Melissa Korn and Joe Light: This fall, students at Columbia Business School will be invited to learn the art of meditation. Emotions will run high in Stanford Graduate School of Business’ long-running “Touchy Feely” course. And professors at the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business will try to teach students to rein in their type-A personalities, lest they upset fellow classmates.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, companies and experts say.
However, with classes often resembling a group therapy session, it is hard to quantify what students actually learn in the softer classes.
A recent study by DePaul University researchers found that managing workers and decision-making—two subjects that require softer skill sets such as being sensitive when delivering feedback—were most important to acting managers. However, those subjects were covered in only 13% and 10% of required classes, respectively, in a study of 373 business schools, said DePaul professor Erich Dierdorff, one of the study’s researchers.
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