The MBA We All Should Think About Getting — Even if you already have one!
Look within. Go Beyond
You may or may not already have an MBA. Either way, you should consider enrolling in The Inner MBA. This is a nine-month immersion certification program to train leaders, entrepreneurs, managers, and employees on how to powerfully grow themselves and their companies.
What makes The Inner MBA so valuable is that the focus is on skills not typically taught in business schools. One of the most popular courses in the Standford GSB program is Organizational Behavior 374 often referred to as the “touchy-feely” course. In fact, Stanford is taking it on the road to corporate America because of the importance of emotional intelligence and other “soft” skills.
I like to say the soft skills (qualitative) are the hard skills to learn.
Stanford says it this way: “The ability to forge strong relationships with others is crucial to becoming a more effective manager in today’s complex, global, and highly interdependent organizations.”
According to its website, “Mindful NYU is the largest campus-based mindfulness initiative in the country. This award-winning meditation and contemplative life program cultivate inner wisdom, compassion, and well-being with a commitment to offering inclusive and transformative experiences based in love, community, and healing.”
This is the perfect time for a program to teach people how to tap into their inner wisdom and to educate people to do this. Now more than ever, we need to learn how to access and demonstrate compassion, empathy, forgiveness, mindfulness, resilience, and more. These are the inner skills that are being advocated as leading to consistently high performance.
The faculty are socially conscious CEOs. People who you would like to pick their brains such as Eileen Fisher, founder of Eileen Fisher, Dan Goldman, Emotional Intelligence guru, and Rose Marcario, former CEO of Patagonia. In addition, there are several well-known inner wisdom teachers who will teach participants about mindfulness meditation.
My leadership book, Leading with Wisdom: Sage Advice from 100 Experts, was the result of interviewing some of the top thought leaders in the field — executive coaches, professors, authors, CEOs, and other senior leaders. A big surprise to me was this:
I was asking them about leadership and they were telling me about life. One of my conclusions was “it is hard to be a good leader if you are not a good person.”
The Inner MBA is all about how to become a good person.
I was so curious about this program that I interviewed Tami Simon, the founder of Sounds True. She said people are ready to “wake up” at work and in life and the timing was perfect for this program. Right now, there are 1400 students in the program from 52 countries.
Simon said it was time for organizations to realize there are multiple bottom lines. Sometimes this is called the triple bottom line to focus on three parts: social, environmental (or ecological) and financial. Organizations need to make a profit to stay sustainable. But they should also provide an environment where people want to work and provide a purpose for working beyond just the money.
She also told me she would not want to cause others to suffer under her leadership. She said it is so important for all of us, but particularly leaders, to keep working on growing as professionals, as mature adults, as learning persons. “We should not create toxic environments for others.”
The Inner MBA reminds me of the course at Stanford GSB Organizational Behavior 374: Interpersonal Dynamics. But it has the nickname of “Touchy Feely” because of the emphasis on emotional intelligence and self-awareness at a deep level. At GSB, this course has been voted the most popular elective for the past 45 years!
In fact, Stanford is taking this course on the road because they believe this is the time for leaders to dig deep into their inner core to develop skills such as compassion, empathy, and forgiveness. Leaders need to be healers and this course and The Inner MBA program are designed to develop these skills.
Conclusion
Even if you have an MBA, you should keep learning and growing. Leadership is a journey.
There is a reason Stanford’s course is so popular that they are taking it to organizations.
There is a reason Sounds True created The Inner MBA. These are often the soft skills not taught in most graduate programs or at least not emphasized enough.
If you are interested in growing in leadership, go to my website where I have a FREE download on how to lead during crises.
