Academic Year 2025: A Year of New Experiences, Growth, and Development

Academic Year 2025 is truly going to be an exciting year filled with new experiences, new people, and great expectations. It began with a new group of curious, highly motivated full-time MBA students. They are already being indoctrinated into the program, some would say a trial by fire, as they navigate their way through the challenges of MBA Statistics. Need I say more?

We also have two new employees, Drs. Zach Linge and Jayme Ringleb, both of whom will join us soon and make an important contribution to our personal development efforts. This is Jayme’s second stint here, his first being while he earned his MBA in 2011. And yes, he is my son. I know that for many of you, particularly after mentioning the start of the full-time MBA program with MBA Statistics, that instantly pulls up a strong empathetic response. OK, I suppose I deserve that.

Another alum from the class of 2011, Chris Ancona, has been working diligently through the summer to assist us in making necessary upgrades to and advancements in our personal development system. We are all very excited as he seems to roll out a new interesting feature on a regular basis. The personal development experiences at CIMBA continue to get better and better, and much of that can be attributed to our great alumni who both assist us directly and indirectly in making CIMBA programs better and better.

We also have some very interesting speakers coming in to visit us. Next week, we have the visit of Ted Wright. Ted is famous for his work on ‘word-of-mouth’ advertising. By all means, I encourage you to find the time to come and get to know him. Alumni both here and in Slovenia will have the opportunity to hear him speak and to have an opportunity to ask questions after his presentation. In the spring, we have expectations that Dr. Dan Siegel and René Rodriguez will be visiting us, again with an opportunity for our students and alumni have conversations with them directly. We also have hopes, although not yet confirmed, that we may have an interesting guest speaker with Ferrari connections. But more on that later.

And, of course, it would not be CIMBA without an exciting new workshop that will be rolled out in the coming academic year. As an encouragement to our many alumni and friends, I would like to give you a quick overview of this exciting new workshop. Some of you have already taken advantage of last year’s new addition, LIVE2INFLUENCE and our unique LIVE2INFLUENCE studio. There, our primary learning expectation was placed on assisting participants in developing the skills to tell a great story, to be influential, to build influence. It was during one of those Workshops where we had an important ‘aha’ moment, realizing that perhaps a more important skill was the ability to encourage others to tell a great story. Relying on a McKinsey survey and our own local contacts, we realized that about 10% of an executive’s conversations during any given business day are goal-oriented; the other 90% are what we have come to call ‘conflict conversations.’ A conflict conversation is one in which the person who approaches you wants, needs, or desires something, and you are unsure of what that is. As manager-leaders, we often become impatient, jump to conclusions as to the want, need, or desire, and provide a solution that may not address the issue the person had come to us to resolve. That resolution, however, leaves the person unsatisfied and frustrated. In fact, McKinsey research shows that employees feel that 75% of the conversations they have with manager-leaders are a waste of time. So, the new course, Conflict Conversations, assists manager-leaders in developing the skills to better encourage that person to tell their story, to reveal their true want, need, or desire. Some of the executive certificate students this past year had the opportunity to experience some of its elements. In fact, many of the questions they asked provided motivation and inspiration for the development of Conflict Conversations, and their input is very much appreciated. Their contribution is yet another important illustration of an old principle that we hold near and dear: When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. In this particular case, the executive certificate students became the teacher, and we became their students. Thank you!

But I would like to go a step further. As we delved deeper into the concept of conflict conversations, we experienced a remarkable number of ‘aha’ moments, insights that shed light on how critical these conversations are in building trust and driving effective communication within an organization. Conflict conversations are essential for encouraging counterparts—whether colleagues, direct reports, or even our own leaders—to share their true wants, needs, and desires. This skill is indispensable for manager-leaders who aim to create an environment of mutual understanding, trust, and collaboration.

However, we soon realized that many employees find themselves in situations where the roles are reversed, where they are faced with a manager-leader who is resistant, stubborn, or steeled in their position. Drawing inspiration from the classic experience of a teenager attempting to influence their parents into allowing them to join friends on a school night, we identified an interesting concept to explore what we have come to call “reverse conflict conversations.”

Just like the teenager who intuitively understands the need to first acknowledge their parents’ concerns and create a sense of control before gradually presenting their case, employees can also learn to use these same conversational tactics when engaging with a difficult manager-leader. In this scenario, the teenager does not immediately argue or demand permission. Instead, they begin by validating their parents’ concerns about safety, responsibility, or schoolwork, which allows the parents to feel they are still in control of the situation. Only then does the teenager present evidence that supports their case, step by step, creating a pathway to a ‘yes.’

In the same way, employees can use these reverse conflict conversation techniques to navigate challenging discussions with their manager-leaders. And interestingly, manager-leaders themselves will encounter situations where they must use these tactics when dealing with their own superiors, making reverse conflict conversations an essential skill at every level of the organization.

Why, then, do so many of us lose these valuable communication skills as we transition into adulthood? The soft skills we instinctively used as teenagers—patience, empathy, and the ability to guide someone gently toward a new perspective—often fade away when we enter the workforce. We become more rigid, more transactional, and less adept at using the very skills that once helped us navigate the world so effectively.

The Conflict Conversations Workshop is designed to help you rediscover and refine these lost skills, equipping you with the tools needed to navigate both traditional and reverse conflict conversations effectively.

Please come join us! Make Academic Year 2025 an important developmental year for you!

Be your best!