B-schools are known to have rigorous curriculums, continuous evaluations, and sacrosanct deadlines. The atmosphere is bound to make one resilient to bear the challenges that the future may hold.
2. Humility – Taking pride in winning is natural but allowing it to get swayed by it to the extent of getting caught in the clutches of ego and haughtiness is something that requires taking precautions. Being humble and focusing not on winning but the learning will help us stay grounded.
Competition is heightened in a B-school and you will often find yourself competing against the best. And yet, the strong bonds will make one help others in the toughest of times thereby teaching one to become humble.
3. Focus – The Mahabharata talks about Arjun piercing the eye of a fish by looking at its reflection – it was certainly not possible without focus. Today we have tons of distractions all around us that limit our capability to focus. Ask yourselves, when was the last time you sat down to complete your assignment without glancing at your smartphone. We often burden our minds with unnecessary distractions and lose sight of the real goal.
A B-school environment gives you enough time to figure out your strengths and weaknesses necessary to determine your interests and inclinations. Once you identify that, you naturally tend to focus on the specialization of your choice.
4. Solidarity – There are times when it gets difficult for the lone wolf to survive so it is better to keep the pack close. A group often provides complementarities in skills and attitudes which are needed to analyze situations and make the right decisions. Lows in life are bound to come but the support group helps the winners to bounce back.
Placements is one such arena where you see the entire batch coming together to help one another. There are no celebrations until each and every candidate gets placed! For Summer Placements the senior batch operationalizes the placements for the junior batch and the favor is returned by the junior batch during Final Placements of the senior batch. Such unity brings a lot of strength.
5. Learning – Often people get defensive to critics and feedback especially when it comes to their failings. Winners, on the other hand, accept their mistakes and use the feedback to turn the tides in their favour. They analyze their failures and seek feedback from the experts, peers, supervisors and even their subordinates.
B-school Case Competitions are a learning game. It takes time to get the right analysis and the best version of the presentation but the mistakes and feedback help one to learn and get better.
6. Mutual Respect – Finger pointing or blame-game will never help recover from failures. But respecting each other’s shortcomings and finding ways to strengthen the team will help achieve the results we seek.
Sports in a B-school helps one appreciate their shortcomings and other’s prowess. The sports fest and inter-college sports extravaganza gives ample of such opportunities to inculcate mutual respect for one another.
7. Commitment – One of the things closely associated with the new year is the resolutions but how often are we able to keep them. Be it working out, reading novels, or switching careers we just cannot meet out resolutions unless we commit ourselves to them. It requires discipline and self-determination.
A B-school provides opportunities for live projects and summer internships where students try out their hands-on solving real-life business problems. Students can only undertake such projects in parallel to the academic curriculum if they show sincere commitment and self-determination. The atmosphere prepares them for the same.
8. Consistency – Changing strategies every now and then will not provide stability to any firm. Be it HP’s struggle in shifting focus towards hardware vs software businesses or Yahoo’s course of switching CEOs - a high variability creates an atmosphere of uncertainty and confusion which cannot reap the fruits we desire. Consistently working towards a dedicated goal leads to success.
Continuous academic evaluation in a B-school prepares one to stay on the edge always. The rigour teaches one to be consistent to reap the best fruits.
A last piece of advice is to ensure that you don’t let the pride of winning takeover and turn into over-confidence or arrogance rather use the winning attitude to emerge as a leader. Leaders benefit from a winning spirit, disciplined focus, mutual respect and consistent commitment that makes success come more often to them.
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