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Teaching a New Breed of Business Leaders posted on September 14, 2007

It’s not enough to have an MBA in today’s corporate climate. You need people skills, solid ethics and a good mentor or two. Here’s how San Diego business schools are doing just that.

Story by Nicholas Drake
Photos of Marshall Goldsmith by | Jim Block

Marshall Goldsmith thinks Tom Brokaw got it all wrong. The heroes and heroines lauded in the iconic newscaster’s 1998 bestseller The Greatest Generation were not the bees’ knees as widely reported. Heck, they weren’t even good role models. The folks who gave birth to a bazillion baby boomers following World War II were in the right place at the right time with little control over their good fortunes.

“I think it was the luckiest generation,” Goldsmith says. “Japan was destroyed. England was destroyed. Germany was destroyed. We had no competitors. We had the biggest manufacturing base in the world. Anybody in the United States could have made it into the middle class during that era. I completely disagree with that book. Today, making it into the middle class is hard. It’s not a given. If you’re 25 years old today, it’s tough out there. Global competition is real, and it’s not going away. Be prepared to work hard. A lot of older people get into this mode of saying, ‘When I was a little boy, things were so tough.’ I don’t believe that. I think when I was a little boy, things were much easier. For the young people coming up today, things are much harder.”

OK, so exactly who is this guy talking smack about old people and criticizing the former godhead of NBC Nightly News? He’s Marshall Goldsmith, a 58-year-old resident of Rancho Santa Fe who holds a doctorate degree in organizational behavior from UCLA and the attention of CEOs pretty much everywhere. His 2007 book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There has zoomed up bestseller lists at both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. One of the world’s leading coaches for business executives, Goldsmith has clients that include Fortune 500 corporations, government entities, academic institutions and not-for-profit groups. Business Week named him one of the most influential practitioners in the history of leadership development. The Economist called him one of the three most credible “thought leaders” in the new era of business.

Goldsmith is one of a growing number of business gurus who believe it takes more than just smarts to be a great leader. Along with the proverbial MBA, today’s CEO wannabes need to have exceptional people skills, sound morals, close mentors and the ability to reinvent an industry at the drop of a hat. San Diego business schools have stepped up to make sure the leaders of tomorrow are skilled and ethical.

“The MBA programs in many schools have been strongly critiqued,” Goldsmith says. “Warren Bennis used the term ‘physics envy’. Some schools act like they’re teaching a branch of physics as opposed to management. If you ask the customers of business schools—today’s corporations—what their biggest critique is, they will tell you they want more focus on people, team building and interpersonal skills, and less training of technicians.”

In 2006 the self-described Buddhist decided to share his wisdom with students of business by teaming up with Alliant International University to open the Marshall Goldsmith School of Management. Offering a mix of business, psychology and international studies, the school features MBA programs as well as doctoral and postdoctoral studies.

“Most business schools don’t do much on business leadership,” says James Goodrich, newly appointed dean of the Marshall Goldsmith School of Management. “Alliant is set up as a professional practice university, which is different from a teaching and research university. Our roots are in learning, but we excel at coaching. We believe people learn more by doing than by analyzing.

“Coaching is a relatively new field. In the past, executives didn’t receive feedback and coaching to help guide people. Nowadays, feedback, self-reflection and an examination of leadership styles are expected in the workplace. It can be challenging initially for people to hear comments about their leadership. But the methods we use at Alliant help them get better at being leaders. It’s actually a wonderful thing to see. People truly learn to become better leaders. That’s what we do at Alliant, and that’s the core of the Marshall Goldsmith School of Management.”

Goodrich also suggests that students of business surround themselves with people more clever than themselves. Or if not more clever, at least more willing to offer smart suggestions.

“Good leaders ask lots of questions,” Goodrich says. “They don’t simply tell their colleagues what to do. Personally secure individuals are not afraid of surrounding themselves with smarter folks. Business is very complex today. You have to be constantly asking questions and testing the waters.”

Get a Good Mentor or Two
If truly smart people surround themselves with others smarter than themselves, then it’s no wonder that the world of mentorship is growing big time, especially for younger students. A quick toggle of the Google search engine will fire back hundreds of offers for business mentors and coaches. Even Marshall Goldsmith had a slew of coaches.

The Rady School of Management at UCSD offers a program designed to help both newbies and veterans learn the complexities of the business world. You might call it baptism by fire.

“We teach leadership by exposing students to a variety of very successful leaders through our mentor program,” explains Robert Sullivan, dean of the Rady School of Management. “It encourages leadership by means of immersion—that is, encouraging students to use their leadership qualities in action-learning environments. Interpersonal skills, communication abilities, confidence and moral values all play roles in leadership development.”

Rady is highly regarded for reinventing graduate business education, as noted in articles appearing in Business Week, Los Angeles Times, The Economist and other bibles of the business world. Many of Rady’s students want to participate in defining new futures. Sullivan says the school is especially focused on the science, technology and life science industries.

“Our school appeals to individuals who would like to participate in these high-impact industries for the 21st century,” Sullivan says. “Rady is particularly attrac-tive to individuals who are entrepreneurial, who may have already earned advanced degrees and who want to create or reinvent industries.”

Like many other business schools these days, Rady has integrated ethics and moral values teachings into its curriculum.

Who Needs Ethics?
National University’s School of Business and Management takes the teaching of ethics very seriously. Anyone who even utters the word “Enron” on campus is ex-pelled. Well, not really. But you get the idea.

Wali Mondal, interim dean of the School of Business and Management, believes solid ethics in business begin at home but need continued reinforcement in the university setting as well as in the business community.

“We have a number of courses that deal with business ethics,” Mondal says. “One theme repeated in all courses is that ethics begin at home. Everyone must exhibit ethical standards in everything they do. That means we have high standards for student conduct as well as academic performance.” “In terms of lessons learned from Enron and other scandals, our faculty constantly prepares case studies so that students become familiar with issues leading to all these scandals,” he adds. “What’s important are the circumstances leading to these scandals and a strategy to avoid such circumstances.”

National University also stresses innovative thinking and teamwork—two areas one of their favorite graduates has worked hard to employ over the past couple of years.

“All business leaders should be able to think outside of the box,” Mondal says. “Every business leader should have a vision relating to his or her business and should be able to translate that vision into reality through teamwork.”

So who is that favorite NU graduate? None other than San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, who received a bachelor’s in criminal justice.

Alliant University
10455 Pomerado Road
San Diego
(858) 635-4772
www.alliant.edu

Rady School of Management
UC San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla
(858) 822-4205
www.rady.ucsd.edu

National University
Academic and Administrative Headquarters
11355 N Torrey Pines Road
La Jolla
(858) 642-8000
www.nu.edu

Biz School Links
Looking for the right business schools to either pull talent from or send employees to for continuing education? Here are some additional prominent business schools Southern California has to offer, most with San Diego locations.

Cal State San Marcos
College of Business Administration
www.csusm.edu

Keller Graduate School of Management of DeVry University
www.devry.edu/keller

San Diego State University
College of Business Administration
www.sdsu.edu

The Paul Merage School
of Business at UC Irvine
www.gsm.uci.edu

UCLA Anderson
School of Management
www.anderson.ucla.edu

University of Phoenix
www.phoenix.edu

University of Redlands
www.redlands.edu

University of San Diego
School of Business Administration
www.sandiego.edu/business

USC Marshall School of Business
www.marshall.usc.edu