Roger That
One of the classes I'm taking this period is Psychological Issues in Management. Why did I take it? Well, it seemed to be so far out of left field that I thought it couldn't possibly make for a boring experience. And for once I seem to be about right.
It's taught by a Spanish professor who seems to know exactly how to rub pushy MBAs the wrong way. It's a pretty simple recipe actually. It involves:
1 part expletives
1 part tough questions
1 part picking on people (god forbid!)
Ironically, the people who struggle most with this cocktail are those who you'd think would be the best placed for it - the really hard, driven, ambitious types. You have no idea how much this course features on the campus conversation radar - by now every body's heard of it.m And people get really wound up by this.
So far what we've been covering something fascinating. How to listen to people. Specifically, the Rogerian method of client-centred therapy. This is a specific approach for listening to people where you try and reflect back their feelings to them, while being empathic, congruent (i.e. your outward appearance must match how you feel internally) and accepting of them. It's interesting to note just how unnatural such an approach is for most people is - one class exercise involves the professor reading client responses from a Rogerian interview and then prompting the class for a suitable interviewer response. It's almost impossible to get this right.
Interestingly though, I seem to be in the minority of the class which is more probably to be successful at listening to people - we did a questionnaire to try and assess whether one has Rogeeian attitudes. I seem to be quite a good match for it, though the proviso is that as with any self-administered questionnaire you may be getting who I want to be rather than who I am answering the questions.
CQW: Did you go to the McKinsey dinner?
It's taught by a Spanish professor who seems to know exactly how to rub pushy MBAs the wrong way. It's a pretty simple recipe actually. It involves:
1 part expletives
1 part tough questions
1 part picking on people (god forbid!)
Ironically, the people who struggle most with this cocktail are those who you'd think would be the best placed for it - the really hard, driven, ambitious types. You have no idea how much this course features on the campus conversation radar - by now every body's heard of it.m And people get really wound up by this.
So far what we've been covering something fascinating. How to listen to people. Specifically, the Rogerian method of client-centred therapy. This is a specific approach for listening to people where you try and reflect back their feelings to them, while being empathic, congruent (i.e. your outward appearance must match how you feel internally) and accepting of them. It's interesting to note just how unnatural such an approach is for most people is - one class exercise involves the professor reading client responses from a Rogerian interview and then prompting the class for a suitable interviewer response. It's almost impossible to get this right.
Interestingly though, I seem to be in the minority of the class which is more probably to be successful at listening to people - we did a questionnaire to try and assess whether one has Rogeeian attitudes. I seem to be quite a good match for it, though the proviso is that as with any self-administered questionnaire you may be getting who I want to be rather than who I am answering the questions.
CQW: Did you go to the McKinsey dinner?
posted by The Apprentice at 1:17 PM
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