Fr McGrath the Magician and a Sage

 “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

Fr McGrath the pioneering founder of India’s oldest B-school XLRI was a Karma Yogi. True to Christian tradition he believed in Basics of Management skills. His other influences were probably Dale Carnegie and Jaycee movement in America. In my time XLRI focus was more on Transactional Analysis and Assertiveness in Communication. Nevertheless Fr McGrath emphasized on Speaking, writing and reading. He called it three Rs and made his students practice speed reading, one minute speech practice and writing business letters as well as resume writing.

What Difference would show Up at Your Best Make in Your Life— at Home, at Work, and in your Community?

Business communication is about bringing polish and right manners in the way we communicate to public. First 30 second impact creates lasting impression on what ensues aftermath.

Words create worlds.

As a child, conversations, body language, and energy exchange never ceased to gain my attention. The desire to know how communication and energetic connection impact every kind of relationship has fueled my interest in Public Speaking, Behavioral Science and Transactional Analysis.

The quality of every relationship depends on the quality of communication and energetic connection..

My language schooling was self-directed blabber school at a rural setting of my civil servant father’s government provided quarters as well as my urban shared rented accommodation at Chennai. For me Chennai provided perfect opportunity to splurge on my passion as I became member of American library, enrolled in coaching centres for GMAT and took computer courses. My self-directed method was loud reading news-papers, listening to BBC radio and watching American movies. I loved copying accent of top movie actors and rehearsed dialogues in the bathroom. To improve my language skills, I started a public speaking group with friends, taught English free, became a sales man, volunteered to take interviews as a journalist for a tabloid and appeared interviews with no intention of joining a job. I also volunteered to deliver speech of introduction and vote of thanks in international seminars and conferences.

If IIM Ahmadabad as a hotbed of business is the soul of India, it is the XLRI and its focus on people skills provided the suave well kempt impeccable charm to voice to Indian corporate. The soft power of HR Gurus of XLRI has provided a balance to hard driving financial wizards from all IIMs. And XLRI founder director, Fr McGrath’s Basic Managerial Skill course is the essence of behavioral makeup that HR soft power strives to bring.

If you are part of a rat race, still you remain a rat.  

My civil servant never wanted me to take a job. He encouraged me to be independent. I dropped out of CA and several other courses before my final MBA and Doctorate from Europe. 

When you are jobless, your friends and family treat you like non-entity, your cousins avoid you and may drive you out of home for being bad influence. Your sibling will always be sympathetic, nevertheless you lose your voice in the family. And if you are the one who has chosen the joblessness to work on your dream, you will be treated like a pariah.  

Imagine at that time you meet an American professor, who lives next door and offers you a course on confidence building. Your life changes. The course that changed my life was Basic Managerial Skills (BMS)by Father McGrath. Father McGrath had his ways, he made me feel like a prince. Suddenly, I started proud of what I was doing. And not being a part of family tradition of being in rat race for a govt job.  I felt proud for my love of reading books.  

BMS helped me to become a public speaker, quiz master, develop my writing skills to write for times of India and new Indian Express. And helped me become Utkal University professor at 25.  

All of a sudden provide a new direction to your career. My public speaking passion made me a successful quiz master and I conducted quizes for all top engineering colleges including CET, NIIT-Rourkela and UCE Burla for over ten years. I still remember the quiz that I conducted for Sarang Engineering College in early 2000s. The whole 2000 odd audience went enraptured for two hours of entertainment quiz. The confidence, I oozed that day made me feel like a star. 

After that all my dreams came true, it is public speaking that launched my career as a Leadership & Career Coach. In 1988, I started my career as a soft-skill trainer with society of Jesuits in India under the tutelage of Fr McGrath . At that time demand for career coaching i.e. mostly helping job aspirants with interview process and communication skills was picking up and I made a transition into a career coach in 1989. It involved job skill training, CV preparation, helping students find a right college, giving feedback on presentation skills and group observation on case study discussions.

The field was virgin and I had a good business sense to market our institution and we did quite well for over 15 years.

Arifin Academy was my Akhadda, Where I experimented and grew while growing others. It was my work of unencumbered love and surrendered action for a higher cause. It was an experimentation ground of books- I read, workshops -I attended such as NLP, TA and Coaching. As well as classes by mentors Fr McGrath, N.K.Singh and several others.

Talk all you want to, Flores says, but if you want to act powerfully, you need to master “speech acts”: language rituals that build trust between colleagues and customers, word practices that open your eyes to new possibilities. Speech acts are powerful because most of the actions that people engage in — in business, in marriage, in parenting — are carried out through conversation. But most people speak without intention; they simply say whatever comes to mind. Speak with intention, and your actions take on new purpose. Speak with power, and you act with power.

You are average of five people you interact with.

In late 1980s Bhubaneswar was a great place to be in. And if you lived in Satyanagar or Sahidnagar, you were the elite.

Bhubaneswar bustled with energy, acceptance. Beginning came when J.B.Patnaik invited Fr De Souza of XLRI to set up XIMB in Odisha. Just before Maharshi Mahesh Yogi too established Mahrishi college in Bhubaneswar. Some of its lecturers such as Achyut Samant and Bhavani Rath went on to establish great institutions later on such as KITs and Krupajal. That is the period, Odisha was trying to forget Mancheswar entrepreneurial debacle.

