As much as I like iday, allow me to retort.
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The program starts with The Leadership Outdoor Experience (LOE) - a three day mandatory retreat to Lake Geneva. It is like boot camp all over - but a lot more fun
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Sure. If your idea of "fun" is doing trust falls and sitting on the ground for 2 hours waiting your turn to climb a ladder and jump off it in a harness so that you can build (somehow) self confidence. Alternatively, I suggest you just go drink some turpentine and go to sleep. Its about as productive. (Warning: Please don't actually drink turpentine)
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The LEAD facilitators (second years) design numerous team building activities for the three days - and by the time we return from LOE, we would know a lot more people than we can remember names of. Also, LEAD is the only program we take as a cohort. The entire class is split into ten cohorts, and each cohort is then split into eight squads. You know your squad and your cohort for the entire two year - and hence chances are that you'll find your closest buddies in these groups.
Actually, they don't design much. It's pretty much prescribed by the facility, which happens to border a bible camp. So yea, I'll stop there. As for getting to know people. Yea, you know them. It doesnt mean you like them or spend time with them or that they'll even end up being your friends. The cohort concept is retarded and an entirely artificial and meaningless concept.
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LOE is followed by classroom sessions that touch upon numerous leadership topics like ethics, team building, crisis management, etc. The second years have some autonomy on how they manage these classes and they try to make it fun by using videos, cases and real life examples.
In other words, you are paying $150 an hour to learn from someone who might very well be younger than yourself, have less real world experience and who has gone through a crash course on subjects like ethics and leadership. Its a farce of the highest order and one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen. These people know nothing more about leadership than you do, some of them barely have more than a few years experience. Bring in a CEO to talk, or bring in someone who does this stuff for a living. But to purport that a 2nd year is somehow now qualified to teach ethics and leadership is insulting to my intelligence and to theirs. As for crisis management? Seriously? A 25 year old teaching you how to manage life crises? With what? Some 'johari window' or other such crap pulled from some framework? It's the equivalent of my attending swimming lessons at a local pool and then teaching a class on 'how to ditch an airplane in high seas and survive'. All this for $150 an hour? What a deal!
As for the videos, cases and real life examples.... just kill me now. The real life examples are so far removed from real life, they might as well be taken from the latest harry potter movie. How about this for a nice realistic situation you might find yourself in. *real case*. You play the CEO of a 5B dollar hospital. I play the CFO. Someone else plays the Private Equity buyer. The nurses at the hospital have been giving free medical care to some homeless people and the CEO and CFO are worried that if they sell to the PE buyer they firm will put a stop to it. Is it unethical to withhold that from the buyer? What should they do? Then you get together and pretend to debate it for 30 minutes. The key word here is pretend.... because here's the kicker: everyone already knows everything: everyone has read the same case, and everyone knows each others arguments ahead of time because they are all in the case, so you just spend half and hour mentally regurgitating out crap you ALREADY KNOW to each other. (You aren't allowed to make up facts). Worse, they tell you what the supposed personalities of each person are - so if the CEO is supposed to play hard and tough - are you supposed to be hard and tough? They also tell you what point of view you are supposed to argue. What if you don't agree with the supposed point of view you are supposed to take? What if thats not who you are? How will this help you practice your skills by pretending to be someone else and pretending to adopt some viewpoint you don't actually have?
So here's how it goes: Nurse: "But its not that expensive!" (page 2 of case) CFO: "How expensive is it?" Nurse: "Uhm uh I don't know the case doesn't say". CEO: "Well I think its important for our community" (page 3 of case), other guy: "But its bad for our relationship with the PE guy" (page 4 of case)..... Third guy: "Well I don't actually feel this way but I'm supposed to say that I oppose telling the buyer...." (page 5 of case) . CEO: "Yea, ok, well uhm, I disagree) (page 6 of case, except you can tell he doesnt)
As if that didn't render the excercise entirely meaningless already, there's absolutely no evaluation of an outcome. There is never a 'right' answer. It doesn't matter what you decide. They don't even take a tally to see if you all come to a similar decision.
Here's how LEAD Should be. First, don't hand me the exact same case info as everyone else, because thats just retarded. Second, use something realistic. How about this: A member of your study group hasn't been pulling their weight and you arent sure how to deal with it. Or maybe you've started a new job and you arne't happy with your assignment, and want to take on more leadership, how do you handle that? Or maybe your new boss is doing something you are concerned about, who, if anyone do you tell? Now *thats* real, relevant, and unlike becoming the CEO of a fictitious hospital, probably something will happen to you in the next 5 years. Third, make the !(#!(#@ decision matter. In another course I took they actually had each game be zero sum - someone wins, someone looses, and although your grade isn't tied to the outcome you do see z-scores for everyone so you can see how you did.
