Leadership Development: New Year’s Resolution Not to Shy Away from Difficult Conversations as a Manager

As managers of people, it is important we all have a New Year’s Resolution to improve our work effectiveness. One thing I do—as most people do—is dread the looming difficult conversations that I know I will have to initiate. We all have to possess the courage to face these conversations as part of our obligation as managers. Vanderbilt’s Executive MBA performance coach, Darin Rowell (10-90.com) recently did a workshop on Leading through Trust and Powerful Conversations. Here are some excerpts from his workshop to help you start your new year off powerfully. Tami

"As a leader, what do you get paid to do? When I pose this question to my clients and students of Vanderbilt’s Executive MBA program, their initial response typically centers on the technical aspects of their role. However, as they listen to their own responses, they quickly come to the realization that most if not all of their time is spent in conversations with others, whether colleagues, customers or suppliers. The more senior leaders almost immediately answer with something along the lines of “I spend most of my time talking with people and helping them think through situations.”

It’s my experience that organizations themselves are nothing more than networks of conversations and relationships. As leaders, we create business results through our ability to have effective conversations and to build effective relationships. (To provide context, I consider an “effective conversation” one that leads to the chosen result.) In turn, a leader’s ability to have effective conversations, including difficult ones, is often a good proxy for their ability to produce sustainable results. Effective leaders have these characteristics in the way they communicate:

• They understand that for any given result, there are certain conversations which need to take place, while others are not relevant and may even be distractions.
• They have a clear sense for “missing conversations.” Missing conversations are those that must take place in order for individuals or teams to re-align or address issues specific to performance. I’ve found that “missing conversations” are often one of the key factors resulting in performance problems.

As you go through your day, I encourage you to put this framework to the test. Are there performance problems that exist because of your or your team’s inability to consistently have effective conversations? When you identify situations where performance levels are not being met or not being sustained, look for missing conversations.

Poor performance is a typical symptom of a breakdown in relationship as the cause. If you are anything like my clients or me, I can guarantee that you will find opportunities to improve your effectiveness by focusing on powerful conversations. We invest countless hours in both business school and on the job learning the technical aspects of business and of our chosen industry. Yet, as leaders, it’s through our ability to have effective conversations and build effective relationships that we are able to leverage all we have learned in order to produce sustainable results." Darin Rowell

An Argument to Keep GMAT in EMBA Admissions

I just returned from the annual meeting of the EMBA Council, this year in Vancouver, where my peers and I share information among some 300 EMBA programs all over the world. Our combined interest is to provide access and information that ultimately lead more people to an MBA education via executive format programs. Three of my peers from other schools asked me how I still use the GMAT as a diagnostic, saying that they’d like to but felt pressure to stop requiring it. Their concern? Schools in their market had dropped GMAT, so it was difficult to require it of candidates to their programs and still make their enrollment numbers. How, they asked, have I convinced prospective students to take it?

Why drop a tried and true predictor of academic performance because of pressure to beat competitors? How about using the GMAT to win customers? At Vanderbilt, our GMAT requirement in the EMBA Program helps with the following:
1. Assurance of a solid academic experience and speed of classroom since all classmates are of comparable academic acumen—like a sports team with players at the same level, despite their different backgrounds and strengths. Top prospective students love that. By insisting on the GMAT, we differentiate on a “quality of peers” basis. 100% of our students are vetted academically on CURRENT academic skills—students who might become YOUR study group members and impact YOUR grades if you choose to get an MBA here. Given the high percentage of group grading assignments, don’t you want to know your peers are your intellectual equals?
2. College GPA, for executive age students out of school 15-25 years, is not a current indicator of ability. And, it is not an apples-to-apples comparison. Is it fair to consider a nuclear engineering major from one university and a general studies major from a different school as the same, if their GPA is the same? Probably not. Either one may be the better prospective student academically. The GMAT will be a more accurate way to compare those two. In fact...
3. It is well documented that the R squared for GMAT is a stronger predictor than GPA and even more pronounced in EMBA students than for weekday MBA students. Ironically given the strongest R squared for GMAT as a predictor of core MBA performance in executive programs, the GMAT is now used more in the weekday MBA admissions at a number of schools that have dropped it over the past decade in EMBA admissions. This same time frame has seen the disturbing reference to “MBA Lite” in the press where some executive programs are not perceived as rigorous academically compared to their weekday MBA. No wonder.
4. GMAT preparation—relearning critical reasoning, algebra, etc—and spending 20 hours a week over 6 weeks to do it, is:
a. a way to be prepared for the MBA program, relearning skills long forgotten,
b. A way to determine if you need other pre-work on math and statistics to maximize your success in the MBA program,
c. a way to test your stamina for juggling the demands of work and school over a longer (two year) period of time.

To the argument that some people don’t have much standardized testing experience, I say two things:
a. The right prep is the equalizer. We advise students on how to do their personal best on the GMAT—100 hours of study the right way. Those students who take our advice on HOW to study and invest the 100 hours to do it will do their personal best on this test. And, it will be an amazingly valid predictor of their core MBA class performance.
b. We don’t expect everyone to have the same GMAT score, but we have a broad range of acceptable scores that have proven to lead to academic success in our program. MBA Program directors should know how to look at the MINIMUM score needed for success at their school, given their particular courses, difficulty levels, and the peer competition in their classroom that determines grading curves. That is, we have the history of past students and scores as a predictor of success in core courses in our MBA programs.

