Business schools don’t — but should — teach their students to become behaviorally fit, Lee Newman argues:
It’s a 9 a.m. meeting, Carolina is getting resistance from the team and a rival is trying to derail her with subtle gibes. This is a typical moment of truth, and her success will depend largely on how well she listens, reveals hidden agendas, demonstrates openness to others’ ideas, and controls her emotions.
Business school graduates and rising young professionals are all smart and armed with knowledge and tools. What differentiates them is how well they can think and react, and the quality of what they say and do in these behavioral moments that populate every workday.
Behavioral science has shown very clearly that when under time pressure and stress, we resort to default behaviors. These are automatic ways of thinking and reacting that are too often unproductive. Behind closed doors, when I ask a group of executives or young professionals, “Who in this room thinks they could be a better listener?”–90% or more raise their hands. In my experience, the majority of smart professionals listen too little, micromanage too much, judge too quickly, give too little consideration to the ideas of others… and the list goes on.
Learning best practices in workplace behaviors (e.g., 10 steps for active listening, eight steps for leading change, and so on) is useful, but also easily forgotten. When push comes to shove in a high-conflict meeting at the end of a long day, it’s less about what you know and are capable of doing, than it is about having well tuned behaviors that allow you to actually make things happen.
This is what I call “behavioral fitness.” Business schools and corporate universities need to treat the workplace like a behavioral gym where professionals have a clear training plan for what behaviors they need to work on, and then they need to get down to it. Professionals need to sweat daily, in every meeting, every conversation, and every problem solving session.
Why wait until post-grad business school?