Teaching MBA Students to Invest (Themselves) Wisely
By Sharon Richmond, MBA, Executive Coach and Management Consultant
As an executive coach and consultant, I have 20 years experience leveraging what the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) assessment has to offer managers and leaders in organizations. Building on that expertise, for the last five years I have taught MBA students at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) how to understand themselves better using the MBTI assessment and then helped them apply what they have learned to improve their career planning and job hunting success.
Like many others, these Stanford students would love a straightforward answer to their most burning question: “What job should I take after business school?” If only we could give them that silver bullet! But anyone who advises people on career development knows that there isn’t one. Instead the students must consider their options, select one, apply, interview, be accepted, and negotiate a package, just like everyone else who is job hunting.
The problem is complicated, though, by characteristics of the student population. These top-tier MBA students are exceptionally bright and have all excelled in both mathematical and verbal intelligence measures. They have often attended the “best” colleges, had “plumb” jobs before school, and have relatively robust personal and professional networks on which to draw. At an average age of 29, they have worked for at least six years before returning to school and have gained entrance to a program where only 1 in 15 applicants are admitted. These are students who are used to succeeding at whatever they have tried.
In some respects, this is the MBA students’ biggest career challenge: they can generally do many things well, and whatever job or project they start, their performance quickly improves. Their job search at the GSB may be one of the first times anyone has asked them to decide – what do you WANT to do? They have quite a problem, then. How should they choose from the nearly endless set of options, many of which they would probably be good at? And they have to face really steep competition for whatever they choose – each other. In only four months.
It is no surprise, then, that most of these students do not find their job searches joyful. Rather than an opportunity to reach for a unique peak on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (self-actualization1), students generally describe this search as stressful and difficult. Even for students with plenty of offers, choosing can be painfully hard. Every “yes” is, at the same time, a “no” to many other good paths. Many students describe feeling uncertain, inadequate, and even immobilized. Many are over-whelmed by the breadth of choice, especially compared with the narrow window of time they have for the search. How can using the MBTI assessment help them through this intensely competitive recruiting process?
In partnership with Kelly Walsh, one of the career advisors at the Career Management Center, we have developed a powerful approach to using the MBTI assessment in career planning: we focus on guiding the students to know themselves better so that throughout the critical junctures of their careers, they can build on what they learned here. By introducing personality type as one of many paths to self-awareness, we help the students meaningfully narrow their job searches. And over several years, we have found this process typically helps the students in one of four ways:
- Invest their energy as wisely as their money
- Know what environment brings out their best
- Take charge of their job search, so they do not get stuck
- Leverage what is unique about themselves and shore up with support
Energy Investment
We focus on all four dichotomies of the type code as highlighting what replenishes and drains our energy. Starting with extraversion and introversion, we teach that one’s type preferences describe the most effortless use of energy. A preference for sensing means that when we use our intuitive functions, it takes more energy or is more draining. We also discuss both what is sustaining and energy-replenishing for us, and how to replenish our energy when we are drained from using non-preferred functions. The students learn to think more fully about what their work might be like day-to-day in different jobs, and how it might align with their natural energy sources and uses. We encourage them to plan how they will balance their own needs and to replenish themselves before they burn out. Additionally, we discuss how to gather such information about a job before they interview, and certainly before they sign on for that job.
One student opting into investment banking described his lesson this way: “I know that I can take a job that will require a lot of solo analytical time [even though I prefer extraversion] as long as I also have a group of people that I can talk through my ideas and decisions with.” While this job may drain him of some energy during his first few years, he can see that as he rises in the firm he will have greater opportunity to guide and coach others, a vision that sustains him. In the meantime, he knows how to keep his energy up during long stretches of fairly isolated work.
Bringing Out My Best
Through “like-type” groups (quadrants, function pairs) students identify the elements of work environments that bring out their best selves. They share stories and help one another understand the different environments in which they have worked. They also discuss such topics as the amount of group versus solo work, what kind of leadership they respond to, the amount and type of praise they like, the organizational climates they prefer (hierarchical vs. flat), the degree of innovation vs. stability, and other factors. What opens their eyes most, of course, is hearing how different environments evoke different responses from different people.
One student described how the chaos of her prior entrepreneurial start-up environment had really sparked her own creativity. She was concerned that if she worked in a place with long hallways of closed doors, she would be less engaged and inspired. Unlike folks from another group, she did not care if the surroundings were “classy” or “communicated success.” This mattered much more to another group of peers. Interviewing at several start-ups, then, this student could focus on the leadership’s vision, the product being created, and the environment in which she would be working, before choosing.
Taking Charge of Your Search (Planning how not to get stuck)
While most career centers outline a process for managing one’s search, these processes can tend to be biased toward (or away from) certain preferences. Students at the GSB are encouraged to consider their search process AND their type preferences. Working in small groups of like-type clusters, they are able to identify together which parts are easy, and where they struggle more, or get stuck. By looking at how they are the same and different, they can also help each other to balance out strengths.
As an example, in one workshop all members of one subgroup shared the STJ preferences. After listening to a group (of NFPs) describe the many career options they could easily generate, one of the men seemed dumbfounded. “Wow,” he told his classmates, “in my whole life, I’ve only ever had three interviews. I’ve taken each of those three jobs.” As he put it, he had never even considered that he might want to branch out across industries to see what other choices might appeal to him. He was content to take what came and make the best of each organization and opportunity. The NFPs were equally dumbfounded – and the conversation that followed enriched both groups!
On the other end of the spectrum, a group of ENTP/ENFPs bemoaned that they had too many choices and did not know how to narrow their field. A group of colleagues with ST preferences suggested ruling out things that were clearly a bad fit. The first group loved the idea and knew who to ask for help if they got stuck again.
Leverage Uniqueness, Fill Gaps
Finally, our students really take the idea of uniqueness to heart. Thinking that all types can survive, even thrive, in many kinds of jobs, they learn to see their unique gifts as sources of competitive advantage. A 33-year old man with ENFJ preferences had come out of venture capital and planned to return to it after school. Based on what he had learned to appreciate about himself, he developed a different idea of what kind of firm he might join. He decided to look for a firm where the other partners were not necessarily as focused on the executive team and the importance of working together as a team. As he pointed out, “I can read the teams in a flash, and I get a different hit on the executive dynamics than others do. Seeing others’ potential is a piece of cake for me, but not for everyone. So that can help me stand out among my peers.”
Given the subset of fields these students will likely enter – consulting, investment banking, private equity, venture capital, general management, product management/marketing, or starting their own businesses – we don’t over-broaden their focus and refer them back to the traditional MBTI career “self-selection” tables. What we do instead is encourage the students to look beyond “what can you do and what are you good at.” We emphasize how understanding their type preferences gives them practical data to help eliminate some of their many options. Such narrowing encourages these students to pro-actively manage their careers, starting with planning a job search so they do not get stuck, continuing through exploring the day-to-day details of the work in a job, and choosing an environment that will bring out their best. Our goal is to focus them on using their unique gifts to distinguish the value they can offer an employer.
We encourage each student to think of themselves as a plant – and knowing what kind of plant they are, to find the work place that best fits them. After all, cactus, ficus, and peonies are all beautiful, but they thrive in different growing conditions. Just like people.
1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs Self-actualization — a concept Maslow attributed to Kurt Goldstein, one of his mentors — is the instinctual need of humans to make the most of their abilities and to strive to be the best they can.
