Business schools are tapping into their "soft" side.
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 most 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 employees, as companies like Google are discovering.
A recent study by
Soft-skill classes aren't respected as much as "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
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.
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.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2011
