Globe and Mail praises Executive MBA team-building

Program aims to build better MBAs

2000-09-04 - By Gordon Pitts
The Globe and Mail

Kingston, Ont. -- An engineer's voice begins to crack as he describes his close relationship with his now deceased father. A manager confides that one of her proudest moments was taking time off work to drive an elderly couple home from a clinic.

"My greatest success has been my marriage," an executive confides to the group around him. Snapshots from group therapy sessions? The latest episode of reality television? Actually, these moments of self-revelation are part of the kick-off sessions in the executive MBA program at Queen's University in Kingston.

Examination of life successes are powerfully effective in helping managers accomplish their goals in the MBA course and in business, says Shawna O'Grady, an associate professor at the Queen's School of Business who specializes in building high-performance teams.

"You get to know the people on your team at a deeper level," says Prof. O'Grady. Discussion of priorities -- particularly about family life – are common threads that can connect people from different backgrounds. In the Queen's program, this connecting is critical. The university puts huge emphasis on building compatible teams, who will work together for two years of high-pressure study. About half the executive MBA course activity is built around teams.

"You will spend more time with your teams than with your family or friends over the next little while," Prof. O'Grady warned the 70 or so managers who assembled for a recent Sunday morning session on the Queen's campus. Theyare some of the 180 executive MBA students in the class of 2002. The stakes are high. A "part-time" executive MBA costs $65,000 over two years. Candidates spend an average of 25 hours a week on courses, and continue duties with their companies in their home cities. The average age of participants is 37, but the group assembled recently ranged from 25 to 65.

The Queen's brain trust emphasizes that team building is more than academic, it's something managers can put to work every day. "Teams are the key unit of performance in organizations today," Prof. O'Grady says.

Teamwork gets a lot of superficial acknowledgment in the business world. Many companies put working groups together and hope for the best, or do some serious training but then don't follow up.

Queen's is convinced effective teams don't just happen. So it devotes three full days in the first two classroom weeks of its executive MBA program to team building, including exercises in conflict management, goals and communications.

Prof. O'Grady says in the past about 80 per cent of executive MBA teams would experience problems. Since the team-building modules were added, that's dropped to 20 per cent.

The MBA groups of about eight members are based on where people live – Team Vancouver, Team Calgary -- but also on diversity in industries, backgrounds and gender. The more diverse the team, the better at problem-solving, the school says.

Aside from initial awkwardness, the MBA students buy into the concept. Brad Heck, 33, a commercial loans officer from Alberta Treasury Branches in Calgary, says he knows he needs to rely on the other people in his group. And team building is important, he says, because many members come from environments where individualism is emphasized. MBA students have to agree that they will perform "effectively" and "supportively" on their teams. If they cannot fulfill this commitment, even after consultation and coaching, they could be removed from the program.

That underlines the critical role of getting-to-know-you exercises such as Bombardment, which triggered the episodes of self-revelation described above.

Bombardment works like this: Team members write down lists of their biggest successes. Seated in a tight circle, team members tell each other about these triumphs and why they were successes.

While one person talks, the others write down what they think are that person's greatest strengths.

When one finishes speaking, each member kneels before him or her and describes the strengths they have recorded. It amounts to a bombardment of positive reinforcement.

When the bombardment is finished, the recipient responds to how he or she felt about the comments. Prof. O'Grady emphasizes this process is all about strengths, not weaknesses. It works toward building respect in the group. And it's useful not just in school, but in business applications, where she applies these tools as a consultant.

"If you want to breed success, build it on positives," she says.