10 Most important skills that can be learnt at business school...

A Business School will equip you with skills that form an excellent foundation for new careers. The art of managing and juggling life can be learnt pretty efficiently in a business school. Certainly a smart personality with soft skills is an attractive feature to sweep anyone off your feet. Presenting a list of the ten most important skills that one can learn being in business school.

TIME MANAGEMENT

We all agree to the fact that, Time Management is the key to build a stronger foundation for success. I have always been incredibly fascinated about how the most successful people manage their time! All of us in one or the other stage of life have faced difficulty to manage our time as per requirements. We have always known time management as to set priorities, manage to meet deadlines, set and achieve goals, effectively organize daily actions, and make decisions faster.

A business school would teach you time management from a different perspective. They don’t believe in managing time or prioritizing time but they would make you learn to multiply time. Most successful entrepreneurs today are multipliers. They have figured out ways to actually create more time while everyone else is still living with the fallacy that time is finite. How in the world do you multiply time? Simple. You multiply your time by giving yourself the emotional permission to spend time on things today that create more time tomorrow. Instead of asking the question: what are the most important things I have to do today? You would ask: what are the things I could do today that would free up more time tomorrow? From the time management perspective, our life is a sequence of big and small choices and decisions. It is those choices that we really manage, not the flow of time.

"The bad news is time flies. The good news is you're the pilot." By-Michael Altshuler

QUICK RESPONSIVENESS

In today’s global race every company expects its workforce to have rigor and responsiveness in skills. It is not just enough to be a problem solver! The real challenge is how quickly and effectively the errors are diagnosed and rectified. And thus the main idiosyncrasy of a management person is quick responsiveness. Leading organizations stress on these skills in their employees, as they want to eliminate non-value added waste time while simultaneously increasing the competitiveness by serving consumers better and faster. Decision making is the most basic building block of our life, career, and community. The faster and more strategically we stack these blocks, the faster and more efficaciously we achieve positive change.

Business schools follow a practical way of learning using case-studies and assignments that would take you to the real world problems. Solving these assignments and tasks would train you to provide faster inputs and respond to the erroneous details. This practical way of learning would train your mind in such a way that you would think rationally about how your options would align the ultimate objective.

CONCISE PRESENTATION SKILLS

Presentations and public speaking skills are very useful in many aspects of work and life. Presenting information clearly and effectively is a key skill to get your message or opinion across. Today, presentation skills are required in almost every field. I have seen many people feel terrified when asked to make their first public talk.

A Business school would train you to be professional in terms of communication and showmanship. Sessions at a business school are interactive and would help to develop confidence and capability to give good presentations. Standing up in front of audience and speaking well, are also some of the extremely helpful competencies, which can be improved at business schools. The art of a good presentation is that it has to be to the point, concise, precise and care must be taken that it is not stretched beyond a limit. Digressing from the original topic is what must be avoided as far as possible. One should be clear in his speech. A slurred/ stammering speech is indicative of the fact that one is not prepared and is confused with respect to his content. Improving these soft skills can be best done in a business school.

IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT

Impression management is a goal-directed conscious or subconscious process in which the person attempts to influence the perception of their image. The minute you want to make a certain impression, you have to try and promote yourself according to the objective you want to achieve and accomplish. It all comes down to how you want to present yourself (self-presentation). The manner you present yourself may either cause harm or benefit. For the reason that, the way you present yourself is the way people would look at you. If you come up as negative to someone then that’s how they’ll perceive you or if you come up positive, then they’ll see you as a positive person. It all depends on the impression you leave and your self-presentation of yourself. Remember: First impression, lasts long. Yes! This kind of holds true.

A business school will enlighten the fashion freak in you. It is not merely about designer clothing and overpriced suits but it will guide you about how you look the best in. Certainly you have to judge yourself and have dress rehearsals, if you are little low in confidence. But seeing yourself and analyzing as to how you will look best will result to improve your confidence. The career management sessions at a business school will help you in this. A business school is the place where you will learn how to carry yourself in the best way. Observe, Learn and Present yourself.

COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Communication is an art, which is believed as one of the key objectives at any business school. If we take a survey, majority will agree that communication skills are the most integral part in the business world. It is almost impossible to teach how to communicate albeit there are courses and workshop to overall groom you to handle the corporate world. We project ourselves by the way we talk. Body language is a key component as far as communicating is concerned. Proper posture, gesture, movements and eye contact are some of the important skills every individual has to learn to succeed in the business environment. In the business world, especially marketing and sales components rely heavily on communication skills. For sales people, communication techniques are like bread and butter. Convincing a client to consider any product/software is the hallmark of an adroit negotiator. Everything ultimately boils down to how you present yourself. A business school is the ultimate place to practice and master these communication techniques. You may be required to address a panel during interviews or give a presentation about your work, you stand out courtesy your soft skills. Business schools mould you in such a fashion.

TEAM WORK

In a fast paced business environment, team work is often a crucial part. Companies today increasingly employ teaming and gathering experts in temporary groups to solve problems. More and more people in nearly every industry now work on teams that differ in duration and have continuous shifting membership. Teaming presents technical and interpersonal challenges. Every individual in a team is expected to get up and speed quickly on new topics. In these circumstances everyone has to learn how to work with others from different functions, divisions, and cultures. Individuals who learn to team well acquire knowledge, skills, and are found good in networking.

Business school classes have a lot of group projects, presentations and case studies. Almost every business school divides students into study groups and then students work within these 5-6 member groups. A business school would also provide opportunities to work as part of clubs, organizing events, fests and more. As a result, you can pick up throughout the coursework is how to work well with others. Teaming at a business school would help to execute and learn at the same time.

NETWORKING

Networking is a skill that does not come naturally to everyone. Some people are simply too shy; others consider networking pretentious, phony, or even manipulative. However there is no doubt that networking has huge benefits. No matter how you look at it, your success in business environment hinge on your ability to successfully network. Your peers may be competing with you for promotion, but they are also critical to your success. The higher you go in your career the more your success will depend on your ability to work across functional lines. That means you need to establish good working relationships with your peers.

Establishing a perfect balance with peers, while networking is what a business school can teach you in a very proper way. Meeting/interacting with other students at school is one of the many reasons why people attend business school. Most of the business schools have a strong teamwork atmosphere that encourages interaction among students inside and outside of class. It is also essential that you network with other people currently active in industry while you are in business school. Such people may include alumni, faculty, guest speakers, or corporate recruiters. These are the ones who can help you make additional connections that will be important to your career. They may also be able to help you get a job after graduation.

WORK LIFE BALANCE

Trying to juggle business, work, family, friends, achievement, personal downtime, etc. can definitely take its toll and make us feel pulled in all sorts of directions. It does not have to be this way. The very concept of attaining balance is a big part of the problem. The idea of balance means that all of our activities must get equivalent time and attention to be perfect. However, in today’s fast moving highly materialistic world, it rather becomes a big task to manage home and work. If you are guided with regards to the art of balancing, you are bound to cause less problems for yourself.

A business school prepares you to handle your life in a better way. It is like a final rehearsal to your tiring future life. If striking a proper balance is grasped and learnt at this stage, it becomes rather easy to tackle life ahead. We are taught this right from school, but in this phase, it can be learnt best. Fortunately, a professional life will practically make you sound.

ANALYTICAL MINDSET

Analytical skill-set is a critical component of visual thinking that gives one the ability to solve problems quickly and effectively. It involves a methodical step-by-step approach to thinking that allows you to break down complex problems into single and manageable components. A good businessman, manager, leader have one thing is common which is an analytical mindset. An analytical mindset may help you figure out multiple possibilities and work on different angles to a problem.

Learning in a business school is all about expanding your analytical horizons. The numerous tasks you need to undertake always require a certain propensity towards analysis. It is a niche of a leader/businessman to analytically view any task at hand and put forth multiple cases with regards to the problem. A business school will sharpen your analytical prowess to a very professional level. As in a business oriented environment, you will always be needed to think in that fashion.

SETTING PRIORITIES

Business is all about setting priorities and organizing work load. Priorities can often be tricky to battle at the workplace. While you may sit down at night and write down the goals you hope to achieve at work tomorrow, the order in which you complete them and devote the most attention to, each one sheds light on how well you can prioritize. You know that sinking feeling you have when there's too much on your plate? When you try to tackle your tasks by priority, but it feels like everything's important? It's a problem that everyone faces at some point or another, and while it's difficult to skillfully juggle multiple priorities and competing responsibilities, it's not impossible. Well, this art is based on judgment. Some tasks require more attention and time devotion. Some require less. Of all the things you learn in a business school, perhaps this is the most important. Because unless you master the knack of setting priorities, it is not possible to implement the other assets. A business school kind of makes you set your goals so that your task is achieved in the most efficacious way.