Home

Behind the mask: the MBA personal development elective.

Gianpiero Petriglieri and Jack Denfeld Wood

Attending an intensive MBA represents a “life transition” that goes beyond professional career enhancement and affects students’ personal relationships, family stability, and the course of their whole life.  The coaching, career counselling and self-awareness initiatives included in most MBA curricula are seldom enough to contain and channel the psychic forces stirred up in the process towards meaningful and long-lasting development.  In this paper we discuss how psychotherapy is integrated in the context of an elite MBA—conceptually and practically. We describe the students’ initial attitude towards therapy, the main concerns at play behind the upbeat image of “high potentials”, and the clinical methods employed to address those concerns.  Finally, we suggest that management education serves a timeless function, representing a modern “initiation ritual.” An MBA is a transitional space and, potentially, a transformational one. In-depth personal work can help accelerate and guide the students’ process of maturation and personal transformation. 

IMD Working Paper 2005 -10