As I review at our stance on requiring the GMAT, I have found we have lost very few applicants, even though the competitors in my geography do not require it. Quite the opposite: students who want intellectual challenge are heartened by the fact that everyone here was vetted academically, and it appeals to a higher quality student.

Rankings and the Executive MBA Decision

Schools don’t change dramatically one year to the next, but rankings methodologies do. So rankings change and—sometimes, accordingly—student sentiments do, too. Today’s Wall Street Journal ranking (second time, the first was in 2008) placed Vanderbilt #25 in its Best Executive MBA Programs poll. We were #19 in 2008. Wharton got the top spot, deserved in my opinion because they, like Vanderbilt, still hold academic ability high in their admissions standards. Like us, they use the GMAT to ensure that seemingly successful prospective executive students have as much intellectual muscle as they do skills in persuasion and people management. That special combination of brains and boardroom charisma, with new training at mid career, is appreciable for MBA graduates from strong executive programs.

The real learning experience doesn’t change as wildly as the ranking might indicate, so I am always surprised by the changes in sentiment of students and employers. Maybe I shouldn’t be. It is no surprise that career-related concerns topped the list of influencers, since the 2010 graduates entered school in a boom economy and then hit the recession. Only 36% of executive students these days are completely sponsored, less than that—from 34% down to 13% this year—at Vanderbilt.

The Top 25 EMBA programs were determined based on this year’s weighted combination of corporate score, alumni score, and management skills score. Vanderbilt earned an 18 alumni rank and 17 management skills rank. Our corporate rank of 31 probably held us back given this year’s rankings methodology. Why? We are in a mid-sized city that is not a major headquarters location for a deep list of sponsoring corporations, and we only have 50 students to try to make an impact on that recruiter poll.

I am most proud of the international respect a Vanderbilt MBA holds, and the close relationships our students have here with faculty, the staff, the executive coach, and—the secret sauce—their peer executives. As one comment in the WSJ related article notes: “Some [recruiters] criticize EMBA programs for not focusing enough on hard core business disciplines.” Like Wharton, Vanderbilt has never lost sight of academic rigor. In the long run, as employers point out, that will matter.

And what matters the most, rankings aside? You can’t have a great B-school without successful alumni, so how alumni feel several years out, and how alumni have gone and done great things with the education, are the true reflections of the merits of an MBA.

To see the complete article and which schools comprise the TOP 25 EMBA Programs go to:
http://online.wsj.com/public/page/business-schools.html

Gearing Up and Embarking on the EMBA Journey: Meet EMBA 2012

What would you be doing if you had started the EMBA program this fall? If you’d attended EMBA Math Camp four Saturdays in July, you’d now be an expert in everything from basic order of operations to solving lineals and quadratics, definition of derivatives, marginal analysis, and probability theory – all in prep for the first day of EMBA classes. Math Camp is required of some admitted EMBA students but open to all, complimentary. The goal of Math Camp is to calibrate the quantitative skills of candidates from vastly different career backgrounds so we can move at the speed of Vanderbilt’s typical class. Some students, despite studying hard for the GMAT and doing well, aren’t sure if they should attend camp…

Suppose I asked you to solve this simple equation, using basic order of operations:

(12)(2) ÷ (2)(3)

If you answered 4, you are rusty and would have needed Math Camp!
If you answered 36, you are correct and perhaps would be ready without it.

(Statistics Professor Bruce Cooil, watching over my shoulder as I wrote this, said, “Oh, no! I think I’d need math camp too.”)

Once past the cobwebs of math forgotten long ago, your official launch of the EMBA Program would be Week in Residence. For EMBA 2012, that began Sunday evening August 8, 2010 in New Harmony, Indiana near Evansville. Students who attended Math Camp arrived –often carpooling—anxious to get started and to meet members of their class who did not attend Camp.

What and why New Harmony, IN for a residency week? New Harmony is a Utopian society in southern Indiana that was founded in 1825. Scientists, philosophers, artists, educators and geologists arrived in this wilderness town which was founded on the belief that education for all was the key to a better way of life. Vanderbilt believes this is the perfect place to start the Executive MBA Program each year. We believe that education for working executives continues to be a key to a better way of life benefitting them, their families, and their organizations. Classes take place in a remodeled 1814 Granary that retains its original charm but underwent a transformation to serve as an ideal, modern meeting space. Vanderbilt EMBA classes have begun their journey here for several decades.

Two days into the EMBA experience and the Executive Leadership course, the students anxiously awaited their C-Team assignments. The C-Team is the group comprised of 4 or 5 executive students who will lean on, learn from and laugh with one another as they navigate their way to an MBA. Their candid interactions and willingness to share knowledge will have huge impact on overall learning. The collective wisdom of executive student experiences, put to work frequently on group assignments within C-Teams, enables EMBA students to teach one another in and outside the classroom. Bonds of shared purpose, leadership, and mentorship have already started here at the Residency Week for the 48 members of EMBA 2012.

I hope you enjoy some pictures from WIR 2010. Congratulations EMBA Class of 2012, and welcome to Vanderbilt.