Students’ Speak: What should be your focus areas for GD preparation?

By: Bisharah Saeed

Preparing for GD is not something that you can achieve just by reading a few points out of a book. It’s like maths. You have to practice it in order to master it.

Needless to say, Group Discussion (GD) is one of the most important sessions which you have to overcome in any management college in order to step into the corporate world. It is actually a session to test your capabilities, attitude and communication skills in a group. Being in a group is not the same as being alone. You will need a lot of patience and sometimes even though you would want to express your opinion, you may need to do it in a subtle way rather than going directly against your colleague even though the input from your colleague doesn’t make sense.

Talking about the preparation methods, I’ll be honest, books will not help you in this case. Preparing for GD is not something that you can achieve just by reading a few points out of a book. It’s like maths. You have to practice it in order to master it. What I would suggest is to watch a lot of videos on YouTube regarding how you should present yourself in a GD. Again, watching just one video won’t do the trick. You need to watch as much as you can because you might not gain everything that you need from one video. What’s missing in one video can be found in another. While watching, maybe you can note down a few points where you currently go wrong. After watching and having an idea in your mind, practise these steps on your own. You can do these either on your own or you can take the help of your friend whichever suits you.

One thing you need to make sure is to never talk fast. You may have colleagues from different parts of the country or even, the world. Everyone one of them may not be that fluent in English. Besides, this is a discussion. So, everyone needs to understand what you are saying. The best way to achieve this is to talk slowly and clearly. This is not something that you can master within one day. It might take days, months, even years. Again, practice is the only way in which you can achieve this. Also, this is one of the criteria on the basis of which you will be evaluated in a GD. Another thing to be kept in mind is that it is not about just blabbering a lot of points in a GD. The person who said the most number of points may not win. Instead, you should make sure that you are giving out relevant points at the right time in a discussion. Along with this, you should make sure that you are paying attention to a person when he/she is speaking failure to which may be seen as a sign of disrespect.

Another way in which you can prepare for GDs is through your colleges itself, provided that the college provides programmes in which you can improve your GD and PI skills. You can also approach a friend whom you feel is excellent in GD and ask him/her to evaluate you and monitor your changes over time.

About the Author:

Bisharah Saeed is a second-year Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) student at Rajagiri Business School. He has a Bachelor's degree in Automobile Engineering. Bisharah has over 10 months of work experience at Amazon.