Top 5 skills that are a must know for any MBA grad to impress their bosses
By: Insignia Investments
Tags: Skills, Corporate Skills, Leadership Skills, Mba

Top 5 skills that are a must know for any MBA grad to impress their bosses Insignia Investments Jul 15·7 min read

Skills and execution are what justifies your salary! Without execution, skills are mere pages in a book, and without skills, my friend, you are just a piece of rock! So skills are the building blocks of your creative existence.

Today I want to discuss 5 skills that are quintessential for you to impress your boss and pave your way to success at your post MBA organization where you will probably be joining as a Manager. These skill are so essential, that merely lacking one paralyzes anyone’s ability to grow at their fullest potential in the corporate world.

So without further ado, name two things that you will find in every office- yes the picture of God in some corner of your boss’s office and Microsoft Excel, and it’s kind of interchangeable at times! Microsoft Excel is so ubiquitous across all offices, across all industries, across all divisions that you will need to know the skills irrespective of where you are placed. And if you have some serious chops with Microsoft Excel, like keyboard shortcuts or you know how to make that unpolished data set look better or you know how to clean up some raw data that you get and you know how to use V-lookup and all the other creative little tools that MS Excel offers, you will become the apple of your bosses eyes. Here’s the thing, I feel Microsoft Excel is the best productivity tool when it comes to jotting down numerical-quantitative ideas and it also serves the purpose of being able to clean it and wrap it in a nice wrapper and present it in a format that is very intuitive from a visual perspective.

Any boss would like to do the brainstorming. He or she would like to come up with the brilliant ideas of being able to come to conclusions from a lot of data. But they would never like doing this data cleaning portion of the task, making it into presentable charts. So, if you are a guy who can do it for him or her you are earning a sure shot access to climbing the corporate ladder.

The second skill is a follow-up to the first. And if you are moderately good at it you will shine in your office. The second skill set is that of Microsoft PowerPoint. Whenever most of your day is lined with Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, you have entered mid management territory. See senior management is usually all about making very high-end decisions, mid-management is about being able to extract a lot of information from diverse sets of data, condense it and present it to senior management to help them in taking those big decisions. Where as entry level management or the lower level management that most MBAs kind of jump into right out of B-school is more about putting in that hard labor of cleaning data, interpreting data, making tables, making charts and graphs, and learning about various key things that your employer is concerned with.

If you are good at MS Excel, you are really set for reaching mid-management subsequently. But if you’re good at both MS Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint: making very visually attractive presentations, which intuitive to understand and very quick to interpret for a first-time viewer, especially senior management, you my friend, have built yourself the bridge to climb up to mid-management at super fast pace. And if you can continue on this and have a greater understanding of the industry there is no stopping you from reaching senior management very quickly.

The third skill that you need to hone is that of human interaction. See most of the task as an MBA grad in lower management will be about dealing with people, getting a lot of data and condensing it for your boss to be able to make great business out of it. So one skill which will be absolutely essential for you is called human interaction. And the way to ace human interaction is being able to go out there on your work floor and talk to people. It can be about anything, work related, non-related, literally anything. At times you will find that there are so many people across the floor that you do not even know. My advice is go and talk to them, ask them to accompany you for a cup of tea during the small breaks that you get or get a seat next to them during lunch or ask some colleague to introduce you to them. Try to know about them because what that does is it sets a very positive tone about you in their minds and later on if you need some favor you will be able to really get it from them, even if not to the fullest extent, at least to some extent. Being friendly never hurts even in the corporate world. Remember, that most people are just people, everyone likes brisk chats, everyone appreciates a genuine wish, everyone responds to a ‘hi’. So make small talk your weapon of mass communication. Try it! I urge you to. Being on small talk terms helps break much larger ice when a quick response is needed from a specific individual. I have been harvesting these from way back in school days! Its not flattery, or coaxing, its just being able to make genuine small talks. Usually start with a ‘Hello, I am new here. I thought why not introduce myself to you!’ The rest will follow very naturally. More than 90% of the time, the other person has given me verbal cues as to what topic they would love to talk about.

The fourth skill is what your MBA is all about. B-Schoolers call it critical reasoning, I call it common sense. Now usually, I have found a little snobbery in big B-School grads. They tend to feel that every word they speak is gospel truth or the next mantra to increase company profits by 50%! I was no exception to this, I admit it.

See once you reach your workplace, just tell yourself, that the other people, older, younger, whoever they may be, are equally smart or better, because if they were not, they wouldn’t be in the same office as you. And that makes proper sense! Right?

So that’s the first lesson in common sense I began my corporate life with. And honestly its life changing. At least it was for me.

The next thing that you need to realize is that throwing around jargons or imposing your gut feeling may not result in the most optimal solution. At time we have been probably able to do that in B-School, that is mostly because of people’s reluctance or because the groups were too small and too non-interested to oppose those views. But in a work place, especially one that employs B-Schoolers only, the groups are large, with many smart people, who have vested interest in presenting flaws or shortcoming in your views, as their appraisals and salaries are attached to such performance. In such scenarios, rejection of your gut feeling may result in heartburns. And yeah! It genuinely burns.

So, the best course of action is to stay closer to quantitative data, and follow a logical path. It is only through this route that I find lower chances of leaving loopholes in my proposed solutions and not drawing heavy counter fire from opposing views. Read, analyze and possibly find numbers to substantiate. Quick number games are difficult for most people, even for sharp minds. So coming in prepared with sales numbers, profit margins, overhead expenses will put many of the opposing views on backfoot, as it usually is a lot to process and the mind needs a calm frame to be able to find loop holes. Still, there might be. Few quick minds will be able to finds discrepancies in your number, but more often than not, the error margins are low, and hence the solution you propose, remains moderately unaltered. So while some people add in horns and tails to your solution set, you still get to carry the lion’s share of the laurel from your boss!

And the final skill that I think is an absolute necessity even if you do not have the above four skills, is commitment. Do not make promises that you cannot keep. Do not make commitments that you cannot deliver. Do not promise a timeframe if you are personally not sure of being able to deliver it within that timeline. Do not promise any of your colleagues support if you are not competent in that field. And never promise to be at a certain place at a certain time if you are not punctual. One thing that destroys all the good perception that your boss develops about you because you have the above four skills is that you just make promises that are not worth their salt. Not being able to keep commitments produces such a negative vibe about anyone that it just negates all the good things that you have been able to deliver. It’s like being a boyfriend who cares, who does all the right things, parents like him and everything, but just doesn’t love her enough. So don’t be that boyfriend. Stick to your commitments!

And with that it’s a wrap. See you in the next one. Till then, happy investing in yourself!