded. It was a real conversation on a real day, and you get the whole thing including the parts where I stop and correct myself.
You get it and you keep it. One payment, no subscription, no renewal.
Yes. The policy is written on the refund page and I would rather you read it than take my word here.
No, and that is the point. Good English and good communication are two different skills. Plenty of people with the first one still are not getting heard.
One specific public thing you do within forty-eight hours of finishing a module. Not a quiz. Something that costs you a small, survivable amount of embarrassment on purpose, because that is the only part that changes anything.