Electives
Business Writing | MCOM-GB.2099
Helps students improve their writing. Required for those who do not achieve a score of 4.0 or above on the writing section of the GMAT and recommended for those who wish to refine their skills. Focuses the writing process, effective style and expression, sentence structure, and business vocabulary. Assignments include letters, memos, reports, and case analyses. The class is conducted as an on-line communication workshop. Students analyze their writing strengths and weaknesses and participate in one-on-one conferences and tutorials. Class size is limited to fifteen students.
Communication for Consultants| MCOM-GB.3311 (3 credits) | Professor Brian Hanssen
Consultants today must be as strategic in their communication as they are in their thinking. Clients expect the consultant to listen well to their perceived needs, engage collaboratively with their staff and ultimately communicate their insights in a manner that leads to some form of change. Managing the communication touch-points in this process will frequently be the deciding factor for success.
In this course, students will take on client engagements coordinated by Stern's NY Initiatives office. Each project will be based in NYC and have an impact on the City. The assignments will require participation from the initial client meeting, through data collection and finally presenting to the client. While the course experience will entail considerable field work, students will be supported by class work that focuses on the communication tools in a typical consulting contract. We'll examine and apply techniques such as brainstorming, conducting interviews, facilitating meetings, building consensus and presenting recommendations. In this way, the course will address communication challenges for consultants and provide a forum for discussing and resolving them.
Crisis Communication | MCOM-GB.2121, 1.5 credits
Prerequisite (EMBA Only): MCOM-GB.2105
What triggers a crisis and how can an organization respond as it is subjected to the white heat glare of media scrutiny? Firms constantly face risks to reputation and profits as a result of unforeseen events, situations, employee conduct and ethical entanglements. Today, anticipating and reacting to crises is a fundamental duty of senior management. This course examines the relationship between business and the media with special attention to the variables involved in organizational crises. Students develop a perspective for communication with various constituencies, especially employees, shareholders, and the media. Selected topics include issue response and the Internet; managing outside pressure, and communicating and managing during crises. The course features guest speakers from the fields of journalism, corporate communication, and communication consulting. Course work includes readings, case analyses, and oral and written reports.
Defending the Bottom Line: Strategies in Persuasion for Financial Services Executives | MCOM-GB.2103, 1.5 credits
Prerequisite (Langone Only): MCOM-GB.2105
No longer can business professionals rely on strong technical and analytical skills alone. Leaders must also be persuasive and credible communicators. This course, designed for students who are experienced communicators, is built on the concept of a “career life cycle” which blends theoretical models for effective persuasion with practical communications strategies in a simulated business setting. The “life cycle” encompasses a number of individual and group situations that an employee will face during the course of their career. In developing communication strategies we will examine factors impacting a person’s career life cycle such as personal goals, business stresses, corporate situations and environmental events that must be considered to be persuasive and credible in a given situation. Exercises focus on communicating to potential audiences of internal and external parties including colleagues, senior management, clients, competitors and potential business partners. Written and spoken communication assignments range from informative to persuasive in a variety of simulated settings. Situations engage hypothetical audiences involving external “industry experts” that range from receptive to challenging. Strategies and lessons learned in this highly participatory course can be put into action immediately in a student’s daily business and personal environment. Students benefit from individual feedback on all written work as well as individual and team coaching based on video recorded reviews of each presentation.
Difficult Conversations | MCOM-GB 3112, 1.5 credits
Successful business relationships require the ability to manage difficult conversations. When managing clients, managing direct reports, or managing up, you will encounter difficult conversations. This course will enable you to effectively lead your most challenging and consequential conversations at work to desired outcomes. You will gain an understanding of the variety of difficult conversations, the neuroscience of what makes a conversation difficult, and the business case for why avoiding these conversations is too costly for employees’ careers and for their organizations’ effectiveness. Through readings, group practice with feedback, analysis of past challenging conversations, and class discussions, you will learn how to use core interpersonal communication skills to manage difficult conversations well, and how to identify and manage interests and motivations. You will practice difficult conversations, reflect on these interactions, and plan for future conversations. As a result of this course, you will be able to identify the personalized mindset and behavior shifts you need to master “crucial conversations” and perform effectively during the most critical moments in your career.
Engage Your Audience | MCOM-GB.2129 (1.5 credits)
Professor Diane Lennard
Successful business presentations are based on effective communication strategy. This course is designed for students who want to become more dynamic and engaging presenters. Practice exercises will focus on planning effective strategy; refining visual, vocal and verbal delivery to strengthen your presence; structuring and designing content; and handling questions from both internal and external audiences. During this course, you will prepare and deliver individual and group presentations. Students will benefit from individual feedback and coaching.
