Back to School

It had been a while since I saw the inside of a class room and actually was a student. More recently I have been the one teaching classes, rather than taking in information. But that's just what I did last week, when a colleague and I attended a three-day course on communications at Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, AZ (near Phoenix.)

I had never heard of Thunderbird before, but it has won many accolades and people who got their degrees there speak very highly of it. (Though who in their right mind would bash their school, it would make their degree and education worth much less.) The campus is smallish and reminds me more of a U.S. high school than a place of higher learning. Still, the auditorium-style class rooms are nice and well-equipped and the care for their corporate clients is good, with fresh coffee, fruit and snacks continuously available.

This was the first time Thunderbird ran the "Leadership Communication" program. The class was small, 10 students, and the professors were very engaged and engaging. I really liked the content of about three-quarters of the program, which focused on stakeholder engagement, framing messages, communicating change and change management. The other 25 percent could be classified as PR 101, which the PR pros in the room already knew.

Still, it is always nice to be able to break away from everyday work and stake a step back and reflect. I enjoyed working through the case studies with the fellow course attendees and reading about the successes and failures of other companies. Also, I got to see my first NBA game thanks to the communications team at Henkel, also in the class. More on that in a later blog.