How I became a Baker Scholar at Harvard Business School
It has been almost exactly 30 years since I graduated from Harvard Business School ("HBS")...
I had a great experience there and did well academically – finishing in the top 5% of my class as a Baker Scholar.
It was so long ago that I don't think about business school often, but it has been on my mind recently for a variety of reasons.
As I wrote in my March 28 and April 1 e-mails, I went back to HBS on March 27 for a day honoring my friend and mentor, Professor Michael Porter. And my oldest daughter is graduating from Dartmouth's Tuck Business School on June 8. Lastly, I recently bumped into two guys who were just accepted to HBS and Columbia Business School.
The first thing I sent them was a slide presentation based on the article I wrote (below), which outlines the 10 strategies I used to nail class participation at HBS, which counted for 50% of one's grade back then (it's now 30% to 50%). (If you're interested, here's a video of me presenting the slides.)
I still remember being at a party for accepted students in the spring before my first year in 1992, when a second-year student outlined these strategies for me. I felt like I had been given a secret key to the kingdom...
And, boy, did I take advantage – not just to become a Baker Scholar, but it benefitted the rest of my career as well because most of these strategies are just as important and effective in the business world.
I've never shared this publicly before, in part because some of the techniques don't work if everybody knows them.
But I always like to give my readers a peek behind the curtain, so enjoy!
How I Became a Baker Scholar at Harvard Business School
10 Strategies for Winning the Class Participation (and Business Meeting) Game
A critical skill to succeed in life, both personally and professionally, is to successfully participate in group discussions in classrooms, board meetings, work meetings, and even gatherings of family or friends.
If you are consistently perceived as a smart and valuable contributor, it will have a huge positive impact on your academic success, career, and life.
(I will focus here on business settings, in which the stakes are high and "airtime" is scarce.)
Given the stakes, you might think that people would be highly strategic and thoughtful in this area – but you would be wrong.
I never cease to be amazed at how many people fail to realize that airtime is precious and squander it by blurting out whatever pops into their head, regurgitating well-known facts, or asking questions that do nothing but display their ignorance.
Instead, I recommend these 10 strategies (note that I've written them for business school students, but the same advice applies in work meetings)...
1. Be serious.
Classroom participation is an important part of your grade. And even if it weren't, it's critical to the learning process – for you as well as your classmates.
So don't even think about speaking up unless you believe that you have something insightful to say that will advance the learning of your classmates and impress the professor.
2. Speak up, but not too much.
To get the highest class participation grade, you need to speak more than average, but not too much or you will earn the resentment of your classmates and the professor will likely stop calling on you.
The right amount, in business school, will depend on how many students are in each class and how long the classes last. In my experience with 80-person, 90-minute classes, speaking every other class was about right.
In the workplace, you also need to consider the organization's culture and your seniority. Junior people are often expected to just take good notes and only speak when spoken to.
3. Don't speak in the first half of class.
In general, the professor uses the first half of every class to establish the facts of the case, while the real analysis occurs near the end.
Let your classmates make "chip shots" that merely show they read the case, while you demonstrate sophisticated thinking during the discussion of the meaty issues that takes place in the second half of each class.
4. Don't ask or answer questions.
If you don't understand something, keep your ignorance to yourself. Instead, just get the answer later by asking one of your classmates.
Even the best question won't impress a professor as much as an insightful piece of analysis.
As for answering questions, unless you happen to have already prepared the answer, why would you blurt out an unprepared comment?
5. Prepare your comments in writing.
You study hard to make the best impression on exams, so why would you prepare any less for classroom participation?
Use the first half of the class – remember, you won't be talking anyway – to anticipate where the discussion is heading and then outline, in writing, a brilliant comment to make when the discussion reaches just the right point.
6. When you raise your hand, hold up a highlighter pen and discretely wiggle it a bit.
There are few things more aggravating than working hard to prepare the exact right comment, waiting patiently for the exact right time – and then the professor calls on someone else.
The human eye is drawn to color and movement, so use a little bit of both to make sure the professor sees and calls on you.
7. Let it go!
It's irritating to prepare an insightful comment and then one of three things happens: a) right before you raise your hand, one of your classmates makes the same point... b) the professor doesn't call on you... or c) the classroom discussion veers in another direction.
When this happens, put your hand down and let it go!
If you don't, and you make the comment anyway, your professor and classmates will be very annoyed with you.
8. First impressions are lasting ones.
Professors are human. If you make a few smart comments early in the semester, they're more likely to rate all the rest of your comments as being brilliant as well.
Building credibility with professors also increases the chances that they will call on you every time you raise your hand (another way to address the problem outlined above).
9. Get to know your professors.
Early in the semester, I always went to each of my professors' office hours.
There are many good reasons for this: they are often smart, interesting people, it shows you're interested in them and their class, you might develop mentors, and, at the very least, it will increase the likelihood that they will call on you and remember your comments during class. (Don't try to do this after class – everyone hates a brown-noser.)
10. Track and grade every comment.
Halfway through a semester, you will want to think about which classes will require more/better class participation over the rest of the semester to earn you the highest grade.
But will you be able to remember all the comments you made in each class? Not likely.
As a result, you're likely to over-participate in your favorite classes and under-participate in other classes, such that in the classes in which you most need a strong class participation grade (to offset a weak exam, perhaps), the opposite occurs – and your GPA suffers.
To make sure this doesn't happen, you need to track, by course, every comment you make during the semester, and grade each one. Every time you open your mouth, you need to give yourself a grade right afterward.
I just did it on a sheet of paper and used a simple grading scale: a "1" was a great comment, a "2" was average and a "3" was poor, while a "0" meant no comment.
So at mid-semester, my list for a course might look like this: 2, 0, 2, 1, 0, 3, 0, 0. This means that in the first eight classes, I made four comments – about right – but the average score was only a "2" – certainly room for improvement.
In summary, many of these strategies wouldn't work if everyone followed them – after all, someone has to speak in the first half of a class/meeting and be willing to answer questions that the professor/your boss poses.
But you're reading this and most of your peers aren't... so use that to your advantage!
Best regards,
Whitney
P.S. I welcome your feedback – send me an e-mail by clicking here.