3 things I learned in grad school that I wish I learned in grade school
My first year in business school was a huge personal growth experience for me in ways I did not expect. I was juggling making new friends, taking challenge coursework, recruiting for summer internships, participating in club leadership, and maintaining my physical and mental health. The overload of activities forced me to constantly prioritize what mattered to me, and I learned a lot about myself very quickly.
Like any good MBA, at the end of my first year I took stock of my skills and looked for any gaps. My analysis revealed that my soft skills needed work. I choose to take coursework to improve, and I have been learning experientially about interpersonal dynamics and leadership, building my social and emotional toolkits. I practiced identifying and regulating my emotions, learned to give and receive critical feedback, practiced engaging in courageous and difficult conversations, explored power dynamics in groups, and learned about self-esteem and developing self-compassion.
Of the skills I’ve learned so far, three important lessons stood out to me. Though they may seem obvious, experiential learning and reflection have helped me to internalize these ideas.
If you can name it, you can tame it
Ok, so that isn’t entirely true. It’s more like, if you can name it, you can decide whether you want to try to change it or just sit with it. But that isn’t as catchy.
The ability to understand and interpret my emotions has been incredibly helpful in regulating those emotions. Prior to learning this, I often would feel a cloudy mix of emotions and mood swings and did not understand where those feelings were coming from. When others asked why I was upset, I would often say “I don’t know, it’s just a down day.” Now I have the tools to explore my emotions.
This semester, my professors at Yale showed me a few different tools to help name emotions, and I have been using two of those tools that work best for me to do so. The first is called a mood meter, which has four quadrants of emotions ranging from high energy to low energy, and from pleasant to unpleasant. The mood meter first lets you select a quadrant for your emotion, and then lists emotions by their intensity along both scales. This tool helps me to narrow down my emotions by process of elimination and expands the range of emotions I am capable of naming.
The second tool I have been using is feeling emotions physically. This involves turning inward and focusing on where in your body you are feeling the emotion, whether that is a tightness in your throat or shoulders or a pit in your stomach, to help better understand the feeling. I never listened to my body in this way before, but I am now more intuitive and trust myself and my feelings.
Giving and receiving feedback gracefully is crucial for growth
It takes two to know one. To fully understand who you are, you need to look internally and get to know yourself, but you also need to know how others see you. I found that I rarely give others feedback and ask for feedback even less often. I know now that it is difficult to grow in necessary ways unless you can receive feedback and learn to give impactful feedback to those you care about.
The Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) feedback model helps you give specific and actionable feedback. First, you explain the specific situation in which the feedback behavior occurred. Then, you describe the observable behavior. Finally, you explain the impact that the other person’s actions had on you. The last part is key. You are honestly and openly sharing how what the other person did made you feel. You focus on your emotions and the listener is much more likely to be receptive to the feedback and internalize it. Emotions are always fact — you feel how you feel and no one can dispute that — but observations can have multiple truths to them. By focusing on emotions, you are much less likely to argue over the facts and more likely to focus on how to improve.
SBI is useful both in work contexts and in your personal life. I am better at giving feedback to my loved ones about how their actions have impacted me so we can focus on a solution that is better for both of us. I am also better at giving real-time feedback to team members at school that they are likely to take to heart. At the same time, I have learned how much easier it is to receive feedback in this way, and to ask for the impact I have had on others if the feedback does not include it. Asking others how I have impacted them has allowed me to grow quickly in a short amount of time.
Self-esteem is overrated, self-compassion is all you need
This lesson was life changing. A facilitator in one of my courses said this, and I believe it really has changed me. I have always had low self-esteem and felt even worse about myself because of that. However, I learned that focusing on self-esteem can be problematic because self-esteem is largely resistant to change and because focus on self-esteem can increase narcissism. Ironically, pivoting my focus to increase my self-compassion has actually increased my self-esteem. I am kinder to myself and less judgmental of my actions. I still have a long way to go, but I am a happier and more resilient person because of my increased self-compassion.
Self-compassion involves treating yourself with kindness, recognizing your shared humanity, and being mindful when considering negative aspects of yourself.
Self-compassion can be difficult to develop as many of us have so much practice being less than kind to ourselves. However, in terms of investing in your personal growth, working on self-compassion provides the “most bang for your buck” (as noted by my Leadership professor). To develop self-compassion, I have been doing meditations focused on changing my mindset and the thoughts I have about myself, and work to speak to myself the way I would a friend.
All of these skills have helped to me to improve on a personal level and as a group member and have generally made me a happier person.
But when I think more about what I’ve learned, I question why I hadn’t learned these things earlier. Was anything I learned really so complicated? Was there anything in the curriculum I was learning that was only relevant to a graduate level program? I don’t think so. In fact, I believe if I learned these skills as a child I would have been practicing them for over 20 years by now, improving both my childhood and adult life.
I wish I had learned social and emotional skills as part of my curriculum in grade school.
Based on “Ready to Lead,” a report for the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) from 2011, children who received high quality social and emotional learning (SEL) have achievement scores approximately 11% higher than those who do not. A study from The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) showed that those who did not receive SEL instruction had an increased chance of unemployment, divorce, poor health, criminal behavior, and imprisonment. Despite the proven benefits of SEL and general educator acceptance, it remains on the sidelines of many educator’s curricula.
I am happy to have learned these skills, though later in life than I would have wished, and already have experienced many benefits. However, I believe we can improve outcomes across society by teaching children these skills, not just graduate students.
