CURRICULUM DESIGN
need is an understanding of AI, entrepreneurship and start-ups. They need hard analytic skills. They must be numerate and understand how businesses really work.” I don’t disagree with these sentiments, but my point is that many ambitious, clever and determined MBA-level graduates come unstuck because they did not attend to their soft skills adequately. This in turn meant they did not manage people well, including colleagues, customers and even board members. As a psychologist, I freely admit to an element of bias. But I think the data here is on my side. Most start-ups fail and many businesses fold as a rule, but one neglected reason for this (among many) is people management. My father called it charm, I called it social skills when studying it at university; nowadays, it is called emotional intelligence. It can be taught and is a good investment for anyone attending business school. Psychology usually only gets a look-in on an MBA, or equivalent programme through courses on behavioural economics, or as part of an HR-inspired option around people management. Yes, there is a lot of pressure on curriculum time, particularly in a volatile and changing world, but neglecting the chance to help students better understand themselves and others is a serious error in my opinion. The research presented at the start of this article shows that it is at least partially responsible for the fact that roughly half of all senior managers ‘come unstuck’ in their role and they do so largely because of people-related issues.
sometimes refer to loosely as experiential learning. Some people fail to be selected for a job not because of their intellect, but because of perceived shortcomings relating to their ‘experience of life’ and the way in which they can demonstrate how they have coped with setbacks. The second technique concerns self-acceptance. This is neither an over-estimation or under-estimation of your talents. Not all of us are intelligent, creative and insightful combined, but it’s always sad to witness people who ignore or underplay their strengths as weaknesses. Find out what you are good at, what you are less good at and derive a plan. Lastly, seek out feedback from others. A good friend, boss or teacher is one who tells it like it is. Such people will help you clarify the crucial questions of “What is really important to me?” and “Who is the authentic me?” In essence, that is why coaching has become so popular, as part of the business school experience and independently of it. To be truly self-aware is to be more resilient, more realistic and more predictable to others. A narcissist who vainly seeks ever- more reassurance from others is as unappealing (and probably as unhappy) as a depressive who only sees personal faults. For proponents of Freudian psychology, the goal of all therapy is self-awareness; namely, to understand the murky unconsciousness, the real self and the inner child. This process can be taught – a week-long intensive course on what might be called personal assessment, self-knowledge or skills auditing, followed up by skilled coaching, could be the best investment one can make at business school in helping graduates to avoid derailment in their subsequent careers. The case for psychology’s inclusion Some people are more intuitive than others. This is about being perceptive, insightful and attuned to the vagaries and nuances of everyday interactions. It is also about being psychologically minded: picking up the clues and cues; reading between the lines; and understanding the subtexts. The question is whether you are good at sensing the motivations and hidden agendas of others and whether you seem instinctively to know the right things to say or do to influence others. Being socially perceptive is a valuable skill, but can you teach insight? I would propose tackling this topic over three short courses that run for no more than a few days each. The first would be on the psychology of selling, where students are tasked with selling things, perhaps door-to-door or even by cold calling. The second would be on counselling skills, where they must learn to deal with seriously upset people, such as those who phone the Samaritans hotline. The third course would focus on acting or drama, allowing participants to learn how to express emotions. I can already hear colleagues and detractors say: “This is all soft, pointless and often expensive flim-flam. What students
Adrian Furnham is an honorary professor of psychology at Birkbeck Business School, Birkbeck, University of London. He is a fellow of the British Psychological Society and is on the editorial board of several international journals. Furnham is also the author of 1,500 peer-reviewed papers and 100 books, including The New Psychology: The 50 Newest Concepts That Are Shaping How We Live and Work , published by Bloomsbury Business
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Business Impact • ISSUE 4 • 2024
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