MANILA, Philippines - In a profile piece on American industrialist and investor Warren Buffett by the BBC in 2009, he told the interviewer how he was so afraid of speaking in public. But one course helped him overcome this fear.
“I was so terrified.... I would throw up, I couldn’t do it. So I took this Dale Carnegie course and as soon as I finished, I was 20 years old then, I went to the University of Omaha and said ‘I want to start teaching.’ I wanted to get up in front of people and make sure I didn’t lapse back,” Buffett narrated.
Dale Carnegie, renowned author of the best-selling self-help book — How to Win Friends and Influence People — had introduced in 1912 a public speaking course and taught students how to express themselves better by gaining more self-confidence.
To this day, Buffett proudly says, the only diploma he has hanging on his office wall is his Dale Carnegie diploma.
From a public speaking course that started out at a YMCA hall, Dale Carnegie Training has evolved “to become a performance-based training organization,” says Bienvenido S. Policarpio, president of Executive Training Institute of the Philippines (ETIOP). ETIOP is the licensed sponsor of Dale Carnegie training programs courses in the Philippines
The first Dale Carnegie Course in the Philippines was launched in 1952 as a Manila Jaycees project for the benefit of its members and the community.
“The training focuses on giving people in the public and private sector the opportunity to sharpen their skills and improve their performance in their respective organizations and industries to build positive, steady, measurable results,” Policarpio says.
There are several courses that cater to the different requirements of managers, chief executives, sales and marketing staff, even beauty pageant candidates!
“We customize the training module for participants. There is one for every need — is it assertiveness you need? EQ? Enthusiasm? Habit? It’s a misnomer that people still think Dale Carnegie is just a public speaking course. We’re here to train leaders, and future leaders, how to behave in public gatherings, how to make sales pitches, how to manage staff, and also public speaking,” Policarpio stresses.
For instance, he says, the most popular course especially among supervisors, managers and some executives is the basic course for Effective Communications and Human Relations. “This course helps participants strengthen interpersonal relations, communicate clearly and concisely, tackle complex challenges with confidence, move beyond their comfort zone, as well as control worry and manage stress.”
Another in-demand course is the Leadership Training for Managers which helps managers “build morale and earn loyalty of the staff, gain cooperation at every level, coach and motivate one’s staff to success, help land implement change initiatives, develop strategies that foster these changes, and empower their team to deliver results.”
Other courses include High-Impact Presentations which helps people structure their presentations and how to sell their ideas to their target group.
To date, ETIOP has produced over 150,000 Dale Carnegie graduates in the country. Among them are well-known personalities in industry and government such as Tony Tancaktiong, president of Jollibee Foods Corp.; Mariano Que, founder of Mercury Drugstore; Ambassador Francisco del Rosario; former Senator Freddie Webb; beauty queen and actress Precious Lara Quigaman, TV host Miriam Quiambao; Preciosa Soliven, founder of OB Montessori, to name a few.
Dale Carnegie courses, Policarpio emphasizes, have helped Filipinos immensely because “by nature, we are shy. More so, when we face Caucasians, we tend to clam up.”
Companies and organizations which have sent employees and managers to ETIOP for training include Nokia Philippines, Globe Telecom, Jollibee, Caltex Philippines, San Miguel Corp., Sun Life of Canada, Texas Instruments, Federal Express, Dole-Stanfilco, the US Embassy, Pryce Waterhouse, and the Bb. Pilipinas Charities Inc.
ETIOP’s partnership with Bb. Pilipinas Charities, for instance, is one of the most successful tieups and training activities for Dale Carnegie in the Philippines. The partnership is currently in its 17th year.
“Before the Dale Carnegie training,” Policarpio stresses, “many candidates/title holders took too long to answer. They were not spontaneous, had no thinking formula, had little or no sense of global environment, and used common language and not politically correct terms. Dale changed that as they went through the training. Practicing questions and answers with them and giving them a formula on how to answer questions helped them improve in those aspects.”
ETIOP is currently training the 24 Bb. Pilipinas finalists for the coronation night on April 10 at the Araneta Coliseum.
Although there are basic templates for the training courses, he says ETIOP is allowed to create modules that are specific to the needs of each client. “Sometimes the companies come to us, they say ‘this is the course we want.’ So we ask them to describe what exactly their needs are, and their objectives for their trainees.
A basic communications course, for instance, answers specific communication needs per industry. “We recognize that for a communications course, for instance, the needs of the airline industry is different from say, the manufacturing industry. Or the hotel industry. A communications course is a wide topic - do you need a simple business correspondence course? Is it how to process thoughts in your mind? Like, you hear a lot of people going around in circles but not hitting the point. So for instance, in the Bb. Pilipinas pageant, you only have 30 seconds to answer, we give you the formula to answer a question correctly.”
Policarpio dismisses the idea that one’s effectivity in communicating is grounded on one’s ability to speak English perfectly. “It’s not really good English, but rather principles acquired in human relations. Principles and thinking processes and [the answering] formula, you always put these together. Kahit magaling ka magsalita ng English, kung wala kang content, wala din.”
In Dale Carnegie’s book, The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking, a good speaker is described as “a good person who can express his ideas.”
Policarpio likens this to teaching a person how to drive: “First you have to teach the student the value of pedestrians, importance of making a U-Turn, why drivers need to follow the traffic light. After he learns all these, that’s the time you teach him how to get in the car, and use the steering wheel, and how to change gears. Similarly, that is what we teach in the Dale course, the attitude, knowledge, how to apply what you have learned, and practicing these so it becomes a habit. We have exercises - we ask the trainees to think of the worst communicator and describe him. The results usually are, English grammar has nothing to do with how good a speaker is. It’s who you are as a person.”