“How has the program changed you as a leader?”

As an engineer at heart, I have always set out to build my career like a tower of LEGOs. I use blocks I’ve picked up along my career to build something great that can be seen from miles around. I have always felt that if I can just “build up,” I’ll reach as high as possible.

I learned through Duke, however, that this perspective can be incorrect. Constantly reaching higher can lead to specialization or mastering a certain area. It can also limit opportunities. Taking time to build outward, setting a wider foundation of skills, ultimately allows a structure to stand taller and more stable.

In this vein, let us suppose the next step in building up your tower is a promotion to management. It is a common misconception that the best engineer on a team will be the best candidate to manage the team, but being the “best” manager and a highly specialized engineer require two distinctly different sets of qualities. Duke changed me as a leader by helping me develop an appreciation for both sets of qualities and showing me that widening my foundation is a powerful way of building my tower and progressing in my career.

Setting the Foundation: Leadership Development in Real-Time

Fuqua empowers leaders by equipping them to speak different business languages and better support their teams by understanding personnel drivers and conflict-resolution modes. The nuance in the program’s execution imparts appreciation for these sectors on a level deeper than just shared vocabulary. Each new business language is like adding a specialized LEGO piece to my collection, like accounting or operations. These new pieces signal growth to my colleagues, allowing them to see themselves in my work and even be more willing to help with my growth.

In practice, my MBA takeaways have made interdepartmental meetings more comfortable and cross-company collaborations more productive. The team I manage sees that I’m able to advocate more effectively (securing funding and facilitating difficult discussions, for example). I recently finished a project with our accounting department that facilitated a major change in our company’s processes. Without the ability to appreciate, understand, and see the value in establishing a wider foundation of skills, I would not have had these opportunities.

Building Up: Learning From Experts and Each Other

The secret sauce that makes the Fuqua MBA so effective is equal parts course material and a diverse student body. The curriculum balances cross-functional quantitative courses with discussion-centered qualitative courses. All are taught by extremely accomplished professors with deep expertise in their course material.

One such exemplary course, Managerial Effectiveness, taught by Professor Noah Eisenkraft, dives into subjects of organizational thinking and inclusive decision-making that tie theory to application in ways that can be immediately taken back to the office. Professor Sim Sitkin’s Executive Leadership course provides deep-cutting articulation skills for leading teams. These courses made me feel prepared through practice, not only to have difficult conversations delivering poor performance feedback to team members, but to explore and address the root cause of the issues with them. This has been invaluable for my team in demonstrating genuine care that is kind, not ”nice.” For anyone who has ever felt like they couldn’t find the right words, this is how you find them.

As with any reputable MBA program, the cohort is a carefully curated mix of professionals from different industry sectors, demographics, and locations. It is the hard-fought success of students in the program solving real-world problems alongside each other that yields a rare appreciation and tight-knit relationships among students. The perspective gained from the coursework and the professional connections made among students is priceless.

As a student, you’re not only gaining new building blocks in the program, but you’re also learning about new ways to use these blocks from your cohort and getting feedback on your difficult career-related questions. I made the move out of a principal single-contributor role and into management roughly a year before entering the program at Duke, and to be honest, I felt unprepared. I had the key technical understanding for my industry and the team at my back, but I was constrained by the momentum of the company in terms of workflows at my disposal. Where I felt pains in our workflow, I saw opportunities, but I lacked the essential pieces, or LEGOs, to orchestrate organizational change.

I shared my concerns with one of my classmates, and though he worked in a completely different sector, he had the experience I needed to move forward. He shared with me the tools he uses to navigate stakeholder management. With these new blocks in my arsenal, I was able to articulate stakeholder needs and acceptance to my ideas through the visual methods that help me arrange-to-understand as I am used to as an engineer.

Because we build such tight-knit communities in our working relationships, it can be very difficult to find competent advice that is also far enough removed from the situation to provide new perspectives. Duke’s ability to bring these kinds of individuals together makes the program shine and gives you access to knowledge you might not have known you needed to build your tower.

Find Your Missing Piece

Take a step back from building that tower. What does it need? The great thing about LEGOs is that when you have used all those weird shapes in places that didn’t quite fit, you’ve created areas that you can widen and attach to your foundation without tearing down your tower and starting over. Likewise, the disparate skills and experiences you accumulate allow you to lead more effectively.

• For those seeking to become more comfortable as a leader, you will gain management insights from this program’s diverse curriculum and prolific teaching staff.
• For those seeking to make meaningful connections across departments or the world, you will be met by Duke’s global network, which always returns a hand when reaching out, Dukie-to-Dukie.
• For those seeking to make moves at a pivotal career stage, I believe the best evidence is by example; I’m happy to report that only halfway through the program, I have found a new job. I graduated from making machines to making product lines of machines; from leading a team to leading multiple teams; and managing within a company of 100 to managing in a company of 29,000 worldwide.

These always start with an interview, and often with an interviewer saying, “Duke — now that’s a great school. Can you tell me about how the program changed you as a leader?”