A talented and diverse class of MBAs being put through their paces at a military camp isn’t the most obvious mental image of how top business schools approach leadership development.
But, turning to military-style training to help students build self-awareness and teamwork skills has become a growing trend among MBA curricula, as two tales from Emory University’s Goizueta Business SchoolandIvey Business School, Western Ontario University this week show.
Gerard Seijts, a professor in organizational behavior at Ivey Business School explains why military instruction can be the perfect companion to an MBA’s leadership development – especially with regard to their ability to influence others.
“One of the foundations of good leadership is the ability to accomplish a task by influencing other people. To do that, however, a leader must be able to assess a situation, develop a plan, issue clear instructions and then supervise execution,” the Ivey professor wrote in Canada’s Huffington Post.
That’s how Ivey’s four-day ‘Leadership Under Fire’ course came about. Teams of students perform daunting challenges while being guided, as well as barked at, by professional soldiers. In this way, building teamwork is supplemented by personal tests of character designed to prepare students for when the going gets tough. Seijts emphasizes, in this video, that Ivey MBA students should come away from the course with a far greater understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.
Across the border, Goizueta Business School has made a one-day trip to the US Army’s military base at Fort Benning a compulsory element for leadership development in its one-year MBA.
Goizueta’s students are split into the same study groups that might more commonly take on the challenges of a finance or marketing class. Here instead, they are set a series of military-style drills and exercises, including slaloming their way through an obstacle course and dodging pretend land mines - while taking turns at leading the groups’ path.
The ‘Leader’s Reaction’ course is run by Ken Keen, who boasts 38 years of experience in the army and who joined Goziueta Business School as an associate dean for leadership development last year.
“Our goal is to prepare students for leadership at all levels. Leadership doesn’t come through osmosis. Students must get out there and put their skills and abilities into action,” Keen told Poets & Quants.
Of course, just as the military can teach MBA students a thing or two about leadership, business school also has a lot to offer an army veteran, as this TopMBA.com guest blogger discusses.
Tim is a writer with a background in consumer journalism and charity communications. He trained as a journalist in the UK and holds degrees in history (BA) and Latin American studies (MA).
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