COMMUNICATE & THINK LIKE AN MBA

During your MBA journey, interactions with fellow students, professors, alumni, and interviewers will demand clear communication and structured thinking.  Our two-part workshop will help you build these critical skills. This session is perfect for your MBA orientation or careers week.

Part 1: Communication

Learning to communicate like an MBA is all about building rapport, showing passion about business, engaging your audience and adjusting your content when necessary.  During this intense three and a half hour workshop, you will build foundational skills:

  • Being “Answer First”
  • Using personal IMPACT stories to be succinct, use data and engage
  • Learning Block, Break, Discuss to stay structured and on topic
  • Reading and interpreting a current business article
  • Understanding how to use Block, Break, Discuss in class and other settings
  • Ending with a “speed meet” discussion exercise

Part 2: Structured Thinking for Business

Now it’s time to broaden your business knowledge. We’ll introduce a simple model to help you see the “big picture” of how a business works.  Then you’ll practice problem-solving in each of these five zones:

  • Zone 1 – Strategy (making strategic decisions)
  • Zone 2 – Operations (managing the day to day money making)
  • Zone 3 – Organization (understanding which organizational changes will make money)
  • Zone 4 – Finance (asking the key financial questions)
  • Zone 5 – External Factors (considering macro impacts on the business at hand)

During the exercises in Part Two, we’ll apply the communication skills learned in Part One. We’ll end our time together discussing some short, broad-based business problems.