The program divided the entering class into a number of cohorts, each comprised of 60 students. Cohorts held regular meetings with facilitators selected from second-year students to engage in exercises designed to develop specific aspects of leadership. At the first meeting of my cohort, the facilitators divided us into twelve teams of 5. They asked us to discuss and select an individual - historical or current - that we believed best-exhibited leadership qualities.
The group I was assigned to had a good mix of international students, including students from Chile, Canada, and Russia. The team had two women and three men. Recall this was just after the first Gulf War under President George Bush Senior. General Schwarzkopf was mentioned, also Jack Welsh of GE, and even Margaret Thatcher. But I had other ideas.
The facilitators asked the teams to stop and polled the room to see what 12 groups of high-achieving graduate business students could come up with.
Six teams of first-year MBAs somehow independently choose Mahatma Gandhi.
Five teams of highly educated future leaders managed to choose the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King.
But my group choose Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Star Ship Enterprise. Sighting him as a poet, an explorer, and a warrior. He was a proven leader and manager not just in a multicultural organization but a multi-species organization.
By the time most of these students arrive at business school, they are thoroughly indoctrinated politically correct sheep. The program is about credentialing the participants - and signaling to potential employers. Original thinkers had long since been weeded out.
