Dee Leopold’s Harvard B-School Webinar Slides

Leopold: “This has been a new development. We call it “have the last word.” This is applicable only to candidates who have been interviewed. And it’s a written reflection—24 hours after your interview. So it’s not meant to be something where you go away and ruminate over a long time. Detailed instructions will be provided to those who are invited to interview.

“Why are we doing this? In our MBA program there is an emphasis on reflection. It’s built into a lot of things you’ll be doing in our classroom and our FIELD course. We think it’s important. It’s easy to keep doing, doing, doing, but we think that leaders and managers need to learn to step back a bit to absorb what they’ve experienced and to be able to put it in writing.

“This also marries a little bit more to what you may be doing in real-life careers. Sometimes you will have months and months to write a report, but more frequently, you’ll probably have to write emails or memos in real time. So we like to think that this is a preview of not only what you will do in class but what we think you’ll be doing throughout your career.”