3 ways an MBA helps you improvise
The title sounds contradictory, right?
I recently encountered the last person that I expected to on a local train around the Italian Veneto region. He was a Canadian CIMBA alum from 2011. I was his Personal Development Coach and CIMBA LIFE Leadership Trainer while he was enrolled in our 11-month full-time MBA .
It was a total surprise. “John?! What are you doing here?” We started to chat while recovering from the shock of seeing one another. After a while he said something that really inspired me to write this post. He was telling me about his past job as a Project Manager in an oil and gas company in Canada. He said, “The CIMBA MBA helped me to think and act more effectively on my feet. I can now approach almost any business situation and manage the uncertainty and the ambiguity with an ease that I didn’t have before the degree. The MBA gave me not only “knowledge” and “process” but also “behaviour” competencies”.
I’m a fan of improv and completed some training at the Second City School of Chicago. I saw so many connections between improv, coaching and mindfulness including the power of staying present and listening deeply. I never considered before how my MBA degree has helped me to improv as well.
One of the most important parts of being a good manager is being able to deal with ambiguity. You cannot do that unless you become familiar with the ability to improvise. It is not possible to be prepared for every single situation and challenge. The MBA provides many tools and new ways to analyse your business and to assign meaning to data and processes. At the same time, with those tools, you cannot manage and control all of the variables. Lots of the uncertainty and ambiguity also come from interpersonal relationships. That’s why the rational tools are not enough sometimes. This is where you need to be able to access empathy on the spot and provide an answer to your employees that will inspire them, even when you are not sure 100% about what to say.
Traditionally, an MBA provides rational tools and processes that help managers be more methodological. That’s true. That’s absolutely true. However, when there is also a strong leadership and personal development component part, the MBA also train your brain to think and act more effectively on your feet.
In summary, these are the 3 ways an MBA helps you improvise:
You have the big picture with an understanding of the logic of all business areas, allowing you to question to the void without being fully prepared at all times.
You know how to provide certainty without dependency on it – you engage people by addressing complexity without making absolute statements.
You help others embraces the concept that situations matter and encourage their flexibility depending on the needs of other people.