Discussion: View Thread

From: Bob Carr [mailto:bcarr@wfubmc.edu]

I also teach management and conflict management, but in a
corporate/educational setting, and find the example stimulating and a
potential catalyst for exploration.

I find it a bit strange that Charles considers this "not focally
'management education' topically." The topic has certainly generated
more interest than most other topics proposed on the list. Perhaps we
need to clearly define what management education encompasses.

In another mailing, Phil mentions that "management education is centered
on those things that can be taught - that is, what a lot of people call
the 'hard' and quantifiable skills. Very little is done about the 'soft'
skills, even though in my opinion they too can be taught (just a little
bit differently). And yet it is these 'soft' skills that get so many
people into trouble."

Is the problem that we can't or don't teach managers the "soft skills"?

In my years of doing corporate training, I have come across many
managers who were trained in the "hard skills", and remain clueless in
the soft ones. They lack empathy and compassion, in addition to the
ability to reason with, negotiate, and manage conflict. This smoking
ban is a case in point. It is not that we are at a loss for more
information. Little new has been added to the discussion in recent
years. Yet the problem remains in some organizations. Why? Perhaps
the answer lies in the ART rather than the science of management.
Perhaps it is even better to say, the practice of leadership. Are we
training people to be leaders or managers? Can we (Do we ?) teach them
the art as well as the science of management?

Experiential teaching could easily take a case like this (or choose any
case of your liking such as students searching the internet while in
class), and explore the issue from a personal perspective. This issue
obviously touched some of our own emotional intelligence. The
facilitator/instructor could then lead the students to a broader
understanding of the application of the principles discussed.

Before we take the discussion off line, would someone like to clarify
what is the core of management education?

I agree with Bob Carr that management education has neglected competences
in the "soft" area. Recently, I submitted a paper proposal to an editor
making the case competence in culture-climate management is of vital
importance, especially in multinational corporations. I was told by the
editor that such an article belongs to organizational behaviour and would
not be of interest to international management. When management education
programs ignore psychosocial dimensions of management, they will likely
produce graduates who are ineffective in creating/maintaining a positive
work climate that enhances morale and productivity.



-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Wankel
To: MG-ED-DV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU
Sent: 2/8/2002 5:16 AM
Subject: what management education encompasses

From: Bob Carr [mailto:bcarr@wfubmc.edu]

I also teach management and conflict management, but in a
corporate/educational setting, and find the example stimulating and a
potential catalyst for exploration.

I find it a bit strange that Charles considers this "not focally
'management education' topically." The topic has certainly generated
more interest than most other topics proposed on the list. Perhaps we
need to clearly define what management education encompasses.

In another mailing, Phil mentions that "management education is centered
on those things that can be taught - that is, what a lot of people call
the 'hard' and quantifiable skills. Very little is done about the 'soft'
skills, even though in my opinion they too can be taught (just a little
bit differently). And yet it is these 'soft' skills that get so many
people into trouble."

Is the problem that we can't or don't teach managers the "soft skills"?

In my years of doing corporate training, I have come across many
managers who were trained in the "hard skills", and remain clueless in
the soft ones. They lack empathy and compassion, in addition to the
ability to reason with, negotiate, and manage conflict. This smoking
ban is a case in point. It is not that we are at a loss for more
information. Little new has been added to the discussion in recent
years. Yet the problem remains in some organizations. Why? Perhaps
the answer lies in the ART rather than the science of management.
Perhaps it is even better to say, the practice of leadership. Are we
training people to be leaders or managers? Can we (Do we ?) teach them
the art as well as the science of management?

Experiential teaching could easily take a case like this (or choose any
case of your liking such as students searching the internet while in
class), and explore the issue from a personal perspective. This issue
obviously touched some of our own emotional intelligence. The
facilitator/instructor could then lead the students to a broader
understanding of the application of the principles discussed.

Before we take the discussion off line, would someone like to clarify
what is the core of management education?

In a message dated 2/8/2002 10:59:51 PM Central Standard Time, wong@twu.ca
writes:


> I agree with Bob Carr that management education has neglected competences
> in the "soft" area. Recently, I submitted a paper proposal to an editor
> making the case competence in culture-climate management is of vital
> importance, especially in multinational corporations. I was told by the
> editor that such an article belongs to organizational behaviour and would
> not be of interest to international management. When management education
> programs ignore psychosocial dimensions of management, they will likely
> produce graduates who are ineffective in creating/maintaining a positive
> work climate that enhances morale and productivity.
>
>
>

WHAT JOURNAL???

