On several occasions, our users from both the corporate and academic worlds have said that learning about Qualtrics and using the tool to conduct their research studies was one of the most important skills they took with them in their careers.

We wanted to share with you some of the ways Qualtrics helps prepare undergraduate and graduate students enter the business world with professionalism and real-world experience.

Just recently, the Harvard Business Review began a six-week series of articles that focused on “Leadership.”

One of these articles by William Sullivan is entitled, “Preparing Undergraduates as Business Professionals.” Sullivan addresses what business schools need to incorporate into their programs to better equip students with the experience and professionalism requisite to succeed as leaders in the business world.

He recommends business schools should focus on:

• inciting analytic thinking
• promoting intellectual curiosity
• emphasizing flexibility and creativity
• helping students learn to see the logic from the outside of business as well as from within

Our clients report that Qualtrics helped them achieve “d. all of the above.” Qualtrics has been used as a valuable resource for conducting and analyzing research within the walls of some of the most prominent MBA programs and academic institutions.

Additionally, a second article we wanted to share with you from the “Leadership” series that pertains to this topic, “Fueling an Appetite for Leadership,” also provides a sort of “checklist” for business schools to ensure they are helping prepare their students to become the future professional business leaders they hope to.

The author, Gianpiero Petriglieri said that in order for institutions to help students address important leadership questions, business school programs must:

1. Reconsider the implications of the theories and leadership exemplars they offer.

2. Rethink the ways courses are structured.

3. Revisit what is required of educational leaders, and developing those leaders. Facilitating experiential learning is different than traditional teaching. It requires the skills and sensitivity to assist a process of personal and professional development, to encourage introspection and experimentation, and to link abstract principles with unique predicaments. Business schools will be short of such professional expertise unless doctoral programs that train their faculty pay more attention to the art and science of pedagogy.

4. Muster the courage to stir things up, and be stirred up, in the service of learning. Inspirational tales, theories, and tools alone don’t develop leaders. They protect them from the unsettling experience of leading. The reassuring illusion that leadership can be acquired and deployed, rather than having to be constantly negotiated, may be what we crave, but it is not what we need. Leadership development must offer more than that.

Click here to read the full article.

If you are interested in learning more about how business schools around the world have benefited from using Qualtrics, give us a call at 801.374.6682 or click here!