As a career coach I often get queries from my clients and passer-byes (at social events and parties) about available resources to advance their careers. This often happens with midcareer professionals who realize that they are missing something in their tool kit of skills to get to the next level. Sometimes this is prompted by the Annual Performance Review (APR) that identifies some deficiencies in their performance and with recommendations for remedying those with in-house training, outside courses, coaching, and even a paid MBA program. Sometimes, too, clients take this as a license to sign-up for an expensive course(s) from prestigious universities on their own to augment their rsum and to impress their boss about how seriously they take these recommendations to keep their skills in tip-top shape and to burnish their rsum.
Recently, I got a query from one of my clients who came across a six-day course at Stanford on Negotiating & Influencing and felt that this course would help her improve her leadership skills when working with internal teams as she is faced with negotiating with various functional areas, including product management, program management, Dev. teams, and other functional areas.
In her role at a payment-technology company she is responsible for multiple programs that deliver different product features with a release timeline, and, because of the constant flux that drive these releases, negotiating priorities and changes are critical to her success in how she is measured. The price tag for this weeklong course at the prestigious Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) was in five figures, which she was willing to pay on her own.
Her question: was it worth the price, trouble, and its benefits?
Hmmm!
So, rather than providing a binary Yes, No answer to this or similar questions with different variables that flow my way frequently let me offer my perspective on the ground reality of pursuing such paths to improve your career, rsum, and available opportunities for growth:
The Positive
1.Any resources to improve your skills, knowledge, and experience are a boon to your career if they are directly connected to how your career and job require what these resources offer you.
2.Taking a relevant course from a top academic institution shows that you are keen on improving yourself in your area of activity and if you pursue this on your own you get some recognition for your own initiative.
3.Mid-career professionals (your peers), most of whom come from general management background or sales/marketing participate in such courses (just look at the participant demographic the school provides in its promos). So, in classroom discussions you get a rich interchange from those who have experienced the material to be covered in the classroom from their real-life encounters. Some participants will also be senior executives, so you get exposure to how they present their ideas and how they communicate at their level. This can be a good way to learn communication/ presentation/executive presence skills as a bonus for attending such programs.
4.In a typical class of 30-50 participants you have many executives from various countries attending such courses. This way you get exposure to how different cultures behave in their interactions with other cultures, which can be a valuable insight.
5.Part of the content is sharing your real-life experiences in your roles as different topics are presented. This is a great way to understand that your problems are not unique to you, but are common across most of the situations modulated by individual cultural and company values.
6.Because you are there to learnrather than to performyou get out of your comfort zone and see how you can navigate through challenging situations without any jeopardy to your agenda. This can be a problem at work and the constraints within your work group may prevent you from experimenting with such ideas, especially if you are not sure of their outcome; a great learning platform!
7.Youll be networking with many executives across the globe and these relationships can help you in your career throughout your professional life and beyond.
8.If you have a burning challenge at work that relates to your course this is the best place to get highly prized opinions from seasoned executives and especially from the expert professor. You may come back with a whole new perspective on how to deal with your burning challenge at work and impress your peers/superiors.
9.You will walk away with some theoretical framework that can provide you with a more comprehensive approach to dealing with problems addressed by the course.
10.Youll go home with up-to-date materials, books, and knowledge that will equip you to deal with challenging situations with a higher level of confidence.
The Negative
1.Most B-Schools do a GREAT job of marketing their expensive products. So, if you are after just the content to master there are more effective and less expensive ways of obtaining that content. Books, seminars, in-company training classes, MOOCs (from top universities), and Coursera offerings can be a good proxy at the fraction of the cost ($100 or so) if you are merely interested in the content and not the social part offered by brick-and-mortar courses.
2.Most of the professors tend to bring their academic grounding to the class content. The real experiential content comes from the participants. So, if you are going to rely more on the material coming from the instructor you may be disappointed in its practical applicability. You may be better off reading their books and articles, instead.
3.In addition to the cost of the session, which can be easily in five figures (six for an MBA) the time away from work is on your own. So, the total price you pay for such courses is much higher. Getting your employer to pay for the course often eliminates the need for time away from work on your own. It also looks better on your rsum.
