Applying 360 Degree Feedback and Coaching in MBA Classroom

RETHINKING MBA FOR NEXT GEN

The role of B-schools is to develop business leaders of the future. And how do we, change classroom experience for the next gen in the post Covid world?

For me the interest area began in 2008, when I was about to join my previous organisation, the chairman talked about his vision of the future and how he wanted to develop 100 future CEOs, the practical work we did for next three years became the base of my study.

Similar question was raised by speakers in IFTDO world conference in Delhi to Indian CEOs as to how do you identify and develop your team 20 for the future. What are the criteria for selection?

Today my presentation is based on those premise -building and developing the champions of tomorrow who in turn guide the organisation to its future and role of B-schools in developing them.

Imagine you are the owner CEO of an organisation that you founded 25 years back. This is a period of soul searching as how you want to navigate the future of organisation. It is about wearing your future glasses: Now say you are in 2030, and you have been invited to Leaders Conclave in New Delhi by a prominent media group. You have to talk about your success in past 15-17 years and how you did it? What are the milestones you crossed? The challenges you faced. Who made it happen?

In his paper “Tomorrow’s Leadership and the Necessary Revolution in Today’s Leadership Development” Professor Peter Hawkins Professor in Leadership at Henly writes about the following:

He says "The time has come for all business schools to fundamentally rethink their role in the world”.

He recommends the 360 and peer feedback for leadership development during MBA programme is of the most valuable piece of learning.

Peer feedback encourages team work and blending to a system: A stage of EGO to ECO

1.      CO-MOVING

2.      CO-INITIATING

3.     CO-SENSING

4.     CO-PILOTING

5.     CO-EVOLVING

My Doctorate is in Cross cultural Communication with a certification in cross cultural communication from Fordham New York. As a Management professor, I teach cross culture, communication and leadership to MBA students.

It basically comes down to the way the new leader is going to behave, using EQ, IQ, and SQ to run the organization. We need to create leadership development programs for leaders who will truly be leaders of the people. To me IQ is body is in, EQ is skin is in and SQ is when soul is in. When a student shows up for a class ”body is in”. When he finishes his home work and shows up”Skin is in”. When he takes initiative and passionate about subject and becomes self directed in learning from other sources “Soul is in”.

My Leadership Akhaada is about EQ+SQ

Akhaada is a place of practice. It is all about anubhav pajna in Buddha's language  i.e. putting into practice through action orientation.  Reading few books watching few videos of learning  is not the answer, the answer lies in Gautam Buddha's teaching. He is the world's first guru of personality development. According him we have two minds, one is the thinking mind and second body mind. Thinking mind is what we see and what we read. While body mind experiential in nature i.e. putting into practice what we know already. 

It is a self-directed approach putting knowledge into practice. Our muscles have memory too. To do anything confidently our muscle need practice. If you want to be a confident communicator you need your exercise your mouth muscles through constant practice. A simple act of loud reading the news-paper daily can work miracles rather than hours of vocabulary and grammar memorization.  

I have  spent 30 years designing intensive theater-based Active Communicating programs at several business schools throughout Asia. Recently, I introduced theatre to a group of teachers in communication and public speaking program in a school. I also made them practice tongue twisters, role plays and voice training drills to improve class room teaching skills.

To help my students develop faster, I am taking an unconventional approach by asking them to repeate the dialogue while watching English movies, listening to BBC, meeting people and having conversation with them in Delhi Metro as well as reading Bhagawat Gita and newspaper loudly.  I also make them practice tongue twisters to work on my accent and voice. 

You must have already heard of the saying, “It takes 21 days to form a new habit. This 21-day challenge provides the perfect starting point for anyone who wants to hone their communication skills. You won’t be able to implement a completely new set of habits in 21 days, but you’ll notice a real difference as will your friends, family, and coworkers. 

They say Group of five committed individuals can change the world. Each of our students form a group of five peers and work with a mentor on their confidence building project. For this 21 day challenge you will need four more committed friends who will come together in a coffee house or somebody's home to practice your learning. 

I coach executives, CEOs, re-entry women and graduate students on leadership, effective communication, interview skills, accent reduction and cross-cultural skills. In my coaching, I replicate my experience ask my coachees to create a self-directed learning projects. The learning plan may include engaging in small talks with colleagues as a deliberate practice, taking a survey, make faking reservations by calling airlines, hotels and coaching centres. It may also include travelling my metro, visiting malls and attending five-star hotel conferences, meetups that provide them opportunity to talk to strangers and engage in small talks. I also ask them to volunteer for social organisations and shadow a professional communicator  

Surviving, B-School Culture Shock.

