MBA is a program that deepens and broadens your business knowledge in such a way that you can put it to practice. It helps you hone practical skills. All this goes hand in hand with a higher salary, more work responsibilities, and powerful designations. MBA is for you if you want to learn management skills and advance your career. It is for you whether you want to be an entrepreneur or progress within your current company. MBA gives you wonderful networking opportunities that can last a lifetime.
Before you pursue an MBA, One of the basic things to do is to reflect on your career goals and aspirations. You can pen a few things down. You can write down your goals, what you want to do career-wise, what it is that you want to achieve in a business school. You can practise your elevator speech, prepare a powerful resume, and build a potential company list. You could even connect with alumni and take their advice on areas where you need guidance. You can spend time reading relevant books. Knowing what’s in store will help you mentally prepare.
There are skills you should have that will help your MBA be more valuable and beneficial to you. Your ability to pivot, take initiatives, and plan effectively are some of them. No matter what kind of a company or role you choose, you will be working with people. So investing time in honing communication skills will be worth the time spent. You could try to understand how to prioritise tasks when there is a mountain of work in front of you. Strategic thinking is crucial in MBA and any business. MBA requires reading, writing, presenting, and studying. So your desire to learn hard work will always benefit you.
Communication Skills Oral And Written
You need fluency in both to truly shine as a skill needed for MBA Aspirants. Your work will involve a lot of human interaction and it is imperative that you master the art of both verbal and non-verbal communication. Doing so will help you to strike deals, size up potential clients, and turn situations to your advantage. People and relationships will be a major part of your job description and you cannot take care of both without ace communication skills.
Good working knowledge of presentation tools is one of the most important skill needed for MBA management students. Presentations are critical in the corporate setup as they are an official form of communication between a client and a business.
Companies require managers to make presentations to their clients that put out their business objectives, offerings, and solution to the client’s problem statement, alongside the methodology in a concise, neat, and aesthetic, yet informative manner. Similarly, companies also need an aesthetic design for their website, or social media handles to connect with their consumers. For this, the managers must have some basic knowledge of design tools to effectively communicate with the website developers and implement the company’s idea of a website look and feel.
MBA students get a good deal of exposure on presentations right from their class assignments to business case study competitions. They must utilise this exposure by learning more about the art of ppt making and sharpen their skills on various tools like PowerPoint, Canva, Prezi, Haiku Deck, etc.
An MBA graduate must be able to take up responsibility, put in the required motivation and dedication, and be good at communication. You must be an active listener, mature, decisive, committed, and optimistic. You must be capable of teamwork and hard work but at the same time remain patient and be flexible
Initiative
“Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.”
– Victor Hugo, French writer
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In a survey one of the important skills employers looked at was -Initiative (74.2 %). Initiative is one skill needed for MBA aspirants. Instead of the word ‘leadership,’ focus on developing initiative. When you take initiative; when you are the first to raise your hand; when you are the first to step up- you automatically become a leader. A leader is someone who goes first. So, work to overcome your hesitancy, your fear of being seen, procrastination and overthinking.
When you show initiative, you do things without being told; you find out what you need to know; you keep going when things get tough; and you spot and take advantage of opportunities that others pass by. You act, instead of reacting, at work.
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Reframe your mind to replace the word ‘failure’ with ‘lesson.’ Take baby steps and aim to become consistent.
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As an MBA graduate, you must be able to function effectively under pressure and be dedicated enough to complete any challenge that comes your way.
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It is important to be a team player, however, possessing these leadership qualities makes you dynamic and excel in your field.
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Being a trustworthy, honest, capable leader is beneficial to the growth of your personal career as well as the future of the organization you work in.
Initiative has become increasingly important in today’s workplace. Organizations want employees who can think on their feet and take action without waiting for someone to tell them what to do. After all, this type of flexibility and courage is what pushes teams and organizations to innovate, and to overcome competition.
The Ability To Pivot
That is the ability to be attentive enough, fast enough, with the ability to re-evaluate a new approach when the factors change and shift. A person who develops this skill can rapidly recalculate an alternate approach as things shift.
A person who can think on his/her feet is a skill needed for mba since adaptability is also a key to succeed
When your professor demands 5 essays for the next morning at midnight, you must have the ability to pivot, cancel your plans, and get working. When the company faces a loss where it expected a profit, you must have the ability to pivot and work to recover it step-by-step.
Planning And Organization
This is perhaps one skill that is needed to survive in the corporate world . These skills needed for mba aspirants to handle the humongous course material. If you don’t plan your assignments and workload, you can very well drown yourself in exhaustion and backlogs. Because you’ll be learning so much in a relatively short amount of time, you need to be strategic and carve out time for all essentials (like rest and leisure). This can only be achieved when your classroom and extracurricular activities are scheduled in and organized. These traits will come in handy when you move to the office and manage large teams in addition to your own work.
You will need to be a hard worker, good leader, team player, quick thinker, etc. project management encompasses many skills, including time management.
Time management skills needed for mba aspirants. Managers communicate the information received from top management to the employees. They also create Minutes of the Meeting with the top management, create training and staffing material, make reports on product specifications and terms of service, etc. Managers also create reports on the internal and external process, stakeholder management, competitor analysis, and project documentation.
Strategic And Analytical Thinking
Most important skill needed for MBA in the post pandemic era is this skill. This is a core part of every management practice. A business graduate needs to be well-versed in strategic and analytical thinking. They should be able to develop a long-term vision and think rationally while keeping their emotions and personal judgments aside.
Also, you do not need to become a master of these skills right away or even in the immediate future. Small but consistent applications of the same will reap noticeable and amazing results during your degree as well as beyond it.