Bob,

I too would like the discussion to stay online because it is bringing us to
the point of my original posting - how the application of the 'soft' skills
(the empathy etc mentioned in your posting) is overridden by the application
of the harder (and far more easily quantifiable) skills.

I stated that the 'soft' skills are, in my opinion, teachable because we
have been doing just that for the past twelve years now, but we have had to
get away from the traditional approach to do so.

Readers may recall the discussion some time back about the differences
between training, education and development, well I didn't get too involved
in this because my experience has proven time and again that there are major
differences which we, as academics and trainers, can use to influence the
degree and application of both soft and hard skills in the workplace.

My definition, taken from someone whose name I cannot recall, is that
training is the transfer from the teacher to the student of skills and
knowledge that are important in the student's day-to-day job (or the one
he/she is about to take up). It doesn't matter who the teacher is - academic
of vocational teacher, in-house trainer, or simply a fellow worker or
manager - but what is important is that the skills and knowledge are
immediately appliable.

Education, in my definition, is the imparting of skills and knowledge
(usually more often the latter but must include the knowledge of how to
apply the skills) related to the wider world of work and where the student's
role or function fits into it. In particular, such issues as politics and
society are included for the gaining of a greater understanding about how
the job or organisation fits into the world in which the student either
currently works or hopes to one day in the future work.

Development I have split in two - self-development (self training or
education [including attendance at formal or informal training or education
sessions] in order to gain skills and knowledge that are not necessarily
immediately appliable but one day will be - slightly different to
'education' where such skills and knowledge MIGHT one day be applied) and
development (developing within one's current role or function, for example
learning more about why and how something works, in order to progress to a
level of mastery).

Now, within each of these are the so-called hard and soft skills - for
example the ability to actually do something and/or the ability to
conceptualise how something might eventuate if certain skills and knowledge
are applied. Management is a good area where this is found - espcially in,
say, the skills to counsel a poor performing staff member coupled with the
empathy to couch such counselling in such a way as to be supportive and
future oriented rather than negative and immediate. The tip is, however,
that in every case it is centred on the behaviour of the manager/student and
not on what he/she thinks or believes. The former we can visualise, teach
and assess on the job. The latter we can only guess at and hopefully
influence - if we are lucky.

In the example of the legislation regarding smokers clocking on and off
whenever they go outside for a cigarette, the point I believe is that the
legislation itself is poorly conceived and applied simply because someone
was displaying hard skills without (one assumes) considering the application
of the soft skills. And to answer Bob's question - no, I don't believe we do
enough to teach people the soft skills. Is this because we don't want to or
because we ourselves don't have the skills to? And to extend Bob's argument
about management being an art rather than a science, I believe that
management education is also an art and not a science. (Now, let's watch the
worms come storming out of that open can <G> )

Phil Rutherford



----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Wankel" <wankelc@optonline.net>
To: <MG-ED-DV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2002 12:16 AM
Subject: [MG-ED-DV] what management education encompasses


> From: Bob Carr [mailto:bcarr@wfubmc.edu]
>
> I also teach management and conflict management, but in a
> corporate/educational setting, and find the example stimulating and a
> potential catalyst for exploration.
>

Colleagues:

In my experience the faculty do a good job in training and educating
students. When one examines most curriculums by quality finction deployment
(QFD), one will find that there are a number of educational competencies that
are embedded within most outcomes.

In the graduate management programs at Southern Wesleyan University (SWU) we
measured 1) perceived importance of each competency for success in the
workplace, 2) the perceived level of mastery that should be required for each
competency, 3) the subjective level of difficulty for mastering each
competency, 4) how strongly each course addressed the terminal competencies
throughout the curriculum, 5) the relative importance of each course in the
curriculum, 6) if there were sufficient learning experiences for the students
to master each competency, and 7) the relative overall emphasis of each
competency in the curriculum. Some of the findings are proving to be very
interesting. We will be submitting our results for publication and will give
sufficient detail so that the QFD technique can be adopted and employed at
other schools. Enuf said--management is both and art and science.

Most sincerely yours,
Bob Cornesky
tqm1bob@aol.com
or bcornesky@swu.edu