Darden MBA Essay Analysis, Your 2015-2016 Application

Darden MBA Essay Analysis: Essay One

Describe the most important professional feedback you have received and how you responded to it. (500 words maximum)

The single Darden essay approach, back again. This time a new prompt altogether. Let’s get serious about a single word. Pay close attention, this single word is going to determine whether you have the makings of a good answer here:

“Change.”

Good for Darden by the way, they’re onto something solid here. A person’s capacity to change is a very cool indicator for future potential. Now, change WHAT, exactly? It could be a deeply-held belief. It could be something fundamental about your personality, or the way you’re coming across. It could simply be a kick in the pants that exposes a disconnect simply with your perception of things compared to others’. Change can apply to many things. But the key idea for this essay, is this: something about your actions, or behavior, or approach BEFORE the feedback underwent some kind of change AFTER you received that feedback. Before the feedback your tactic had been A. After the feedback your tactic became B. If there isn’t a discernible difference between the two, you may either be picking the wrong example, or casing the right example incorrectly.

Let’s lay it out. You’re operating in whatever your role is: project lead, analyst, entrepreneur, whatever. Then someone says something to you. Who? Doesn’t really matter. Could be a client. Could be a co-worker. Could be a superior. Could be someone from a competitor firm. Could be anyone that said something that made you PAUSE… and eventually develop some tweak to how you mentally approached things, or something behavioral, that was DIFFERENT from however you were operating before you received that feedback. The harder it was for you to MAKE this change, the better the story. After all, a victory is generally measured by the level of difficulty associated with achieving it. A boxer who wins the title match when his opponent had the flu isn’t nearly as impressive as when the opponent was in peak physical shape, right?

So this may be one way to figure what you’re going to write about. When have you ever changed? See if you can come up with a list. Moments in your professional life that you LET GO of an idea. A moment where you consciously BIT YOUR TONGUE to do something uncomfortable, but it led to a more permanent change. A moment where you were incredibly HUMBLED by someone else’s perspective, and learned just how wrong you were. All of these things were probably met with some resistance. (Again, if the feedback made perfect sense, the ensuing change couldn’t have been all that difficult.)

It may have taken time to “get over” the feedback before you were able even to process it fully and develop a game plan to address it. This is okay; it makes you human. And those of you capable of admitting this are likely capable of real greatness (Darden is aware of this, and is looking for the rare few who can talk about this openly.)

Then you decided to do something about it. Walk us through not just the “doing,” but the surrounding process of fully comprehending the feedback and dealing with it. Eventually, take us through the steps you took to address it, and especially the challenges associated with it. Again, if it was easy, you haven’t picked truly interesting feedback.

Let’s review:

• Shortlist times in your professional career where you made a significant change in TACK, in response to feedback you received from someone.
• Pick the example where your new approach was MOST different from your initial one. This delta should be as big as possible, thus making your ability to (1) hear the feedback and then (2) respond to it… as DIFFICULT as possible.
• Take us through your reaction, including denial, resistance, hurt feelings, surprise, disbelief, irritation, humility, all of it. Don’t skimp on the details here. The more honest you’re able to be, the greater your ability to be a truly thoughtful and effective leader.
• Now take us through to the steps you took to act on all that introspection. What did you do, and remember to explain exactly how each step was challenging (without that reminder, it won’t seem like growth).