Finally, LEAD is Pass fail. 50% of the grade is attendance. If the school wants to wax poetic about leadership and pretend that the class is serious, then they need to make it APPEAR serious ... because when you tell me that 50% of my grade is me showing up, then you've just lost half the class' dedication and you've really put a big hole in the argument that you consider this a really important class.
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The LEAD program finally ends with Golden Gargoyles – an annual event where cohorts make movies from which the best movies will get $$$. Overall - the program is designed to be a fun, enjoyable arena where an individual's strengths and weaknesses are identified, analyzed and opportunities are given to improve on them. This information also helps individuals approach classrooms and other group work as better team players and leaders.
Translation: A bunch of people get together and make a video. It has absolutely nothing to do with weaknesses or strengths of any kind . I have no clue why iday would think it does. Its people being silly on camera and then you get together and go to a bar and drink and watch the movies and a few skits. It has absolutely zero - and I mean I think you'd get more teamwork experience by going to the bathroom with a friend - to do with "group work as better team players and leaders."
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* People expect too much from the program - no one is gonna remodel you in 10 weeks. All you will have is the knowledge that you are awesome in some aspect and you also suck at certain areas. You'll have a to-do list, but eventually you gotta work on it. LEAD is 100% a "What You Get Is What You Give". Unfortunately, no MBA student has enough time to invest in LEAD.
Actually I expected nothing of value, and I got nothing of value. I guess it met my expectations.
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* The program is very theoretical - this was true in my case. I'd have preferred to do more hands on exercises, to see how I react to situations. To see how my team mates react to situations. I learn the best from such experiences, but we felt we could have more of those than discussion scenarios with PowerPoint slides! Fortunately, this aspect was improved this year for the incoming class - but by how much, I am not sure.
See prior comments.
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* The LEAD program is reflective - this is debatable; but personally I think it is true. The LEAD facils are second years. They haven’t been to the real world, used LEAD skills over a significant period of time, to come back and say "Hey this worked this way". What we hear is "In my prev job, this is how it worked" or "This is how it would work in our future jobs". By how much this dilutes the experience - we don’t know yet. I say yet because, true to GSB style, we have a professor researching on this and we'll know the results in a couple of decades!
I think iday just made my case for me. $150 an hour for a 24 year old who spend two years at Ford to teach me ethics? Yea, thats money well spent.
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* The Learnings - In the very first LEAD class, me and my squad were given a case, asked to solve it and were videotaped! It was hilarious to watch ourselves crack this case. But we also learnt how we behave in a team environment - right from our posture to the tone of our voice to the level of participation.
I'll give him this. The videotaping at the beginning was interesting. However, its done once, its not done again at the end (so how do you know you improved) and finally, its pretty artificial.
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* The feedback - There is a facil attached to each squad. He's in-charge of ensuring that your LEAD experience is the best. One of his responsibilities is to offer you feedback - at carefully designed points in the program - to help you catch things that you missed. There's feedback from your peers - your squad mates. If you stepped on someone's foot - you'll know right there. No hard feelings. Finally, as I’ll explain in the next point, there are numerous moments when the programs trigger the internal feedback system and help you see yourself in a different light.
The feedback is pathetically weak - the guys barely know you anyway and they've barely interacted with you. A couple of weeks in a classroom of 60 people (and mind you they teach more than one class) and you are going to critique my leadership skills based on my pretending to be someone I'm not because the case said I should 'act defensive'? Give me a break. Just hand me a book on the subject and go away.
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* The opportunities - nowhere else would you get such a risk free environment to test your mettle and see if you've improved. There's the classroom, the cases, the exercises, golden gargoyles, leadership positions inside your cohort, the LEAD challenge - just way too many moments that will show you who you are. Now go work on them...
Yea I remember those moments. I would sit in class and think about assisted suicide.
Bottom line: The only people who benefit from LEAD are the facilitators who get to stand in front of 60 people and practice presentation skills and other things. Everyone else is just there to placate some marketing bullcrap about designing leadership into a program.
There are a lot of great things about Booth, but LEAD is not one of them.