商学院向神殿看齐, 冥想促进自我认知

    但比桑茨表示，与其他人相比，有望就读哈佛商学院的学生可以多做真北团队所要求的自我反省。他表示“很多商学院的学生都没有对自己的生活进行深入的自我反省，”因为他们一帆风顺地进入顶尖商学院，从各方面来看，他们都算得上是成功人士。但他认为，正因为如此，以商业为目标的人士进行自我反省才更有必要。“只有尝试着自我反省时，才能确定自己是谁，以及自己的信仰是什么。”

迷失的一代？

    信仰指引职业方向的观点引起了年轻学生和员工的共鸣。以本•奥斯丁为例，他在哥伦比亚商学院是瓦德瓦课程的学生。他曾在好莱坞的一家电影公司工作，并笑称自己的工作就是端茶递水，但实际上是搜寻节假日期间具有票房潜力的影片。他希望瓦德瓦的课程能帮助他增强自己的目的感，并确立自己的职业目标。他说，他想要找的工作并不是一套技能的简单组合。

    从整体上来看，新千年一代在求职时的目标感更强。美世咨询公司（Mercer）的一份调查显示，在年轻求职者眼中，虽然薪酬依然是首要关注对象，但公司良好的声誉也是决定是否接受一份工作最重要的考虑因素之一。美世咨询公司资深合伙人杰森•贾菲表示，与其他员工相比，“新千年一代更看重价值观的一致性。就职的公司能否反映他们的价值观？这一点对他们非常重要。”

    显然，并非所有年轻人都如此。许多MBA学生都是“薪酬至上”。而且，乔治和瓦德瓦的课都属于选修，所以，他们的授课对象是迫切需要这种引导的群体。乔治说，类似的课程作业是否会成为强制规定，目前尚不明确。

当工作与私人生活融为一体

    其实从核心来讲，这些课程都是希望教授学生“社交智能”，而不是外界认为的在常识中掺杂一点同情。人们通常认为，只要做到正派和有抱负，就能帮助一个人成为更优秀的领导者和经理人。

    实际上，工作与个人生活正在逐渐融为一体。许多人不论走到哪里都放不下自己的工作；而且，随着工作时间越来越长，我们与同事在一起的时间也越来越多。商学院正逐渐转型成为这样一个场所：在这里，学生们都希望学会怎样才能好好生活。这种转变不无道理。

    本•奥斯丁也这么认为。他建议，本文开头应该先描述学生在冥想，然后继续说明，这可不是祭拜的神庙，而是【此处作一富有戏剧性的停顿】“哥伦比亚商学院：商业的神庙。”

    奥斯丁说的对。当下，在何处学习道德准则，又在哪里学习平衡预算，这两者之间的界限已经日渐模糊。

    译者：刘进龙/乔树静

    But students likely to be at Harvard Business school could use the self-reflection a True North group requires, perhaps more than anybody, says Bisanz. "A lot of them haven't had to be subjected to deep personal examination of their lives," he says, because their paths have led to a top business school, so they've been pretty successful by most standards. But he thinks that makes business-oriented soul searching even more necessary. "When those people are tried and tested, they're going to have to decide who they are and what they believe in."

A generation in search of purpose?

    This idea that your beliefs should guide your career resonates among younger students and employees. Take Ben Austin, one of the students in Wadhwa's class at Columbia. He used to work for film crews in Hollywood, fetching lattes, he jokes, but actually scoping out promising films at festivals. He hopes Wadhwa's class will help him hone his sense of purpose and match that to his career goals. He isn't so much looking for a job as a skill set, he says.

    Millennials tend to, on the whole, crave jobs with a greater purpose. In a survey by consulting firm Mercer, young jobseekers ranked a company's good reputation as one of the most important draws for a job, although salary still held the No. 1 spot. More than other workers, "Millennials are looking for a value congruence -- it's very important for them that the company they work for reflects their values," says Jason Jeffay, a senior partner at Mercer consulting firm.

    Clearly, that's not true for all young people. Plenty of MBAs are strictly salary-driven, and both George's and Wadhwa's classes are electives, so they select for a population that's searching for this kind of guidance. It's unclear whether coursework like this could ever be mandatory, George says.

When work and personal life become one

    At its core, these courses try to teach "social intelligence," otherwise known as compassion mixed with common sense. Being a decent, fulfilled person will help you become a better leader and manager, the thinking goes.

    In truth, the business and personal worlds are collapsing in on each other. Many of us carry work with us wherever we go and spend more time with colleagues as the workday grows longer and longer. So it makes sense that business schools are turning into places where students want to learn how to be good at life in general.

    Ben Austin said as much. He suggested that this article open with a description of the students meditating, then continue to describe how no, this wasn't a scene at a temple of worship but rather [dramatic pause] "Columbia Business School: a temple of commerce."

    Austin has a point. The lines between where we go for moral guidance and where we go to learn how to balance a budget are growing blurrier these days.