If you are new to a country first you need to ground yourself. Grounding is sensing the environment with your body. That starts when you enter a country. You surrender to the place and what it offers you in terms of food, culture, lifestyle and language. Whether you are welcome or not welcome by people around will be based on your capability to adopt and how you accept what is available. Your groundedness is a silent stance of yogi, the initial sensing in silence will not overwhelm you with new demands to your identity. Once you develop a new taste and use sensing faculty of SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TOUCH & TASTE to adapt to new place, you are in. You are in if you FLOW WITH THE WIND. And allow THINGS TO HAPPEN rather than MAKE THINGS HAPPEN habit that allowed you to succeed back home. You have to people who will help you BLEND in the new society.

BEING          STANDING           DOING          BLENDING          HAVING IT TOGETHER

In your place people give you credibility because you went to a particular school, the community you belong and because of your family status. If you are a university topper you get a special treatment and get the best job offer. i.e. You have it that is why you get it and ultimately you become what you become.

HAVING                  DOING                   BEING

It is all the in a B-School, when students join a MBA program they have a culture shock experience. They go through emotional roller coaster of fitting in a new environment.  When coaching is integrated in MBA curriculum, leadership development becomes faster.

Leadership in the classroom: teaching to team facilitation to team coaching

Trust is foundational to learning across all stages of the lifespan. Whether the focus is on student learning of new academic or social skills or on teachers as they experiment with new instructional techniques, learning is enhanced when the learner feels safe enough to take the risks that learning entails. In the absence of trust, learning is impaired as self-protection becomes the primary focus of attention ((Tschannen-Moran, 2004a; 2004b).

Question is why teachers with above average academic record  excel in a classroom? Is it their capacity of tolerance for non performance leads to calmness in class? Or is it the attitude not to dominate? For a classroom to succeed, a teacher has to appeal to the best and while not neglecting the non performers. The attention drives performance. This delicate balancing act is not an ego trip; it is the capacity to BLEND, ACCEPT, AWARE, AWAKE AND ARISE in the class. When a teachers LETS GO her ego trip to dominate the class and JUDGING students as good and bad. She sees beauty in the class. Class room is a place to SURRENDER to what is emerging. The power of APPRECIATION works miracle. The teacher who LISTEN more to students drive excellence. Teaching is a MONOLOGUE, facilitation is a DIALOGUE and COACHING is driving excellence by APPRECIATION of talent that is emerging in the classroom.

An IQ driven class leads to subject excellence. An EQ driven class collective leadership excellence and team work. And both are combined it is SQ, that is SOUL driven. Sunil Gavskar and Sachin Tendulkar was IQ. Dhoni was EQ. Kapil Dev as a captain was SQ, so was Ganguly and now Kohli.

The game of being coach is different. It is an EGOLESS trip.In the cricket field, a Super star like Kapil Dev was a failure as Indian coach and so was Anil Kumble as well as Australian legend Greg Chappel. Nevertheless above average like Ravi Sastri is a success and so was Peter Kirstin. Sourav Ganguly’s head-strong approach gelled well with the likes of New Zealand’s John Wright but didn’t go down well with Australia’s Greg Chappell. The much-talked-about fall-out between Sourav Ganguly and Greg Chappell eventually resulted in India’s disastrous showing at the 2007 50-over World Cup.

1 Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coaching for Guaranteed & Measurable Leadership Growth 1500 Coaches 200 Cities 45 Countries 35 Languages ONE Process .

Marshall Goldsmith - World's # 1 Leadership Thinker Marshall Goldsmith has been recognized as the # 1 leadership thinker in the world by Thinkers50 and Harvard Business Review. Marshall Goldsmith's Stakeholder Centered Coaching process has proven to enable successful people to lead more effectively through long-term change in leadership behavior by using a methodology that is highly effective and time efficient.

Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coaching takes the leadership change process further, outside the classroom, and into their hostel with the stakeholders. Stakeholders can provide important and insightful suggestions for behavioral change that would help leaders to become more effective on the job. The Stakeholder Centered Coaching process includes a strong emphasis on action implementation and followthrough to make change stick, thus creating more effective leadership behaviors and habits.

Stakeholder Centered Coaching developed by Marshall Goldsmith.

A. Determine 1-2 Leadership Growth Areas Important to the Leader and the Organization In consultation with the coach, the leader selects 1-2 specific behaviors that are important for their leadership growth (e.g. influencing or delegation). Usually multi-rater leadership assessments ( ) and behavioral interviews are used to determine the aforementioned focus.

Yearlong OR two Executive Coaching Program using Stakeholder Centered Coaching for Guaranteed & Measurable Leadership Growth Most successful executives today have a good intellectual understanding of the various management tools required to lead an organization successfully.

Effective development plans follow the 70-20-10 rule for development, where 70% of the activities are on the job assignments, 20% of activities are from feedback/mentoring/networking, and 10% are courses and/or reading. Activities should be built into or be a part of the leader's regular routine, not just one time events, to ensure maximum learning.

