The article by Sutton discusses individuals’ ability to condition themselves to better learning. If an individual is not confident and has doubts about their abilities to study, they will not do well at it. This goes for any task but is particularly true of competitive sports. Competitiveness is necessary to succeed at anything. None should be afraid of it. If you are you will fail. Competing in any sport requires positive reinforcement. Coach should be very positive and if not you will fail. This translates into working world also. If a manager tells employees that they are not good at particular task they will not even try to do it right. If their boss says that he or she is sure that they will do just fine then employee will certainly try hard to meet the expectations. Challenging yourself in anything will help you get better at it. Even if you don’t think well of yourself and if you are not as smart as others around you, you must work on it and you will change your level of intelligence. The more you do it the better you get at it, no matter what you are working on.

It is hard to believe that flirtatious women get fewer raises and promotions. However, it is known that women are often discriminated against by their male co-workers and managers. I have read many articles on women’s salaries, raises and promotions. It is very well-known that they get paid less, get smaller raises and are less promoted than man. I can see the point of not giving raises to flirtatious women and not promoting them, perhaps because they have very good soft skills and not very good hard skills. I believe that a little flirtatious behavior is acceptable, but this should be done at the right time and place. Many people interpret flirtatious behavior differently. I think that flirting at work causes disorder and lack of productivity. The author claims that this study is statistically significant but I have doubts that it is a good representation for the whole country as the study was done locally. It would be interesting to see the results of a study done in all the major metropolitan areas in the US – seeing that the sample size was so small.

The article by Pollock addresses issues many of us have experienced in our careers. Whether it is a school, workplace or social event women are becoming more present in such and more importantly comfortable. Pollock explains that in recent years the number of women holding professional positions has increased by 14.6 percent. Women are becoming a driving force in every industry. Many current CEOs are very successful women and they are a great example for new generations. I am not quite sure how they got there, but I am sure they did not get there by flirting. Flirting is just human nature and both men and women engage in it. Since businesses are still dominated by men it can be easily misunderstood what women do. The professional world is evolving fast and the more diversity a company has results in a more creative environment and more innovation. Creativity and innovation are necessary to be successful. The stereotypes about women staying home and taking care of the house and kids may have been valid a long time ago, but it is no longer applicable. Most households cannot succeed in raising kids and supporting them through college with only the income of one person. Culture has changed and we now see what has been missing in the workplace.

Soft skills are essential of all MBA graduates but usually these skills are linked to personality. Interpersonal skills are an important means to getting hired and promoted. However, interpersonal skills such as leadership, teamwork, communication and decision-making alone are not sufficient for one to be successful. Hard skills are as important as interpersonal skills, because they get the job done. Soft skills will help you get hired and incompetence in hard skills will get you fired. MBA graduates, for that reason, must be well-rounded in soft and hard skills in order to be competent for the business environment.

It is surprising to read that the University of Northern Colorado has a business college that was the recipient of the National Quality Award.  The university is accredited by AACSB in both Accounting and Business Administration. It was the first school in Colorado that had such accreditation. The students graduating from the college have been tested by many organizations and they report more than a 90% satisfaction with their hires. The student satisfaction is very high and 98.3% of graduates were employed or attending graduate studies. All of these statistics show that the college is on the course towards excellence. The key to their success is continuous improvement and feedback from community and various partnerships.

It is hard to believe that the bad experiences of recruiters have been so well combined in this article. MBA candidates are having issues with writing, attitude, and people skills? Writing comes as a problem for many but mostly international graduates.  I can see where an attitude could be a problem. Overly confident applicants may exert too much pride in their work. People skills can also be part of the attitude problem. It was very interesting to read this article and I am “confident” that all of the above issues are present in a minority of MBA graduates. If you want to get hired just use common sense.

Prof. Argyris makes an argument that smart people have  a hard time learning due to their defensive behavior.  Smart people never fail, right? No, they do. However, they are so successful and confident that they don’t see their mistakes.  

The common assumption that learning depends on motivation is not true. He classifies learners into two types: Single loop learners and double loop learners. Single loop learners are those individuals that are able to acquire large amount of information without an in-depth analysis. They have a great attitude and are committed to learning. They are just getting  information and this information is filtered and stored by their feelings and experiences, therefore, they make mistakes. “They never fail” and never learn from the failures. This type of defensive behavior blocks the learning.

Consequently, double loop learning is encouraged where more open communication is present. Managers and executives are open to critique (I am not sure how many really are? It would be interesting to see if there is any research on this). Critique helps them improve themselves and learn.