PSYCHOLOGY
managers must reflect these trends and adapt their leadership decisions in a flexible, open-minded manner. This is essential as the statistics on mental health and psychosocial risks reported by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work reveal alarmingly high numbers of job stress and poor work performance due to absenteeism, presenteeism or inadequate management. The younger generations place importance on (and require when seeking a job) a good work/life balance, su cient leisure time and a healthy environment, to name but a few elements. How will we prepare managers and leaders for the requirements of future generations? How will we help today’s younger employees to cope with stress and be more resilient? What demands does today’s world place on the personality of a leader in terms of these new cultural and psychosocial phenomena? This year in Berlin, during a capacity-building workshop organised by AMBA’s sister organisation, BGA, I spoke to many colleagues who had similar questions, such as how to train a new generation of leaders to be less prone to work stress, more immunised to deal with the changing world and able to emphasise the sustainability of their creative and fresh leadership. In line with PRME (the principles for responsible management education), we may also ask what education and training will be indispensable for future leaders in MBA programmes and which psychosocial subjects will become important and inevitable parts of the curriculum. Subjects we might like to consider could be psychological literacy, mental-health coaching, psychological prevention and protection for leaders, gender, sexual and cultural literacy, mindfulness training, philosophical values in 21st-century leadership and purposeful leadership, as well as leadership based on emotional intelligence and critical thinking. Clearly the quality of a professional organisation equates to the quality of those individuals working within it, without whom there is no profit or prosperity. To form, create and develop a new generation of big leadership personalities having graduated from our MBA programmes is the most challenging and inspiring goal for our international community.
name but a few, have become buzzwords. We often do not realise that they represent the theories of former scholars. For instance, ‘stepping out of our comfort zone’ represents the scientific finding that in order to reach our goals we must understand our fears, learn how to manage our emotions and navigate our behaviour without feelings of uncertainty. Especially at the start of a management career, young leaders will step out of their comfort zone very often and therefore should be well prepared for these circumstances to prevent their failure in key decision- making or negotiation. We should o er them mentoring and support on their journey in the same way that Telemachus’ teacher, who was the original Mentor, supported his young protégé, son of the Greek hero Odysseus, when on his voyage for many years. Back to the present and to Andrew Main Wilson’s remarks on business students: “Graduates need to ask themselves ‘Who am I? What makes me unique and di erentiates me from the other candidates applying for a job?’”. In turn, we as educators need to ask ourselves the following questions: How do we prepare our students to fulfil these words? What are the contemporary educational goals when educating future leaders in our MBA programmes in the context of personality? What educational and training didactics should we present to managers and leaders regarding their personality development, growth and proper self-awareness? Should we incorporate more personality development subjects into our curriculum to help cultivate a student’s character, or should this be any teacher’s professional responsibility as a sort of ‘side-e ect’ of their teaching methods? What skills are essential for dealing with the current turbulent and uncertain world that we should help students to develop? How do we shape and cultivate the personalities of our future leaders in MBA schools? Challenges of the present era The demands on the culture of an organisation change nearly every decade. The world of corporate culture in the 21st century respects many values, including quality of education, expertise, sustainability, equality, anti-discrimination measures and so on. Regardless of the era, however, all managers and leaders are at the centre of attention and their actions are subject to criticism, analysis and evaluation, as well as admiration. Based on historical experience, being a leader and manager therefore means being equipped with psychological competences that allow you to cope with numerous challenges. These include pressure, stress, assessment, management of subordinates, demanding work pace, daily multi-level communication, interacting with the media, serious decision-making and finding solutions in often di cult situations, both in the sphere of work relations and in the application of material and moral responsibility. Today, we face new constructs in HR culture such as the concept of hot-button issues, protecting mental health at work, providing psychological services for employees and reducing psychosocial risks, in line with ISO regulation 45001-003. Whether these are fads or the real needs of the organisation and the workforce, backed up by scientific data and the relentless changes in the world,
BIOGRAPHY Daniel Tuma is a management psychologist, entrepreneur and founder of Made in Czechoslovakia and the Czechoslovak Business School, headquartered in Prague and Bratislava, central Europe. He holds an MBA in applied psychology in management
Ambition DECEMBER 2023/JANUARY 2024 | 33
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