Improv for Effective Leadership | MCOM-GB 2106, 1.5 credits
In this course, you will use improvisation techniques to enhance your ability to think on your feet, connect with others, build trusting relationships, and develop greater confidence to make good things happen. Through improvisation, you will learn how to listen openly, let judgments of yourself and others fall away, and adapt to change. After all, effective leadership communication is that which compels change in what we do as individuals, as a team, and as a company. It is about developing a strategy and communicating it so compellingly that it brings new ideas to life. Improvisation is unique in its ability to heighten awareness of self and others, helping you take and support responsible risks, owning your authority and sharing it well when it makes sense. Staying empathic, agile, and present amidst ambiguity and adversity is essential to cultivating the resilience and integrity needed to become a leader in an increasingly transparent society. That is what this course is designed to help you do!
Inclusive Conversations | MCOM-GB xxxx, 1.5 credits
Research shows that being on inclusive teams makes people more creative, more diligent, and harder-working, and that more diverse leadership teams outperform their less diverse peers in financial returns. Furthermore, inclusion leads to increased innovation, which is critically important in today’s rapidly changing world. So what does inclusion mean and how does one cultivate it? This course aims to develop mindful, inclusive communication skills to enable belonging and increase success for all. With this course, you will gain foundational knowledge of inclusive language, build awareness of your social identities and their relationship to inclusion, and practice increasing inclusion and cross-difference understanding. Through readings, videos, conversation role plays, self-reflection, peer feedback, case analyses, and class discussions, by the end of this course, you will be able to: 1) Recognize to what extent an interaction is or is not inclusive; 2) Apply the knowledge, skills, mindsets, and frameworks learned in this course to maximize inclusion in your conversations at work and beyond; and 3) Empower yourself and others to foster inclusive team communication and to continue ongoing learning about inclusion. Inclusive Conversations is for everyone who wants to create more shared understanding and connection across lines of difference, both 1:1 and in teams. Regardless of your starting point, this course will empower you to grow your emotional, relational, and cultural intelligences.
Management Communication | MCOM-GB.2100, 1.5 credits
Professor Ronni Burns
In a September 2007 feature, The Wall Street Journal reported that corporate MBA recruiters ranked Communication Skills as the most important attribute they considered when evaluating applicants. Being able to communicate effectively is a vital component to many aspects of business life. This course emphasizes both a strategic and practical approach to provide you with a set of frameworks that will help you construct effective e-mail correspondence, documents and presentations which inform, persuade and influence your audience. The Management Communication course offers you the opportunity to speak and write in a managerial context while receiving personalized feedback and coaching to help develop and sharpen these critical skills.
Reparative Conversations | MCOM-GB 3113, 1.5 credits
Developing and repairing trust are critical parts of all successful business relationships with clients, direct reports, bosses, and others. Research shows that teams with a high level of trust perform better, recover from setbacks more readily, and even have superior health outcomes. This course will enable you to build trust, facilitate repair when distrust has weakened a relationship, and begin to cultivate environments of trust at work and beyond. Through readings, videos, in-class discussions, analysis of past relationships, and the planning and practice of real-life reparative conversations, you will learn to: 1) Identify the elements of a relationship that build or harm trust, and the associated behaviors used to build strong teams; 2) Apply the knowledge, skills, mindsets, and frameworks to lead reparative conversations with individuals and groups; and 3) Increase your ability to assess trust levels and make informed decisions about the best way to move forward. Regardless of your starting point, Reparative Conversations will empower you to better manage the cycle of building, maintaining, and repairing trust, as well as create more resilient relationships.
Storytelling for Impact | MCOM-GB 2107, 1.5 credits | Professor Diane Lennard
A story can influence, persuade, and inspire action. This course is designed for students who want to explore the power of stories in a business context and improve their storytelling abilities. In each class session, you will have the opportunity to practice delivering a story that is based on your own experience, and then receive feedback on the story’s impact from your peers and the professor. You will learn how to find, develop, and tell compelling stories that connect with the hearts and minds of the audience. Practice exercises will focus on expanding your range of expressiveness and enhancing your ability to communicate congruently. Throughout the course, you will engage in a process of personal reflection on your stories and storytelling techniques, view videos, and read articles. You also will develop a library of personal stories that can engage audiences and make your messages memorable.