Problem
A group of 9 friends invest equally in a business opportunity that costs $20,000. If n more friends were to take part evenly in the investment...
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The last place mechanical engineer Andrew Wilkinson ever expected to find himself was on stage. Yet this fall, the second-year student at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business took the advice of several recent graduates and enrolled in Business Acting, performing scenes from plays like Death of a Salesman. Now, Wilkinson believes the lessons he learned in drama class are just as important for his future as those he picked up in traditional M.B.A. courses like Finance and Marketing Management.
"I learned that confidence and self-awareness in front of people are essential-that you have to be able to fully commit to whatever you're selling or talking about," he says. One example: Little things like planting your feet instead of shifting your weight make a big difference in how an audience perceives you. The 26-year-old hopes his new interpersonal skills will propel him to the top at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, where he'll be an associate next year. "I look at it like a poker game," he explains. "Your ante is your quantitative skills-you have to be able to solve the problem-but a lot of people will have their version of the right answer, so it's having the ability to connect and to communicate your message clearly that makes all the difference."
Indeed, a growing number of employers agree that it is communication, leadership, teamwork, and other so-called soft skills that truly distinguish M.B.A. candidates today. According to a 2006 survey by the Graduate Management Admission Council, nearly two fifths of employers say these are extremely important in selection and hiring. "The globalization of business requires companies to operate across a wider degree of diversity when it comes to clients, shareholders, and employees," says John Costas, chairman and CEO of Dillon Read Capital Management, a hedge fund in Stamford, Conn. "That's where things like leadership, being a team player, empathy, and excellent communication come into play." This is especially true over the course of a career, he notes, as executives take on general management responsibilities.
Business schools are responding with offerings on topics like ethics, negotiation and persuasion, business writing, and, yes, occasionally even the arts. Some are launching entire programs dedicated to soft skills. Starting next year, for example, all first-year students at Vanderbilt's Owen Graduate School of Management will participate in Learning to Lead, which will include personality assessments as well as executive coaching and voluntary activities such as military leadership simulations. At the University of Texas-Austin McCombs School of Business, all first-year students now pay $800 for the first two semesters of the extracurricular Plus program, which includes services like Coach-on-Call for help preparing a presentation, say, or advice about presentations and job-skills seminars.
Tell me about it. Teamwork, of course, is now part of nearly every M.B.A. curriculum. At the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, for example, students work in groups in 75 percent of their classes, and half of all grades are issued to teams. Students get constant anonymous feedback from their peers; they also design individual leadership development plans, which track strengths, weaknesses, progress, and goals and are similar to the personal development portfolios required at institutions like Northeastern University. "Some people say leaders are born, not made, but we don't believe that," says Tuck Dean Paul Danos. "We think we can push students up the ladder of leadership faster by exposing them to as many different experiences as possible and making them sensitive to their own skills and how they're coming across."
For those who think classes in leadership and communication sound like fluff, administrators warn that soft skills are actually hard work. "They involve our own emotions and other people in a way that technical skills do not," says Bruce Clark, the faculty coordinator for the M.B.A. program at Northeastern, recently revamped with the help of more than 20 employers to incorporate eight soft skills. It's much easier for most M.B.A. types to solve an econ problem set than to deal with interpersonal issues, agrees Jill Cartwright, 34, a second-year M.B.A. candidate at Babson College, where she started by composing poetry as part of a weeklong program that challenges students to apply imaginative approaches to dance and music-and then to management issues. Cartwright had to confront a recalcitrant team member who refused to participate and snickered at others' work. "I realized that oftentimes you have to work through conflict to get to cohesion and consensus, and learned a lot about how productive conflict can be when it's handled appropriately," she says.
While would-be M.B.A.'s like Drew Wilkinson are getting a strong dose of soft-skills training at Carnegie Mellon, Dean Kenneth Dunn cautions that it's important for the pendulum not to swing too far. "To face and solve complex problems in a rapidly changing world where data is more readily available ... you really do need analytical skills," says Dunn, a former managing director of Morgan Stanley Investment Management. In other words, it doesn't matter how well you communicate if you don't have the knowledge and understanding to back it up. If schools cut back on core subjects like accounting, finance, and marketing to incorporate more qualitative learning, "we're going to end up outsourcing the analysis to the rest of the world, and at some point that gives them a real competitive advantage," he warns. "That's definitely not good in the long run-for M.B.A. students or for the competitiveness of the U.S. economy."
Smart Choices
SUSTAINABLE ENTERPRISE. Global warming got you down? Schools including Kenan-Flagler at UNC-Chapel Hill have programs to help business execs balance profitability, ecological integrity, and social equity (related story, Page 54). DESIGN. A handful of programs (example: Illinois Institute of Technology's Master of Design/M.B.A. dual degree) have cutting-edge offerings that combine studies in design, management, and innovation.
Insider Tip
To stay a step ahead of globalization, consider heading abroad for your M.B.A., especially if you want to get back into the working world in a hurry: Many European schools, including the prestigious INSEAD, with campuses in France and Singapore, and IMD, in Switzerland, have shortened their programs to just one year. Similar in design and content to their U.S. counterparts, they tend to be faster paced and aimed at students with additional work experience; they also offer faculty and student diversity and are less expensive overall.
Reality Check
Average base salary for '06 M.B.A. grads: $88,591. Average signing bonus (for those who reported one): $16,463.
Best-paying job: consulting; avg. compensation: $98,435. No. 2: general management, $89,506.
M.B.A. students who have accepted a job before they graduate: 73%
What they don't tell you in B-school: In a global survey on organizational agility, 69% said their organizations experienced disruptive change in the past 12 months.
REALITY CHECK SOURCES: MBA CAREER SERVICES COUNCIL; AMERICAN MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION
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