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Yale’s School of Management (SOM) recently made some significant adjustments to its core curriculum. The revised program enables students to take classes organized around constituencies such as customers and employees. Meantime, Yale’s SOM is looking to change its admissions process as a whole and increase the number of international students in its class. The school also announced plans for the construction of a new building. On December 11th a forum was held to discuss these various changes. Attendees were a group of prospective students and BusinessWeek. Bruce DelMonico, the Yale Admissions Director, and two Yale students, Abby Kowaloff and Michael McLaughlin answered their questions.

When asked to describe the purpose of the curriculum changes, DelMonico explained how the new program was designed to improve students’ learning experience in a broader way. He explained that the school’s goal is to train people for leadership roles in business. To do this, students need to learn to be able to cope with all the important aspects of the business world, including leading others. The new curriculum proposes to help make this possible.Questions emerged concerning the increase of the class size. It is estimated that about 300 or so more students will be accepted per year when this construction completes in 2011.

The admissions interview process was also a major topic. The audience was especially concerned with how interviewers prepare for an interview and how quickly they evaluate once it is complete. On-campus interviews are conducted by trained second year students. These interviewers have access to candidates’ applications before the interview. The interviewer will write a report of the interview usually within 24 hours in order to accurately evaluate a prospective student.Scholarship eligibility was another concern addressed. When an application is being reviewed, it is also decided whether a student merits a scholarship. If so, the notification will be sent out at the time of admission.

SOM is cited as having one of the lowest percentages of international students among top US B-schools. The panel explained how the admissions board is looking to not only increase diversity in regards to student bodies’ fields of study, but also to expand the diversity of the students’ origins. SOM would like their student body to reflect their international focus. Therefore, ongoing strategies have been implemented to have more interviews done out of the country to recruit international students.International Experience, SOM’s study abroad program, was a major topic as well. In this program a student travels for a 10 day excursion to study in a foreign country. These travels blend cultural exploration with top-level executive meetings. If you would like to read the forum in its entirety, simply follow this link.

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Difficult people come in the forms of customers, colleagues, subordinates, and supervisors. Difficult people won’t change on their own, and, unfortunately it’s not likely that you will be able to change them. Before you let this this fact depress you, consider these tips for coping:

1.) Try to be as positive as possible. Formulate a strategy. Decide in advance what results you would like to achieve rather than concentrate on negative issues or your bad feelings about the difficult person.

2.) Express your feelings. Don’t bottle up irritation, outrage, annoyance, or feelings of hurt.

3.) Invite others to express how they feel. Seek feedback. Don’t try to guess what someone else is thinking.

4.) Use open-ended questions to inquire about feelings and opinions.

5.) In cases of dispute, appeal to a higher authority-preferably something totally objective, such as a rule book, a protocal manual, or some similar source.

6.) Keep documentation. This may not only limit or entirely avert disputes with difficult people, it might just save your hide. When your boss assigns you a major project, get the specifics in writing. If the assignment is made verbally, send a follow up e-mail or a confirming memo that states the specifics. Get the other person to sign off on it.

7.) While documentation is important, don’t let written memos become substitutes for face-to-face conversations. It is important to deal directly with difficult people in order to see their body language and to hear the tone of their voice.

8.) Go out of your way to ask difficult people for their opinion and for their help. Getting them to take interest in you will tend to give them ownership stake in your projects and your problems.Because difficult people tend not to change, their behavior is usually predictable. While you should not expect too much of difficult people at least you can prepare for encounters with them.

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We are busy preparing for our Year-end Holiday Party today. It’s an exciting time of year when most people are reflecting on the year past and make projections or resolutions for the upcoming one. Many of our readers are located internationally, but this post pertains mostly to the US market.A recent survey conducted by Milwaukee-based global staffing firm Manpower (MAN) found that 12% of companies expect to reduce employment in the three-month period starting in January, while 22% plan to add jobs. Fewer than a quarter of employers expect to add positions in the first quarter of the new year, almost the same as a year ago, according to this survey of 14,000 companies.The numbers show a slight drop from hiring intentions during the same quarter last year, when 23% of employers said they’d increase hiring and 11% expected a decrease. They also show more pessimism than last quarter, when 27% of employers planned to increase hiring while only 9% said they planned a decline.The numbers, overall, do not represent big changes.

Construction companies expect one of the larger drops, with 23% of employers saying they expect to curtail hiring, compared with 16% in the same quarter last year. Seventeen percent of employers in this sector say they expect to increase hiring, down slightly from 18% last year.

Wholesale and retail saw a slight drop, with 21% of companies saying they planned to increase hiring, down from 23% last year. Eighteen percent plan a decrease, up from 17% last year.

In the finances and real estate sector, plans to increase hiring remained steady at 21%. But the number of companies in the sector that planned to hire less than last year grew to 9% from 7%.

Hiring levels are also projected to vary regionally.

Nineteen percent of companies in the Midwest reported they would increase hiring in the first quarter, down from 26% during the previous one. Thirteen percent of companies were planning a decline, up from 9% last quarter.

The West continues to have the best outlook, with 29% of employers saying they planned to increase hiring, down from 33% last quarter. Eleven percent of employers said they planned to decrease hiring, up from 10% last quarter.

The South dipped slightly, with 23% of employers expecting to increase hiring next quarter, down from 26% last quarter. Eleven percent expected to decrease hiring, up from 8% last quarter.

The Northeast also saw a dip, with 21% of companies saying they planned to increase staff, down from 25% last quarter. Thirteen percent of employers in that region said they planned a decrease, up from 10% last quarter.

The survey doesn’t ask why employers choose to increase, decrease or maintain their staffing levels. The mortgage crisis or possibility of a recession could be reasons, but the survey can’t say for sure.

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During a normal business day, we have countless verbal interactions that we take for granted. But the simplest communication should not be overlooked. The language you incorporate in your business relationships can have a tremendous impact on your success. Well-handled verbal responses strenghten your visibility in the workplace and showcase your upper-management potential. Someone with a high verbal IQ speaks effectively with fluency and flexibility. Having control of your words, using accurate language, and delivering your speeches with confidence all contribute to an overall strong verbal IQ.

Here are a few tips on projecting a positive verbal IQ:

1.) Anticipate what is most likely to happen in your encounters with people and prepare possible scenarios.

2.) Avoid talking too much.

3.) Concentrate on solutions rather than on problems.

4.) Be honest and sincere.

5.) Think before you react.How you phrase your words is a crucial aspect of business relationships. Therefore, take the time to carefully craft your language.

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During the recent two years, many business schools have revamped or retooled the curriculum of their MBA programs . This is designed to better prepare students to manage and thrive on new challenges in an ever-changing global business world through a more profound intellectual experience and more effective training on leadership development. These modifications allow students to customize their MBA programs with a greater selection of electives, an increased number of half-semester core courses, more exchange programs for studying aboard, smaller classes, a closer integration of in-person and online class participation, and more week-long intensive courses.

Deeper, Smaller, Broader

So what are those key improvements? In a nutshell, MBA curriculums have been remodeled in 4 major aspects:

1.) Content – More real-world relevant courses, more interdisciplinary courses (such as legal and international relations courses), and more collaborative effort – Harvard Business School, for example, offers the opportunity to cross-register for courses in other select graduate programs. So do many other top business schools. More extra-curricular lectures from business professionals and on-site projects with corporations or governments.

2.) Configuration – Broader spectrum of electives allow you to construct your own study program and make your B-school academic experience unique. The weight of core courses as requirements for the degree is lowering. Many core courses are also offered in half-semesters to let you take many different courses within a semester’s time. For example, about half of Columbia Business School’s core courses are half-semester.

3.) Delivery – More high-tech equipped classrooms with more frequent use of the Internet. Smaller class sizes. Classes are taught in seminars that maximize active participation and deeper intellectual involvement. More courses are taught by two or more faculty members as a team.More interaction with faculty advisors. For example, at Stanford Graduate School of Business, your faculty advisor partners with you to select the courses that fit with your personal background and interests.

4.) Format – New curriculum models. For example, Yale’s MBA program did away with the traditional self-contained subject courses such as marketing, finance, and organizational behavior. Instead it starts to offer an Integrated Leadership Perspective course focusing on managing internal and external parties such as all levels of employees, customers, competitors, and investors. The goal is to tie together all that students learned in the first year in a holistic manner.

What prompted these changes?

Many top-rated business schools had not developed new MBA programs in nearly 30 years. Why all the changes now?The major reason for the changes is one framework of business education simply won’t work anymore. Interdisciplinary studies and experience-based learning foster the kind of creativity, leadership, problem-solving skills, critical and independent thinking, business ethics, and cultural sensitivity necessary to succeed in real-world business.

The impact of the dot-com era and an increasingly dynamic, global economy are two main catalysts for curriculum changes. MBA programs now incorporate more courses specifically geared toward e-commerce, digital media, and information technology. Programs also look beyond textbooks to incorporate more interactive learning into the classroom. The growing significance of communication in a global context also translates into a stronger emphasis on foreign language study and traveling abroad within MBA curriculum.

Finally, many top business schools have changed due to new dean and program director appointments in the past few years. These new personnel bring years of experiences, fresh perspectives, and great initiatives to instill new energy into well-established institutions in a competitive and adaptive MBA education world.

What Is Required of the Schools?

To take the program to the next level, those schools need significant funding from their respective parent institutions to support new facility, new equipment, increase in faculty and more. Both Stanford and Columbia are in the midst of expanding their business school campuses.As we can see, a lot of more work is ahead for all the top institutions. To educate next century’s business leaders, all the business schools need to stay at the forefront of the changes.

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