Tomorrow’s Delivery Formats

Perhaps more important than what courses will be delivered is how they will be delivered. While in-person workshops remain the most common — and most popular — form of training, there is change on the horizon. When asked the question: “When in a study by Asridge Business school asked the managers: What will be the most popular form of learning in your organization in the next two years?”, the popularity of “In-classroom workshops” fell a full 45%, with the balance shifting in favour of more digital and collaborative learning including: Social media/collaborative learning (+48%), eLearning (+28%) and webinars (27%).

Course Delivery Formats

1. ·        Collaborative Learning
2. ·        Webinars
3. ·        Learn from the Leaders
4. ·        In-person Workshops
5. ·        Mentoring Programs
6. ·        Lunch and Learns
7. ·        Seminars/Conferences
8. ·        Experiential Outings
9. ·        virtual Classroom/Webcast; Instructor Led
10. ·        Blended; Face-to-Face &Virtual
11. ·        Individual, Self Paced e-Learning; No Instructor
12. ·        Social Networks e.g.Facebook, LinkedIn
13. ·        Other

A Shift Towards Collaborative Learning

future of learning will be much more collaborative. With the presence of social networking, email and rapid communication in our personal lives, people expect their training to be collaborative as well. This means more facilitated webinars, more exploration with social networking, and increased usage of dynamic eLearning with simulation and interactivity. In-classroom courses will need to focus less on the‘preach and teach’ format, and more on the experiential, interactive exercise format of learning.

Whether caused by technology, the media or the boredom of youth, educators are ? nding that they are changing the design of their learning. These changes are positive in that they re?ect quality learning design that should be the objective of all –not just those aiming at the younger generation. It is forcing people to sit back and think how to optimise learning. This new generation may be driving some essential changes at all levels.

We administered Learning Style Inventory Based on David Kolb's Model questionnaire in MBA classes over a period two years amongst more than 100 students. Kolb Learning Style has 12 questions, six in part 1 and Six in part -2. The Majority of students preferred Concrete Experience to Abstract Conceptualization and Active Experimentation to Reflective Observation i.e. hands on learning experience, learning from peers, project assignments, and Group discussion to traditional lecture method of learning.

“There is a shift, but not a huge shift yet towards more collaborative type learning activities, using tools like Wikis. The focus of knowledge-gaining is now outside the classroom. I think this means we can respond more immediately than in the past.

Here is an excerpt from an interview by Ashridge Business School study on 2009 Gen Y report on learning:

“We have changed our approach to the graduate programme. We decided we wanted to make the induction and development as engaging as we could. We set up a Facebook site to let them to get to know each other before they started work and they are using it. We tried to break up the learning with a variety of activities, making it as interactive as possible. We added structured networking sessions a bit like speed dating. We have a virtual reality centre here which has only been set up recently, and we have added that into the induction as we feel that would excite them to try it out. We are also inviting their managers in for the last day of the programme, so they get to know each other in a different environment.”

Indian class rooms still adopt the traditional system of education that was relevant few years break. Contemporariness is making class room learning making it more collaborative learning experience with least use of lecturer methodology. A blended approach to curriculum design with a blend of self-directed learning through blogs, skype based group peer learning sessions, face to face case discussions or in class sessions coupled with one on one coaching brings a total contemporariness to course design.

To develop a course design of similar kind needs a different approach, the trainer/educators, who need to embrace technology and stay contemporary through constant research. The shift is from educators to thought leaders who can drive content based education through blogs, webinars, networking and driving research.

The author recently experimented in an MBA class in Sep-Dec 2013,  a radically different approach to teaching in B-School, while teaching manpower planning. There was no text book prescribed. Instead students learnt from blogs. In the class it was basically discussion on existing literature. Students were asked to do a literature survey as the assignment. The faculty gave unlimited coaching to students, when ever it was required. They were asked to meet HR professionals in the field and ask questions on a prepared questionnaire. The students felt confident when they interacted with professionals from the field. Finally each student was asked to prepare a presentation on the basis study they had made.

The Following structure was followed:

•  10 hour pre-class reading
•  30 hours in class discussion and presentation of existing contemporary literature
•  Unlimited coaching and literature survey
•  10 hours survey and interview/face to face meeting
•  30 hours optional project and summit presentation
•  A one day best in class summit
•  One on one stake holder coaching for two years till final placement

The best training course is the one, which develops competency needed in the job.

On the basis of study organisations must revamp themselves and offer courses that are relevant to new age professionals. Courses and must be redesigned by taking into account marketability of the programs. And marketability will come only when it helps to fill the industry competency gap.

An invitation for The Coaching Week talk on Rethinking MBA for the

Next Gen

Applying 360 Degree Feedback & Stakeholder Coaching in B-Schools 

Time in IST- 7.30 pm on Sunday, the 23rd May, 2021

Join with Google Meet-meet.google.com/ymg-jiwj-qmb