Stays abroad in China or Hong Kong, internships in Germany and elsewhere – everything is to be expected and more or less normal as part of an MBA degree, unless the pandemic is forcing you to work from home. Vanessa Besler de Castro and her fellow MBA students from the Düsseldorf Business School, on the other hand, visited the zoo for a module of their studies. To be precise, the monkey house in the Gelsenkirchen zoo. There the Dutch behavioral scientist Patrick van Veen was waiting for the MBA students.
For many years, Van Veen has offered training to managers at the zoo to help them understand that the behaviors of humans and great apes are not all that different. Apemanagement – Van Veen calls his courses monkey management. In the seminar room next to the monkey house, the researcher first explains how groups of monkeys are organized, then they go outside to observe primates. “Basically, we humans have a very simple structure,” says Vanessa Besler de Castro. “Fear, seeking distance, running away or seeking protection in a group – the behavioral patterns are not all that different in humans and apes.”
The hierarchies of the monkeys are particularly evident during feeding: the bosses of the monkey clan take a lot of the fine bananas, and no one dares to steal anything from them. But the bosses also make sure that the other monkeys get enough.
Primate observation in the zoo is an integral part of the course program
“If you want to change behavior, you first have to observe and then draw your own conclusions,” says Stefan Suess. He is dean at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf and professor for human resources management at the Düsseldorf Business School, which is affiliated with the university. The primate observation in the zoo is an integral part of the program of his courses. Because Süss knows that the MBA course can of course also, but not only, be about imparting business administration knowledge. “Today’s work is often embedded in communication and exchange processes; they have to be understood,” says Suess, “soft skills are becoming increasingly important in companies.”
Soft skills are character traits, but also attitudes and characteristics that go beyond learned professional skills. These include the ability to work in a team, communication skills, the ability to deal with conflict, time management, but also empathy and creativity. Because it is difficult to measure these skills, they are called soft factors, soft skills.
“The teaching of soft skills has always been our focus,” says Konstantin Korotov. “That’s part of 60 percent of our MBA and EMBA courses.” Korotov is Professor of Organizational Behavior and Faculty Director of the EMBA program at ESMT in Berlin. Like many other business schools, ESMT covers the soft skill teamwork – one of the core skills, according to Korotov – by having the students work together in groups in almost all courses.
Very different values come together in international teams
Konstantin Korotov observes a change in companies with regard to soft skills: “In the past there was no place for political or social views in the working world. Today it’s different,” says Korotov, “People come to work with their values. But especially in international teams we have to try to bring many different views together and learn to treat them with respect.” Something else has changed. “Today, managers are expected to understand the needs of their employees and to respond to them,” says Korotov, citing the example of the stress that many feel as a result of being forced to work from home. Special coaching programs at ESMT are designed to help executives to be able to meet these expectations.
A course is dedicated exclusively to the personal wishes of the participants
At the Munich Business School (MBS) you start even earlier – namely with the development of your own personality. “Before you lead others, you have to know who you are yourself,” says Kathrin Vallund, who runs the Personal Development course at MBS. “I always tell my MBA students at the beginning: This is the most selfish course you will have, because it’s all about you: Who are you? What can you do? What do you want? Those are my questions.”
Kathrin Vallund’s course is a compulsory module in the MBA course. “We force the students to spend those 20 hours with us. Some love it, some hate it. There really isn’t anything in between,” says Vallund. The aim of her course is for the students to find out what makes them happy in the long term. Vallund tries to achieve this with different coaching approaches, she herself has trained as a coach. “Of course there are tears,” says the lecturer, “colleagues sometimes jokingly say ‘Kathrin’s crying course’ to my seminar.”
Christian Schmidkonz also teaches at the Munich Business School and is a professor of international business administration. He also teaches the Success Factor Happiness course. He deals with topics such as happiness, gratitude, mindfulness or compassionate leadership – leading with compassion. “All content is scientifically sound and theory-based. The course is intended to provide inspiration for individual personal implementation, including reflection,” says Schmidkonz, who wants to convey to his participants how they can become happier at work. For example, by understanding that they are part of something bigger than themselves, that they are doing something meaningful. But it also makes it clear that it is primarily the responsibility of companies to create the larger context. “How well this works depends very much on individual values and passion for certain topics. And that doesn’t work for every person in every company,” says Christian Schmidkonz. He himself knows: “There is no such thing as ultimate happiness. But knowing the basics of happiness can be very helpful.”
Vanessa Besler, the MBA student from Düsseldorf, is now working on her master’s thesis. After two decades of working in the fashion industry, she decided to add an MBA to her business studies 20 years ago. She is doing her MBA alongside her job as Head of Sales E-Commerce and Business Development in a large fashion company – she also has a small daughter, by the way. “I found the teaching of soft skills in addition to the teaching of specialist knowledge during the course to be very beneficial – and the cooperation with other students from different industries with a wide variety of practical knowledge in the groups,” says Besler in retrospect. She often reflected on herself as a manager and also learned a lot about self and time management: “I already miss the university. Unfortunately, we often get lost in the complexity of things in everyday life.”
Many business schools offer their MBA students free individual coaching – also an important building block in the development of soft skills. At the Mannheim Business School, a coaching program is included in the EMBA course. But even a smaller university like the HTW Berlin has free coaching in the MBA distance learning General Management program.