4.Some learn better at a slower pace than the typically designed torrid pace during these intensive courses. So, learning at your own pace can be a better option, depending on your learning style.
5.If you do not have the urgent need at work for the content provided by the course, its short half-life period kicks in. Typically, in about a month youll resile back to your old ways if you do not apply what you learn and keep applying on a regular basis.
6.If, after taking a course, someone asks you in an interview: Tell me specifically how this course helped you improve your effectiveness in the areas of your work with examples, and if you do not have an example to present it may not be a positive response!
So, there is NO silver bullet as an answer to the question that prompted this blog. I welcome comments from readers, who have gone through this experience first-hand so that other readers can learn from their perspectives. So, I thank you for sharing them!
Good luck!
| About Author | |
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Dilip has distinguished himself as LinkedIn’s #1 career coach from among a global pool of over 1,000 peers ever since LinkedIn started ranking them professionally (LinkedIn selected 23 categories of professionals for this ranking and published this ranking from 2006 until 2012). Having worked with over 6,000 clients from all walks of professions and having worked with nearly the entire spectrum of age groups—from high-school graduates about to enter college to those in their 70s, not knowing what to do with their retirement—Dilip has developed a unique approach to bringing meaning to their professional and personal lives. Dilip’s professional success lies in his ability to codify what he has learned in his own varied life (he has changed careers four times and is currently in his fifth) and from those of his clients, and to apply the essence of that learning to each coaching situation. After getting his B.Tech. (Honors) from IIT-Bombay and Master’s in electrical engineering(MSEE) from Stanford University, Dilip worked at various organizations, starting as an individual contributor and then progressing to head an engineering organization of a division of a high-tech company, with $2B in sales, in California’s Silicon Valley. His current interest in coaching resulted from his career experiences spanning nearly four decades, at four very diverse organizations–and industries, including a major conglomerate in India, and from what it takes to re-invent oneself time and again, especially after a lay-off and with constraints that are beyond your control. During the 45-plus years since his graduation, Dilip has reinvented himself time and again to explore new career horizons. When he left the corporate world, as head of engineering of a technology company, he started his own technology consulting business, helping high-tech and biotech companies streamline their product development processes. Dilip’s third career was working as a marketing consultant helping Fortune-500 companies dramatically improve their sales, based on a novel concept. It is during this work that Dilip realized that the greatest challenge most corporations face is available leadership resources and effectiveness; too many followers looking up to rudderless leadership. Dilip then decided to work with corporations helping them understand the leadership process and how to increase leadership effectiveness at every level. Soon afterwards, when the job-market tanked in Silicon Valley in 2001, Dilip changed his career track yet again and decided to work initially with many high-tech refugees, who wanted expert guidance in their reinvention and reemployment. Quickly, Dilip expanded his practice to help professionals from all walks of life. Now in his fifth career, Dilip works with professionals in the Silicon Valley and around the world helping with reinvention to get their dream jobs or vocations. As a career counselor and life coach, Dilip’s focus has been career transitions for professionals at all levels and engaging them in a purposeful pursuit. Working with them, he has developed many groundbreaking approaches to career transition that are now published in five books, his weekly blogs, and hundreds of articles. He has worked with those looking for a change in their careers–re-invention–and jobs at levels ranging from CEOs to hospital orderlies. He has developed numerous seminars and workshops to complement his individual coaching for helping others with making career and life transitions. Dilip’s central theme in his practice is to help clients discover their latent genius and then build a value proposition around it to articulate a strong verbal brand. Throughout this journey, Dilip has come up with many groundbreaking practices such as an Inductive Résumé and the Genius Extraction Tool. Dilip owns two patents, has two publications in the Harvard Business Review and has led a CEO roundtable for Chief Executive on Customer Loyalty. Both Amazon and B&N list numerous reviews on his five books. Dilip is also listed in Who’s Who, has appeared several times on CNN Headline News/Comcast Local Edition, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle in its career columns. Dilip is a contributing writer to several publications. Dilip is a sought-after speaker at public and private forums on jobs, careers, leadership challenges, and how to be an effective leader. |
Website: http://dilipsaraf.com/?p=2590
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