Next Year’s Numbers: Why Business Leaders Should Sponsor their Employees' MBAs

Growing up with two parents with PhDs and multiple master’s degrees each, I never considered not getting my master’s degree. Getting an advanced degree felt expected of me coming from a family that valued education so highly and worked very hard to provide me every opportunity to further my education. Within two weeks of starting my very first job out of undergrad, I was already expressing interest in getting my MBA to my parents.?

So, you can imagine my surprise when three years ago, I asked my boss at the time to support me in pursuing my MBA and the answer was an immediate “No.” I wasn’t asking for any fiscal support or time off work. I was simply asking for the flexibility to tailor my business travel around when I would have class. “Why not?” I asked, completely perplexed. This was a courtesy ask and I was shocked to get a negative response. His answer was simply, “It’s not going to make you any better at your job and I would like to see you focus on having good numbers next year.” I walked away from that conversation defeated. Did my Boss not care about the course of my career and my professional development? Did he not see my potential for future roles??

Was it really just about next year’s numbers? Was it always just going to be about next year’s numbers?

Three years later, I find myself at a new company, with a new boss, about to finish my MBA. Did I mention that the whole thing was company sponsored? That’s right. Wego paid for the entirety of my MBA and gave me every other Friday off to attend class as part of NYU Stern’s Executive MBA Program. I can say with full confidence now that my old boss was very, very wrong.?

My MBA experience has made me much better at my job. I still work in a sales function – though now on the product side managing the commercial aspects and P&L for Wego’s construction chemical product line – and my MBA has not only made me a better seller but a better colleague, teammate, and professional all around.?

The return on investment of sponsoring your employees MBA is significant and here’s why:

1. Inspiration to Level Up

If your employee is interested in pursuing their MBA while maintaining their full time job at your organization, chances are they are already an ambitious top performer in your organization inspiring those around them to work harder and up their game. Academics aside, the MBA experience brings these ambitious individuals together in an environment where creativity thrives and fear of failure dies. Everyone in a part time or executive MBA program is impressive. There is inspiration and motivation everywhere.

My MBA experience has been the catalyst for so many exciting opportunities and challenges that I never would’ve had the confidence or creativity to begin on my own. The non-profit I co-founded – Women in Chemicals – was initially inspired by a casual networking conversation I had during my MBA experience. My cohort affectionately called these networking opportunities a “PJ Mixer,” named after the classmate (PJ) who started it by pairing us up one-on-one to get to know one another. My classmate and dear friend Hannah Frey and I wrote a series of thought pieces about sales, which we published to LinkedIn. I was inspired by her writing prowess, our shared experience working in sales and a conversation about my misplaced shame around working in sales.

These are just two examples of a countless number of experiences where I was motivated by my impressive classmates to try something I otherwise wouldn’t have. Women in Chemicals has expanded my network enormously and given me courage to take giant leaps with no guarantee of a soft landing. Writing the sales series taught me to be a better written communicator and encouraged me to be a braver, more authentic professional.

?2. Weaknesses Will Be Confronted

Have you given the same employee similar feedback about their respective weaknesses on multiple reviews and seen little progress toward growth? Send them to get an MBA! Pursuing an MBA is an experience that brings out the best and worst of everyone – giving ample opportunity for growth. Whether it’s 12-hour days at orientation, finals, or simply trying to balance the demands of work, school and social, weaknesses will be revealed and opportunities for growth will abound.

Two weaknesses that have been incredibly present throughout my career:

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????? ????? Fear of public speaking

The MBA experience forced me to confront and work toward both.?

The best part for my organization? Getting that same feedback from a group of peers that gave me the compassion and the accountability to both make mistakes while expecting me to grow from them.? Big shoutout to my study group from core year (love you guys, mean it!) who were so patient with my dominant and impatient style in our study sessions. I am by no means a perfect teammate now, but I am certainly more open and aware of the impact of my style on others.

Second, overcoming my fear of public speaking. I had the honor of presenting to 150+ women earlier this week about Women in Chemicals and was completely at ease. Hard to believe that two years ago, giving a brief introduction of myself on a Zoom with my classmates was enough to send me into full blown panic.?

My MBA forced me to get outside my comfort zone repeatedly and to practice things that felt difficult and scary. I’ve gotten to represent both my non-profit and my organization on panels at industry events, podcast interviews, and other speaking opportunities that I never would’ve felt confident to take prior to this experience.

I now find myself leaning into professional opportunities where I feel nervous or that failure may be imminent. I lean in because I know it’s another opportunity to grow.

3.Gain Compassion and Perspective

Here are a couple phrases (complaints) that I have used ad nauseum in my sales career:

“Do I ACTUALLY have to do this budget?”

*in an irate tone* “Please explain again why my customer cannot have Net 120 days?”

“Hi, I know you are on vacation today, please see my request below and respond ASAP!!!”

I know what you’re thinking and yes, I am a professional assh*le. But truthfully, prior to my MBA, I didn’t have the awareness or the exposure to understand that I was being incredibly difficult, inconsiderate, and quite frankly, intolerable.

I have worked exclusively in chemical distribution companies where the sales organization drove revenue and strategy. My perspective was limited to what I needed to successfully do my job, rarely taking into consideration the overall health of a company or all the various efforts that went into supporting and fulfilling the business the sales organization was building. Taking classes like accounting, finance, and strategy forced me to see the business more holistically and to have more compassion for my colleagues who were simply trying to fiscally plan and preserve cash flow. It turns out that in decisions that sometimes felt like they were purposely trying to kill deals, they were actually just trying to ensure that the company could both make payroll and provide my customer extended credit terms again.

Gretchen Rubin said the widely used quote, “the days are long, but the years are short,” and there’s no better way to describe the passage of time in an MBA experience.?

My program was two years which felt like a relatively short amount of time, but in hindsight my classmates and I bared witness to some of the best and worst moments of our lives. We saw engagements, marriages, divorces, babies, miscarriages, new relationships form, break-ups, and death. We saw each other grieve and celebrate in a setting that is less formal than the workplace – at least for those of us working in more traditional industries.

Watching some of the smartest and most impressive people I’ve ever known navigate the highs and lows of life in such an honest, transparent, and authentic way has changed the way I show up in the world.

I hope everyone has a chance to be this humbled in their lifetime by the strength of the human spirit.? This has translated directly into my professional demeanor and how I approach my colleagues in significant and meaningful ways.?

Could I do my job without an MBA? Yes

Am I better at my job because of my MBA? Absolutely

Was the return on the investment for my MBA worth it? Well, I’d like to reference the metric my old boss was concerned with… my numbers. For your reference, I did more in sales in the month of May than I did in the entire year of 2019 at my old job. I’d say the investment paid off.