What Can An MBA Do For Your Career?

It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what is required – Sir Winston Churchill.

An MBA helps you acquire the broadest range of people skills and a perfected set of proven management skills in addition to helping you develop your thought processes. An MBA also prepares you for positions of leadership. Simply put, an MBA helps you become a leader with appropriate leadership tool set. Once you get these things under your belt, which is the essence of getting an MBA, the things such as making the “right career move” and “achieving your goals” all fall into their logical place.

What Does An MBA Teach You?

An MBA helps you by broadening your educational horizons. As an MBA you are looked upon to lead teams and carry out the goals of an organization. MBA’s are routinely called upon to implement tasks that require both strong leadership skills and vision.

1. Personality Development: The general aptitude that one has developed during his or her undergraduate studies will need to be translated into management ability. During the course of MBA studies, students learn various aspects of business activities and the intricate nuances involved.

2. Leadership Ability: Leadership abilities are not limited to those who born leaders. The characteristics of leadership such as composed nature, analytical abilities, an eye for detail and identifying winning strategies are instilled during the course of MBA. A manager is looked upon as a leader having vision and ability to lead from the front and by example. Six Sigma Professionals often have as much, if not more, leadership potential than newly-minted MBA’s.

3. Domain Expertise: An MBA is supposed to be a person of resource. If for example, marketing is your chosen field for MBA, you will deeply study the science of marketing and selling consumer and capital goods. This goal is also achieved by studying the psychology of the market as a whole as well as consumers. As an MBA student, you will also study how to quantify the market, budgeting and how to manage corporate finance.

Characteristics of an MBA

There are several attributes of an MBA. But the critical one which differentiates an MBA (or any good manager, for that matter) from others is the understanding of the difference between choosing a conventional approach and a radical approach, on a case by case basis. In addition to this, through an MBA you will learn the intricacies of planning, goal setting, and interpersonal skills (being a team player). You will identify the importance of building relationships with your employees; creating a good working environment, developing intuition, commitment and discipline. This list also includes work culture, competence and the ability to delegate tasks.

What Does All This Do For You?

Brainstorming, which is the mainstay MBA training, teaches the techniques of developing great ideas and strategies. But more than that, apart from your academics, you learn composure, empathy and team building skills which are all the qualities of a good manager.

Large corporations are looking for more and more MBAs for their senior positions not because others are incompetent, but because MBAs will have learned things that would take years for others to learn without going through a formal MBA program.

Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solutions – Six Sigma Online ( http://www.sixsigmaonline.org ) offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts