How To Show Leadership Potential In The MBA Application

Any candidate, business or political, needs to make a persuasive case for their leadership potential. How will you make yours?

If you plan to apply to business school later this year or in a future admissions season, it’s never too early to begin building your leadership profile. HBS admissions make no secret of looking to identify the Habit of Leadership, while Stanford GSB looks for times when you have demonstrated leadership behaviors to create impact or change.

The best MBA applicants take the time to think about their leadership potential and guiding values before starting to write. Consider these top tips on how to capture and convey your leadership qualities in the MBA application from my colleagues at Fortuna Admissions, along with what you should be doing now to set yourself up for success.

5 TIPS FOR POSITIONING YOUR LEADERSHIP POTENTIAL TO BUSINESS SCHOOLS

Identify stories of specific scenarios.

Schools take the perspective that past performance is the best predictor of future potential. You will need to refer to some clear, concrete examples of leadership in your MBA application. What kinds of stories best convey your leadership style and potential? Here are some questions as a starting point:

A project you initiated (from action to outcome)
When you identified an opportunity (from action to result)
A time you made an impact
The most challenging team project you led, and how you ensured its success

With some examples in mind, begin to sketch your stories from the big picture to detail, but make sure you can set the scene and get to the point quickly. You should be able to convey what you did, why you did it, the impact on others, and the final outcome. Think about recent, positive situations and make sure your stories have a beginning, middle, and end.

Demonstrate your experience.

If you have had explicit leadership experience at work, say, in team management – so much the better. But not all pre-MBA positions offer supervision roles (for example, those of you working in finance may be in advisory positions where people management isn’t required). Offer examples outside of work where you’ve demonstrated leadership acumen – from athletics or community involvement to volunteer positions. It’s a great opportunity to showcase another part of your background and experience. If you’ve been active on a sports team or local board, this is a way to highlight that interest as well as your leadership qualities. For example:

How have you been someone’s mentor?
How do you describe your mentorship style?
When have you garnered resources for an initiative you believed in?
How did you influence a decision or steward a process that made a big impact?
Where have you stepped up to ensure the success of a group or outcome?

Think about how you might invite leadership opportunities at work, for example, by taking the initiative on a project that is over and above your regular scope of work. If appropriate, don’t hesitate to let your supervisors know that you’re considering business school and are looking for opportunities to build stand-out experience into your resume. It means you’ll be top of mind when they are seeking team members to take on additional responsibilities.

Map your core skills.

When thinking about how to present your leadership experience in your application, it can be useful to break down leadership into elemental skills. Reflect on these six elements:

Strategic thinking – in what ways are you action-oriented, focusing on results while keeping your eyes on a bigger vision beyond your team and company?
Results-focused – are you able to be effective, efficient, and evolutionary in terms of both process and product?
Team leadership – from management to mentoring, how do you foster collaboration and inspire action?
Partnership building – in what ways to you seek synergies that amplify impact, from within your own team to relationship building across teams and sectors?
Communication – can you present complexity in a clear and compelling way, and are you skilled at adapting your message to specific audiences and motivating others?
Development – have you gone beyond your own personal and professional development to grow and retain talent? Are you skilled at identifying and harnessing the strengths of others?

You should ideally have some examples that showcase different aspects of leadership for each of the elements above.

View all five tips on the Fortuna Admissions blog.

Matt Symonds is Co-Founder of MBA admissions coaching firm Fortuna Admissions and Co-Host of the upcoming CentreCourt MBA Festival on Feb. 15 & 16, 2022. For a candid assessment of your chances of admission success at a top MBA program, sign up for a free consultation.