Tools & Tips
"Soft Skills" Business Courses Aim to Prepare Students for Managerial Roles

The Wall Street Journal - May 5, 2011

By Melissa Korn and Joe Light

Business schools are tapping into their "soft" side.

This fall, students at Columbia Business School will be invited to learn the art of meditation. Emotions will run high in Stanford Graduate School of Business' long-running "Touchy Feely" course. And professors at the University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business will try to teach students to rein in their type-A personalities, lest they upset fellow classmates.

It's all part of a continuing push by business schools to teach "soft skills" - such as accepting feedback with grace and speaking respectfully to subordinates - that companies say are important in molding future business leaders.

Although business schools have traditionally excelled at teaching "hard skills" like finance and accounting, those skills become less relevant as an employee ascends the corporate ladder and moves away from crunching numbers to overseeing employes, companies and experts say.

However, with classes often resembling a group therapy session, it is hard to quantify what students actually learn in the softer classes.

A recent study by DePaul University researchers found that managing workers and decision-making - two subjects that require softer skill sets such as being sensitive when delivering feedback - were most important to acting managers. However, those subjects were covered only in 13% and 10% of required classes, respectively, in a study of 373 business schools, said DePaul professor Erich Dierdorff, one of the study's researchers.

"Business schools are falling short where it matters most," Mr. Dierdorff said.

Part of the difficulty might be that soft-skill classes aren't respected as much as the "hard" courses, like finance, according to professors and students.

"[They're] very easy to parody," said Michael Morris, director of the Program on Social Intelligence at Columbia University, which started in 2006 and coordinates the business school's soft-skill classes.

Mr. Morris said the Program on Social Intelligence deliberately doesn't brand itself on classes and keeps a low profile to avoid turning students off from courses.

One such class is a course on "personal leadership," in which students are tasked to set goals, spend time on introspection and even use meditation techniques to alleviate stress, he said.

Columbia also requires students to take a class on determining their leadership style, teamwork and "self-awareness" during their first year.

Part of the restructuring at many top programs is in response to feedback from recruiters, who say that business school students have always been good at technical aspects of managerial jobs but unrefined in leadership areas.

In recent years, BASF Corp., the North American unit of chemical company BASF SE, has trained managers who interview M.B.A. candidates with proficiency in soft qualities like leadership capability, customer focus and creativity, said head of staffing Michael Kannisto.

Previously, the company looked for expertise in functional areas, like engineering and chemistry, but found that job candidates with proficiency in softer skills ended up leading better, no matter their functional background, he said.

When interviewing job candidates, managers from Deloitte LLP assume that M.B.A. candidates have technical prowess and focus almost exclusively on assessing candidates' soft skills, says Kelly Marchese, a principal in Deloitte's strategy practice.

In response to recruiter feedback, this fall the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California plans to double the length of its mandatory Management Communication for Leaders, which currently lasts eight weeks.

Employers want to see that prospective hires are comfortable presenting to a large group or working one-on-one with peers or subordinates, said James Ellis, the business school's dean.

The Haas School of Business also has beefed up its course catalog to focus on skills, such as the importance of influencing subordinates, peers and outsiders without pulling what Dean Richard Lyons calls "the authority card."

To be sure, soft-skills training isn't new everywhere. Stanford introduced its optional interpersonal communications class, affectionately nicknames "Touchy Feely," more than 40 years ago. It is now one the many soft-skill classes that are offered at the school.

In "Touchy Feely" course, small groups of students learn how to give and receive constructive feedback and control emotional responses to conflict.

Former Touchy Feely student Arnulfo Ventura, who received his M.B.A. from Stanford in 2008, filled his schedule with classes about exerting influence, marketing messaging and leadership development. He said those courses were key to his success in launching Coba, a Los Angeles-based natural beverage company.

Still, not everyone is enamored of formal soft-skill training.

"Having a professor that's never led an organization teach me leadership out of a book, really doesn't do anything for me," said Mike Marchak, a program manager at Google Inc. and 2008 graduate of Columbia.

Mr. Marchak said he learned more from interactions with classmates in study groups and leading team projects than in classes intended to teach leadership strategy. "I felt like they were way too abstract."