forming a brightly lit center catwalk down which the students breezily parade, seemingly unaware that all eyes are on them. I admire their nonchalance.
The students are even better turned out than their surroundings, if such a thing is possible. No one is more than five pounds overweight or has bad skin or wears odd accessories. The women are a cross between Head Cheerleader and Most Likely to Succeed. They wear fitted jeans, filmy blouses, and high-heeled peekaboo-toed shoes that make a pleasing clicketyâclack on Spanglerâs polished wood floors. Some parade like fashion models, except that theyâre social and beaming instead of aloof and impassive. The men are clean-cut and athletic; they look like people who expect to be in charge, but in a friendly, Eagle Scout sort of way. I have the feeling that if you asked one of them for driving directions, heâd greet you with a can-do smile and throw himself into the task of helping you to your destinationâwhether or not he knew the way.
I sit down next to a couple of students who are in the middle of planning a road tripâHBS students are forever coordinating pub crawls and parties, or describing an extreme-travel junket theyâve just come back from. When they ask what brings me to campus, I say that Iâm conducting interviews for a book about introversion and extroversion. I donât tell them that a friend of mine, himself an HBS grad, once called the placethe âSpiritual Capital of Extroversion.â But it turns out that I donât
have
to tell them.
âGood luck finding an introvert around here,â says one.
âThis school is predicated on extroversion,â adds the other. âYour grades and social status depend on it. Itâs just the norm here. Everyone around you is speaking up and being social and going out.â
âIsnât there anyone on the quieter side?â I ask.
They look at me curiously.
âI couldnât tell you,â says the first student dismissively.
Harvard Business School is not, by any measure, an ordinary place.Founded in 1908, just when Dale Carnegie hit the road as a traveling salesman and only three years before he taught his first class in public speaking, the school sees itself as âeducating leaders who make a difference in the world.âPresident George W. Bush is a graduate, as are an impressive collection of World Bank presidents, U.S. Treasury secretaries, New York City mayors, CEOs of companies like General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Procter & Gamble, and, more notoriously, Jeffrey Skilling, the villain of the Enron scandal. Between 2004 and 2006, 20 percent of the top three executives at the Fortune 500 companies were HBS grads.
HBS grads likely have influenced your life in ways youâre not aware of. They have decided who should go to war and when; they have resolved the fate of Detroitâs auto industry; they play leading roles in just about every crisis to shake Wall Street, Main Street, and Pennsylvania Avenue. If you work in corporate America, thereâs a good chance that Harvard Business School grads have shaped your everyday life, too, weighing in on how much privacy you need in your workspace, how many team-building sessions you need to attend per year, and whether creativity is best achieved through brainstorming or solitude. Given the scope of their influence, itâs worth taking a look at who enrolls hereâand what they value by the time they graduate.
The student who wishes me luck in finding an introvert at HBS no doubt believes that there are none to be found. But clearly he doesnât know his first-year classmate Don Chen. I first meet Don in Spangler, where heâs seated only a few couches away from the road-trip planners. He comes across as a typical HBS student, tall, with gracious manners, prominent cheekbones, a winsome smile, and a fashionably choppy, surfer-dude haircut. Heâd like to find a job in private
The students are even better turned out than their surroundings, if such a thing is possible. No one is more than five pounds overweight or has bad skin or wears odd accessories. The women are a cross between Head Cheerleader and Most Likely to Succeed. They wear fitted jeans, filmy blouses, and high-heeled peekaboo-toed shoes that make a pleasing clicketyâclack on Spanglerâs polished wood floors. Some parade like fashion models, except that theyâre social and beaming instead of aloof and impassive. The men are clean-cut and athletic; they look like people who expect to be in charge, but in a friendly, Eagle Scout sort of way. I have the feeling that if you asked one of them for driving directions, heâd greet you with a can-do smile and throw himself into the task of helping you to your destinationâwhether or not he knew the way.
I sit down next to a couple of students who are in the middle of planning a road tripâHBS students are forever coordinating pub crawls and parties, or describing an extreme-travel junket theyâve just come back from. When they ask what brings me to campus, I say that Iâm conducting interviews for a book about introversion and extroversion. I donât tell them that a friend of mine, himself an HBS grad, once called the placethe âSpiritual Capital of Extroversion.â But it turns out that I donât
have
to tell them.
âGood luck finding an introvert around here,â says one.
âThis school is predicated on extroversion,â adds the other. âYour grades and social status depend on it. Itâs just the norm here. Everyone around you is speaking up and being social and going out.â
âIsnât there anyone on the quieter side?â I ask.
They look at me curiously.
âI couldnât tell you,â says the first student dismissively.
Harvard Business School is not, by any measure, an ordinary place.Founded in 1908, just when Dale Carnegie hit the road as a traveling salesman and only three years before he taught his first class in public speaking, the school sees itself as âeducating leaders who make a difference in the world.âPresident George W. Bush is a graduate, as are an impressive collection of World Bank presidents, U.S. Treasury secretaries, New York City mayors, CEOs of companies like General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Procter & Gamble, and, more notoriously, Jeffrey Skilling, the villain of the Enron scandal. Between 2004 and 2006, 20 percent of the top three executives at the Fortune 500 companies were HBS grads.
HBS grads likely have influenced your life in ways youâre not aware of. They have decided who should go to war and when; they have resolved the fate of Detroitâs auto industry; they play leading roles in just about every crisis to shake Wall Street, Main Street, and Pennsylvania Avenue. If you work in corporate America, thereâs a good chance that Harvard Business School grads have shaped your everyday life, too, weighing in on how much privacy you need in your workspace, how many team-building sessions you need to attend per year, and whether creativity is best achieved through brainstorming or solitude. Given the scope of their influence, itâs worth taking a look at who enrolls hereâand what they value by the time they graduate.
The student who wishes me luck in finding an introvert at HBS no doubt believes that there are none to be found. But clearly he doesnât know his first-year classmate Don Chen. I first meet Don in Spangler, where heâs seated only a few couches away from the road-trip planners. He comes across as a typical HBS student, tall, with gracious manners, prominent cheekbones, a winsome smile, and a fashionably choppy, surfer-dude haircut. Heâd like to find a job in private
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