What Do You Learn in Business School? 6 Skills You Could Gain

Whether you’re an aspiring business professional or interested in developing business skills, the question of whether to pursue a master of business administration (MBA) has likely crossed your mind.

An MBA is an investment of time and money, so the decision shouldn’t be made lightly. One of the biggest questions you may have while deciding is what skills you can gain from an MBA program.

Here’s an overview of what an MBA is, six skills you could gain, and how to prepare.

What Is an MBA Program?

A master of business administration (MBA) is a graduate degree program designed to equip students with the knowledge and skills to succeed in business. Harvard Business School established the world’s first MBA in 1908.

When taken full-time, an MBA program takes two years to complete. Typically, as is the case at HBS, the first academic year is spent developing technical skills and the big-picture perspective business leaders need. The summer is spent working, interning, or launching a business before the second academic year when students take more specific, advanced courses to hone their skills and expertise.

The complementary nature of broad and specific topics grants graduates a deep understanding of the intricacies of business and the skills to lead across departments and industries.

Related: 10 Reasons It Makes Sense to Get an MBA

6 Skills You’ll Learn in Business School

1. Technical Skills

One type of skill you’ll learn in an MBA program is technical or “hard” skills. This is the type of hands-on knowledge required for business professionals and leaders.

Technical skills include:

• Creating and analyzing financial statements
• Using ratios and formulas to understand a business’s financial health
• Crafting marketing strategies based on key performance indicators and market research
• Understanding supply chain management and how to streamline processes to create value
• Assessing international opportunities and threats based on macroeconomic trends and calculations
• Gathering, processing, and analyzing data using statistics to drive business decisions

These are typically gained in the first year of business school, although more advanced technical skills may be taught in the second year. Learning and honing these skills will help you provide value for your organization and set yourself up for career growth.

2. Leadership and Management Skills

If your goal is to be a well-rounded business leader and manager, an MBA is an effective way to prepare. In addition to technical skills, MBA programs prioritize teaching leadership and management skills to empower students to become successful leaders.

These skills include:

• Emotional intelligence: Emotionally intelligent leaders understand and manage their emotions and recognize and influence the emotions of those around them.
• Strong communication: Clearly and effectively communicating vision, goals, and action items can align teams.
• Empowering others: Strong leaders empower employees to harness their strengths and perform at their best.
• Self-awareness: Become aware of your leadership style so you can cultivate and develop it over time.
• Financial literacy: Learn to make data-driven decisions that directly impact the company’s bottom line.
• Resilience: Effective leaders are agile, flexible, and resilient in the face of change and tumult—and guide their teams to adopt these qualities, too.

You’ll develop many of these skills throughout your business school career as you encounter new challenges and practice refining your mindset and leadership style.

3. Entrepreneurial Skills

Because an MBA program gives you an in-depth understanding of the many facets of business, it can be a great choice for building the skills needed to become a successful entrepreneur.

From learning to identify market opportunities, conduct market research, and develop an innovative idea to sustaining a business, navigating investor relations, and building and leading a team, you can gain skills for every stage of your entrepreneurial journey.

4. Strategic Thinking Skills

Another skill you’ll develop throughout your MBA experience is the ability to think strategically. Crafting business strategy requires understanding pricing structure, value creation, and market and macroeconomic trends—competencies you can gain in business school.

A big-picture perspective, data analysis skills, and strong communication are all required to formulate, validate, and execute a successful strategy.

5. Empathy & Global Perspective

A pair of often-overlooked skills you can gain in an MBA program are empathy—the ability to understand others’ experiences and emotions—and a global perspective. These two emotional intelligence skills can be credited largely to the global pool of MBA students and collaborative learning that comes with a business school education.

Vai Schierholtz, director of marketing for MBA Admissions at HBS, comments on the transferability of these skills.

“Because of the global context and curriculum you will be exposed to—from international classmates to cases about global companies—you’re going to develop the empathy and interpersonal skills that will be essential in your future career when you’re managing teams,” Schierholtz says.

A recent survey from workplace inclusion nonprofit Catalyst found that empathetic leadership and management yields innovation, engagement, and decreased burnout, resulting in employees that feel respected and valued. An MBA can equip you with the mindset to be an empathetic leader and set your future teams up for success.

6. Integrative Problem-Solving

One of the most critical skills you can gain in business school is integrative problem-solving—the ability to consider multiple perspectives and stakeholders when solving problems.

In an MBA program, you’ll learn about each facet of a functioning business and gain new perspectives from your professors and classmates.

“You may enter an MBA program with one siloed level of expertise—for instance, finance or marketing—but an MBA introduces you to all the other industries and functions within a team,” Schierholtz says. “As a future business leader, you need to integrate all of those teams together and make decisions across the spectrum, not in the silo. That’s a huge piece of the MBA. We aim for students to think about complex, integrated problems that rely on many different perspectives to solve.”

One way HBS teaches this skill is through the case method, a learning model in which students are presented with a real-world business problem and asked how they would solve it. After working through the challenge themselves, students are told how the real scenario played out.

This method allows students to problem-solve creatively and collaboratively with peers, engage with imperfect data and complex scenarios, and learn from the business professionals who navigated those challenges.

Related: Should You Go to Business School? 6 Benefits of Strong Business Skills

How Can the Skills Gained from an MBA Benefit Your Career?

An MBA program can equip you with several skills that will prove useful in the business world, some more immediately applicable than others.

Technical skills—such as analyzing financial statements, crafting a marketing strategy, and calculating key metrics—will prove useful right away.

Other skills, referred to as “soft skills,” may not be as applicable in your first role after graduation but will set you apart as a leader, manager, and decision-maker as advancement opportunities arise.

“An MBA teaches you the hard and soft skills you need in business,” Schierholtz says. “Alumni will often say that the hard skills helped them in the first three years of their first job, but their career accelerates after they start using the soft skills they developed in the MBA program.”

An MBA can differentiate you from others who may have strong technical skills but don’t possess the perspective, empathy, and integrative problem-solving skills to be a great cross-functional leader.

Making the Most of Your MBA Experience

As with any other educational opportunity, what you gain from an MBA program depends on the effort you put into it. If business school is the right next step for you, prepare yourself in advance so you can make the most of the two-year intensive.

Schierholtz recommends entering the program with an open mind and an idea of your personal and professional goals. What do you hope to gain from the program? These goals will give you direction, but your flexibility will keep you open to change as you learn and grow.

He also recommends preparing in advance for the rigorous academics. One way to do so is by taking a program that teaches business essentials, like HBS Online’s Credential of Readiness (CORe) program, comprised of three online courses: Business Analytics, Financial Accounting, and Economics for Managers.

“Taking a business fundamentals program like CORe, especially if you’re coming from an industry that isn’t as business-focused, is a great idea to help you prepare for business school,” Schierholtz says.

Entering an MBA program with foundational knowledge, an open mind, and a sense of your personal and professional goals can enable you to gain the skills an MBA offers and accelerate your career.

Are you considering earning an MBA? Explore our three-course Credential of Readiness (CORe) program and download our free guide to preparing for business school.