In Bhubaneswar I was part of a group that fueled Odisha's contribution towards artistic pursuit NGO movement to award winning movies as well as thought leadership. It was Akhaadaa/ a place of learning where wannabe journalists, artists, movie directors, singers gathered together to have tea together.

Bhubaneswar Priya Hotel was the new adda for intellectual revival of Odisha. It was called Bhubaneswar Citizen’s forum.

 The best part was Julian Boyle’s Spoken English class in Human Life Centre conducted in Bhubaneswar Convent School. In 1987 Fr McGrath moved to the Human Life Centre in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, and took over as director there. Julian Boyle was my neighbor and told me about Fr. McGrath Basic Managerial Skill Course being offered in Bhubaneswar.

In February 1987, I came to Bhubaneswar from Madras after my civil servant father took a transfer from Koraput. 

I always dreamt of joining XLRI and after dropping out of CA, being in XLRI became my only goal. One day to my utter surprise in 1987, XLRI founder came to my neighborhood and conducted a three months Basic Managerial Skill Course. I was so fascinated by the training, I attended the course three times. After meeting Fr McGrath in Basic Managerial Skill course, I went through a transformation process. Fr. McGrath had his way of finding gift in others and the way he appreciated us, transformed us from frogs to Princes After that Fr McGrath invited me to teach with him. For me that was more than XLRI. I had XLRI in my home with Fr McGrath as my mentor. When I started ARIFIN, all XLRI and XIMB aspirants came to us because Fr McGrath was teaching at ARIFIN. Of course, I went to XLRI later on a scholarship for a certificate program facilitated by Fr McGrath.

Fr. Edward Hugh McGrath, SJ, one of the founding fathers of XLRI, is no more. He passed away on August 4 after prolonged illness. He was 95 years old. He came to India in 1949 when he was 26. He was born in New York to Dr John F McGrath and Lillian McGrath on January 7, 1923. At 36, Fr McGrath became the second director of XLRI in 1959. XLRI was born to strengthen industrial India, and bring in ethical management practices strengthening both the trade unions and personnel managers. He held the position till 1962 and had his second stint as the director between 1981 and 1982. He conducted several courses for management and trade union groups at XLRI. During the 60s, XLRI, under his leadership, started offering courses for unions in collaboration with the steel unions at the Steel Worker College.

In 1987 Fr McGrath moved to the Human Life Centre in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, and took over as director there. He developed vocational training courses, such as written and spoken English, computer operating, tailoring, and carpentry among others.

Here is an excerpt from an XLRI alumni about Father McGrath’s teachings.

"Maggie taught us basic managerial skills in our first term and I must admit that, what I am today, as a professional and as a human being is because of this selfless person. His teaching style was so natural and experiential that each one of us took away a lifetime of learning from his sessions. He personified a humane spirit and one of the most important lessons learnt from him was that of humility. Irrespective of what he had achieved in his life, he was so down to earth that he made everyone, who interacted with him, feel the need to be humble. I try to emulate this learning from him and find that this has helped me build and maintain relationships across different sets/types of people in my life.

His experiential style of teaching made each one of us acquire and retain much more than what we would have learnt in the traditional style. For me, Fr McGrath was more than a teacher of a subject. He taught me what it is to live life to the fullest and be compassionate. He made me what I am. I bow before my guru, philosopher and guide and place on record my heartfelt gratitude for his hand in making me a person and a professional."

Below is another excerpt from XLRI Alumni Krish Shankar -Father McGrath- my abiding memories Published on August 5, 2017

"But his course in first semester, Basic Managerial Skills, was what set us on a magical learning path. Simply put, this course was all about the simple skills of management- defining a problem, problem solving, communication, delegation, participating in a group discussion, leading a committee meeting etc. And the focus was on real hands-on practice through role plays and exercises. He divided us into teams of 5-6 people each, and every Friday we had to perform one activity and be assessed. Eight different skills, like public speaking, participating in a committee, etc., capped by a final project where we had to organise an event for charity. But the master stroke here was that he made our senior batch assess us every week and give us feedback. The seniors were also divided into groups of 5, and we would be assessed by a different set of seniors each week on a different activity! While we learnt to practice those skills, the seniors learnt to assess us and give us good developmental feedback. And imagine the community and the bond that was created by this fabulous interaction. We got to know the seniors better, they saw us up close and helped with feedback- in fact I was amazed at the sincerity and commitment of our seniors in giving us feedback and making us feel at ease. We learnt a lot from them.

Isn’t that an innovation in learning? I think it was magical. I guess we all learnt far more in that course than we thought possible. And imagine, this was 30 years ago! And one man, sitting in that corner of Jamshedpur, was orchestrating this learning, building a magical community, instilling values and building skills that will stand the test of time! I continue to marvel at the Basic Managerial Skills book. I still have a copy and refer to it for the simple concepts, exercises and tools. The BMS course was based around that book, and had elements of peer learning, mentoring, lot of hands-on role plays, interspersed with his fun classes where he just outlined some tips. We were given numerous opportunities to apply what we learnt in the classes, and correct ourselves where needed. We learnt a tremendous amount from each other- such was the environment that was created.  He inspired people- with his simplicity, by empowering and enabling students, and by being a great role model.

What we probably need now is the kind of learning innovation that Maggie put together- a great focus on building skills, practicing in a safe environment, inspiring people with values and building a true learning community. Maggie was a true institution builder. Even as he was an inspirational teacher, he focused on bringing human values to life. He inspired many lives by his humility and simplicity, and I guess many of us still adore him for that"