Taking on the "Cutthroat Culture" of B-School

Kerry Patterson sees a lot wrong with the MBA classroom. Patterson is chief development officer and co-founder of VitalSmarts, a global organizational-performance and leadership consultancy based in Provo, Utah. He terms the typical MBA classroom as an arena where students are expected to be brutal to each other. In his view, students and MBA graduates need to study human interaction and model effective communication to build teamwork.

Patterson, who's also an adjunct professor of organizational behavior in the MBA program at Brigham Young University's Marriott School of Management, began his research into the challenges of developing and maintaining healthy organizations during his doctoral work at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He has coauthored two bestsellers: Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High (2002) and Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, & Bad Behavior (2005), both published by BusinessWeek and BusinessWeek Online publisher McGraw-Hill.

Patterson writes mostly on interpersonal skills, culture change, teamwork, and dialogue. He recently spoke with BusinessWeek Online reporter Jeffrey Gangemi. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow:

How do you define MBA culture, and what's wrong with it?
All MBA classrooms are built as coliseums. They follow case methods almost universally across the country. Students come to class, where they get cold-called, and they're graded as much as half by how they respond. Teams of students meet -- and I've watched them for over 30 years now -- and they're brutal to each other. The professor plays the role of referee.

Calling a group of students a team doesn't make them one. MBA professors don't help students with high-stakes conversations, conflict resolution, or anything that would facilitate a team. The professors' assumption is that, if you throw them in the water, they will swim. They put students in bad scenarios, don't give them the skills to handle them, and just hope they'll get better at it.

Who's to blame? The professors and administrators?
Of course. Professors work in a system that discourages collaboration and teamwork. Professors are only concerned with their academic freedom for the right to make an argument. They think that, when they make an argument, they can be brutal. It's just stupid. University faculties are just a little more cohesive than six people who just met in an elevator.

You're sounding kind of brutal yourself. Is that to get your point across?
It sounds brutal because it's brutal impact. I spend my entire life getting flown to teams who have been brutal with each other [in order to] try to help them figure out how to come to a common decision and act on it with commitment.

Is competition for grades in MBA programs the biggest cause of this brutality?
Competition for winning the argument in the classroom is probably the single largest element. Getting rid of grade disclosure got rid of some of the problem at some schools (see BW Online, 9/12/05, "Campus Confidential"). Now at least [students] collaborate by sharing resources.

How can students work on improving their communication and teamwork skills?
Rather than saying someone is wrong, you should say something like, "I agree with that, and let me build on it." Or, if you think someone is wrong, try saying "let me contrast that with my view, and you can tell me where my thinking is wrong, and we can come to a common understanding."

I teach at a business school, and I always give my ground rules at the beginning of the course. I make it clear that we're going to hold people to academic excellence. We're not going to let sloppy thinking go by. But the second rule is that we're going to do it in a way that's not disrespectful.

How can MBA programs change their culture?
They have to change the classroom scenario, where they get comfortable holding people to academic excellence -- that is, having the best ideas -- instead of doing it in a way that emotionally beats up people. It's ridiculous to pit people against each other when many of them are just getting their first exposure to business.

How do you facilitate positive change in a brutal organization?
You have to be competitive. And to be competitive, you have to have the best ideas, which means you have to get everyone to speak his or her mind. You need to become equally skilled at becoming honest and frank, while doing it in a way that doesn't harm the relationship.

Our model for years has been a seeding model -- planting the seeds of positive behavior in upper management and watching it spread to the rest of the organization. You get four or five people and get them fairly skilled at effective communication, then let people watch them. I've gone into organizations of several hundred people, worked with the top 15 or 20, and had the entire organization shifting in a positive direction as they started modeling the behaviors.

How important is personal development in teaching these skills?
We don't care what happened in people's childhood. We watch people who were picked by their peers as being the most influential in their company, and we cloned the skills and teach them. Philosophy has to get translated into behavior or changes never occur.

What other pieces of advice would you offer MBAs?
Become a student of human interaction. In the classroom, students should be paying attention to interactions that do two things -- get the problem solved or make the point in the classroom in a way that doesn't cause harm in a relationship.

When people are in their working world and attending meetings, most people don't know that there are two things happening -- the argument itself and the process of how that argument's unfolding. The capacity to constantly be observing the argument at hand as well as the process people are using to make their points makes you doubly empowered.