Reflections on the MBA journey- part 2

My initial research led me to selecting five universities offering the MBA in which Swansea was one of them. Once I had the opportunity to speak to a University representative, I was all the more convinced of Swansea being the right place for me. The university has been getting better year by year, it has a substantial international students’ population and the MBA program is accredited by AMBA.

I am glad I chose to pursue my MBA in Swansea and now that the program draws to a close in a few months, it is time to contemplate and reflect on what I have learnt as a person and how it can help me grow.
Having interacted with the MBA cohort over the past eight months has allowed me to assess the skills I have developed since I started the course. If I were to analyse myself critically on my pre MBA days, I would like to believe that I have been a willing learner, who doesn’t shy hard work and enjoys to some extent crunch times when one needs to come up with good results at work. I would say that I have good communication skills and can develop rapport with people pretty fast.

I have been good with time management and decision making and consider myself creative. In terms of weaknesses, I would say that I have always found it difficult to delegate tasks and been weak in leadership capabilities. I had also been told by my colleagues at work that I tend to expect a lot more from them and can be a bit too harsh if that is not delivered. I see that as a weakness because managers must be patient and empathetic rather than speak their mind too often expecting the same level of commitment and performance from all.

I believe that every aspect and element of the Swansea MBA programme had some significance which would give a holistic touch to building managerial abilities for the students. At the start of the course, we made a self evaluation of our abilities and personality traits through the Belbin Team Role Self-perception Inventory (BTRSPI).

Organisations these days are realising the importance of work being done in teams and emphasise useful skills like good team-working skills which will be of great demand and almost a prerequisite for any job in the future. The importance of BTRSPI has been on the rise (Fisher et al 1996). My profile revealed to me that I was a mix of Completer Finisher and Plant. On reflection, I would say that the profiling has been quite accurate. A weakness for Plant is that they can be too preoccupied with own thoughts to communicate effectively. For Completer Finisher, it is reluctance to let others into own job. True enough, these are exactly what I end up doing.

The MBA program gave a lot of importance to developing management skills- importance given to hard skills like quantitative analysis and the softer skills like team building and communicating effectively. Is there any reason why so much on these subjects were talked about?

In hindsight, I would say that there was enough reason for the faculty to believe that these two core aspects of a manager’s job may be the most important that is needed for better managing.
Managerial skills can be broadly classified as conceptual, human and technical. Most of these skills are acquired through education and experience. A lot of premium is given to the latter- since many things in life are best learnt through experience. I had always been a people’s person and felt my interpersonal skills had been good but having been thrown in a melting pot of such diverse cultures in the MBA cohort, my skills were to be really tested.

Many researchers have studied the world of managers and managing of organisations. Notably among them are Henri Fayol and Henry Mintzberg. However, most of their findings are quite dated. The last twenty odd years have brought enormous changes in the workplace. Technology and globalisation have been major propellants of this change. The internet as a medium of communication and commerce has allowed managers to interact in a different way. Work patterns have changed, flexibility and tele-working have become a common reality (Gentry et al 2008). These dynamism at the workplaces have resulted into a greater need for better communication, coordination, improved performance, team monitoring, and more interdependence and trust (Gentry at al 2008 in Salas et al., 2004, 2005; Zaccaro et al., 2004).Organization’s environment becoming more reactive and fast paced makes one think if the importance of different skills that managers of today need may have changed.

Skills that have become vitally important to survive and compete in a brutally competitive environment that empower employees to perform and orchestrate their own success may have changed from the skills believed to be important years ago.
However, it seems they haven’t changed much. A lot may have changed in the workplace, very little has for the manager, as managerial work has in effect remained the same (Tengblad 2006).

The importance given to certain skills twenty years back is still the same today. Communication skills, that involves communicating a piece of information, idea or concept effectively is still held as important today as it was before. However relationship building as a skill has gained greater importance today than ever. Managers these days are giving emphasis to working with associates in groups than in isolation.

Advancements in the use of communication such as e-mail with a globalised workforce have required managers to put more effort in building and maintaining relationships (Gentry et al 2008). To reiterate, studies indicate that managers need to focus more on communication and relationship building (within a team) and decision making in their pursuit for effective management.