EMBAs Gain Confidence, Lose Cockiness

There’s something to be said for living and working long enough to have failed at something. EMBA students, who are typically in their 30s to 50s, bring their rich employment past and present to the classroom every day. They come to learn not just from faculty, but also from their peers in class, and they all have a lesson or two to teach as well.

EMBA candidates, in their rise to middle management and executive ranks, have had their fair share of life lessons including: things they tried that failed, mistakes they made in delegating to people and managing up the chain of command, learning and knowing which levers to pull and which investments to make that lead to results, reading customers and their reactions. The list goes on. It’s all the soft skills that are the hardest part of any job…execution involving people.

A humble mind is a great foundation for getting more out of your learning environment. Thinking through the different trials of their management and executive jobs, EMBA students bring a refreshing perspective to the classroom and to their peers. They beat one another up in class on Saturdays and explore a wide range of classroom topics sprinkled with current challenges from their work. Then everyone is ready to face their executive team, their investors, their board, their employees and their customers back at work on Monday.

If you are considering the EMBA program, we look to you to articulate what you would be able to teach your peers in class. If you join us, you may show up for Week-in-Residence a little cocky, but it will not last long. The average person in the classroom—a manager/executive with 10-20 years of experience, a strong intellect, and perhaps another graduate degree—will help you realize that everyone in the class is a high achiever who is successful, and a little wiser, because of past successes and mistakes in business.

Because of those mistakes, the MBA has become imperative for each student in their own time. An EMBA program is not about gaining a piece of paper as a credential for a trophy shelf, although the credential is a must in certain fields. It’s about gaining confidence in your ability to see all the angles of a problem. It’s about influencing others, backed by data and a new language for presenting “gut” instincts in a quantifiable way. It’s about sharing best practices with faculty and student peers from different companies and industries that share common problems. It’s the journey toward earning the piece of paper, marked by shared experiences, that’s worth having.