Skills you need to study for an MBA

People can pursue an MBA (Master’s in Business Administration), for a variety of reasons. It’s an executive degree meant for those in the workforce who want to boost their careers: an MBA is a pathway to managerial positions, boosted salaries, and increased skills in business.

To get into the MBA of your dreams, you usually will have to fulfil a handful of formal requirements, such as a minimum of a Bachelor’s degree, a number of years of professional experience and a GMAT score in some cases. Having those under your belt is great - we have also outlined some useful skills that will help you both get into an MBA and succeed once you’re in.

Communication skills

No matter what you will be doing after the MBA, you will be working with people. It's not overkilling to be prepared to communicate with different folk - you never know who else will be doing the MBA alongside you.

Being able to talk and listen to others opens the door not only to more efficient work but also opportunities to learn. Both in your studies and in your career, you will have to work on projects with other people. If you aspire to become a manager or have another leadership position, you will need great communication skills in order to succeed.

Strategic thinking

Knowing how to prioritise and put certain tasks before others is a skill many already possess - whether it is from previous studies, hectic lives, or hours spent playing strategy games. It’s a part of staying sane when there is a mountain of work in front of you.

Thinking strategically is crucial in an MBA - in part because you must be able to handle the work. However, showing your lecturers that you possess this skill already shows them that you may be well on your way to that higher-up position you’re working for.

Desire to learn

Like any other degree, an MBA requires time spent reading, writing, and studying. All those can be quite hard if you’re not excited about the actual learning part. This can happen if you’re in it for the MBA qualification rather than for the experience and knowledge there is to gain.

No matter your motivations, it’s important to know that it’s a degree. Most MBA programmes take two years and they cost money. When making the decision to pursue an MBA, double-check to see if you’re ready to commit a little more time of your life to education.

Hard worker

The flip-side of wanting to learn is actually doing it. Doing an MBA alongside the things already going on in your life is no easy feat, so if you want to succeed you have to be willing to work hard. This may mean missing out on social events and spending more weekends working at home.

Hard work cultivates greater results, too. An MBA is a degree you still want to do well in. By putting in that little extra effort, you can receive great feedback from fellow students as well as your lecturers. Those remarks are valuable: they show others that you are a hard worker and go through with what you intended to do.

Choosing to do an MBA comes from the ambition to go higher, further, faster - beyond what you already know. Having the above skills is great, and there is so much more to be learned by doing an MBA.

Don’t worry if you feel like you’re not secure in one skill or the other. Studying an MBA will give you security in all of them and prepare you to employ them in your field of work.

Do you need further convincing on why to do an MBA? We’ve outlined five great reasons to study for an MBA you might not have thought about yet.