Sunday 25 January 2015

Building T-Shaped Skills



In addition to the various terms that effectively describe career enhancement, promotion and role change and the more obvious financial motivation, Royal Holloway MBA's expressed motivations as diverse as learning to think differently, personal growth, making a difference, happiness. (See left the spider-gram that summarises a group discussion on this - This exercise was undertaken on the first day of term this year - 22 Sep 2014)


What are the advantages of the qualification for the individual on completion ?


MBA = Wide and broad "T Shaped" skills

The accrual of a wide and broad base of business knowledge is key, combined with theoretical constructs that support creative problem solving and analysis. These T-shaped skills enable shoulder rubbing on an equal footing with other functional C-suite directors.

Coping with work load pressure and various intensive group based learning activities exposed to peers from a wide range of diverse cultural and professional backgrounds gives a plethora of 'safe' learning experiences to try out different management and leadership styles and reflect on successes and failures, in a non-career limiting context.

The transformation we see in many MBA's is profound and for some it can be a hugely significant life changing experience, says Royal Holloway's MBA Director Justin O'Brien.  "We use the notion of learning to look at life differently, many of our MBA's note this is the single biggest benefit from their studies, which results in better approaches and more positive outcomes to a range of problems."