Two DePaul University professors will release a study at this weekend's American Management Association meeting showing a serious disconnect between what businesses and students say they need from MBA programs.
America is finally waking up to the staggering costs associated with people in leadership positions who can't lead, communicate or conduct themselves in a dignified, principled manner. The ashtray-hurling John Bolton comes to mind as do "the smartest guys in the room" at Enron. Yet, MBA students say they have little use for these so-called "soft skills." In the study, students say soft skills won't get them jobs in a market that demands ever-increasing technical and financial prowess.
Where did this notion come from that leadership, communication, listening, synthesizing and other people skills are soft? There is nothing soft about them! In fact, it is relatively easy to master technical subjects, especially disciplines without much human interaction. Balance sheets and computer programs rarely talk back. Learning to respect and be respected, to trust and be trusted, however, are the hardest skills known to humankind. They are almost always the root of leadership, management, business and political problems that no amount of venture capital, engineering brainpower, creative bookkeeping or real estate flipping will ever solve.
If these technical skills are to be called "hard," then the human skills so desperately needed today should be called "harder." Much harder. That's it; let's call them the "hard" skills and the "even harder skills." Then, it won't be so easy to discount them by calling them "soft."
Language really matters when framing issues. I recall a Fortune 200 CEO reprimanding a top executive for bringing "intuition" into the conversation. He didn't like the word intuition because it was not serious in his mind and, if truth be told, it was also too soft and feminine for him. He said there was no room for "intuition" in any business conversation. Can you imagine?
Yet this never stopped him from invoking his own "gut feeling" in conversations. Just the sound of the word "gut" gives it the requisite masculinity but, of course, says virtually the same thing as intuition. Remember, too, Joe Biden's apocryphal question to President Bush, "What if you're wrong about Iraq?" The President told Biden he knew he was right because he had a "gut feeling."
America is finally waking up to the staggering costs associated with people in leadership positions who can't lead, communicate or conduct themselves in a dignified, principled manner. The ashtray-hurling John Bolton comes to mind as do "the smartest guys in the room" at Enron. Yet, MBA students say they have little use for these so-called "soft skills." In the study, students say soft skills won't get them jobs in a market that demands ever-increasing technical and financial prowess.
Where did this notion come from that leadership, communication, listening, synthesizing and other people skills are soft? There is nothing soft about them! In fact, it is relatively easy to master technical subjects, especially disciplines without much human interaction. Balance sheets and computer programs rarely talk back. Learning to respect and be respected, to trust and be trusted, however, are the hardest skills known to humankind. They are almost always the root of leadership, management, business and political problems that no amount of venture capital, engineering brainpower, creative bookkeeping or real estate flipping will ever solve.
If these technical skills are to be called "hard," then the human skills so desperately needed today should be called "harder." Much harder. That's it; let's call them the "hard" skills and the "even harder skills." Then, it won't be so easy to discount them by calling them "soft."
Language really matters when framing issues. I recall a Fortune 200 CEO reprimanding a top executive for bringing "intuition" into the conversation. He didn't like the word intuition because it was not serious in his mind and, if truth be told, it was also too soft and feminine for him. He said there was no room for "intuition" in any business conversation. Can you imagine?
Yet this never stopped him from invoking his own "gut feeling" in conversations. Just the sound of the word "gut" gives it the requisite masculinity but, of course, says virtually the same thing as intuition. Remember, too, Joe Biden's apocryphal question to President Bush, "What if you're wrong about Iraq?" The President told Biden he knew he was right because he had a "gut feeling."