Directors are faced with a vast array of business education choices, from 'quick fix' courses to full-blown MBAs. With so much on offer, how should they choose the right professional development for them?

The term "business education" encompasses a huge panoply of courses and qualifications from an equally wide variety of providers, ranging from blue-chip academic institutions right down to unregulated crackpots and cranks. How can busy business leaders—or those aspiring to the boardroom—keen to develop their business skills and knowledge, decide what and how to study?

Leaving aside the crackpots and cranks, reputable business education falls broadly into four main categories: high-level vocational courses, academic programmes (including the now ubiquitous MBA), leadership coaching, and director and board development.

To start with, it is useful to make some distinction between training and education. "Training is something you can take away today and use in the workplace tomorrow," says Beth Rogers, senior lecturer at Portsmouth Business School. "Education, on the other hand, provides you with thinking skills to equip you for the long term."

But training and education are not mutually exclusive. While training can provide new tools and skills quickly—and therefore make an immediate impact on a business—it can easily lead an individual or group into a longer period of business education.

Vocational courses
This path is often clearly demonstrated in the field of vocational courses, with many senior business leaders grafting high-level academic qualifications on to their initial functional skills.

Traditionally, it was only a clutch of professional disciplines including law, accountancy and engineering in which directors had to qualify in order to progress. Now, many other areas have become professionalised, such as HR, purchasing, marketing and even sales. More competition and regulation have increased the pressure on directors to be suitably qualified. It's got to the point where Rogers claims it is almost a governance issue.

"Just as a business must have qualified accountants, it's unusual now to find HR directors without at least a certificate, if not a post-graduate diploma or an MA in HR management," says Rogers. "An academic qualification at masters level shows an ability to grasp strategy." Rogers, who runs the in-company MA sales management programme at Portsmouth, is also research director of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management (ISMM), which exemplifies this renewed emphasis on vocational qualifications.

The ISMM is dedicated to raising the professionalism of sales and marketing personnel by devising and delivering up-to-date, high-calibre qualifications through a range of certified training providers.

The merit of vocational qualifications at senior level is that they are role-specific, but directly relevant to directors. "They're tailored to the director's level, but aimed at the job they have to do," says Dr William Pedley, the ISMM's director of education.

"The drawback of most MBAs is that they simply do not tackle the crucial issue of sales, but skirt around it by only dealing with marketing, whic is only half the picture," he says.

The ISMM's highest qualification—an executive diploma in strategic sales and account management—is a graduate-level qualification aimed at individuals who aspire to deliver strategic sales solutions at a national or international level. Both sales directors and board members with little or no sales education can benefit. The ISMM is experiencing heightened interest in it on the back of increasing global competition, which is making UK companies aware of the need to compete with often more highly qualified international sales forces. Similarly, vocational training across many functions and disciplines is on the increase in response to both global pressures and the UK government's efforts to "up-skill" the whole workforce. In terms of cost and time, the diploma programme is broadly typical of high-level vocational courses, costing around £3,000 from a private training provider—less from a public sector institution—and taking about a year to complete while in full-time employment.

MBAs
The masters degree in business administration (MBA) is a strategic general management qualification positioned specifically for people in, or aspiring to, a leadership role. It is based on a combination of high-level structured learning, together with the practical application of skills and knowledge.

"Unlike most other professional development, it's not just a case of being taught," says Jeanette Purcell, chief executive of the Association of MBAs (AMBA). "Candidates bring past experience to the business school, enhance it through learning, and then apply it. Employees gain exposure to other organisations and business situations—and come out with a well rounded understanding of business in different contexts."

The starting point in selecting an MBA course is to confine your search to programmes accredited by AMBA, which is internationally recognised as the global standard for all MBA, Doctorates in Business Administration (DBA) and Masters in Business and Management (MBM) programmes.
AMBA currently accredits MBA, DBA and MBM programmes at 152 business schools in 69 countries. All require candidates to have a minimum of three years' good, relevant management experience. Some are billed as "executive MBAs", and are aimed at senior managers and directors with at least 10 years' experience. The choice then depends on what, where and how you wish to study—and how much you can afford to spend.

At the prestige end of the spectrum, London Business School (LBS) offers an intensive, full-time MBA in 12 months, for the small matter of around £50,000. This is the top-rated UK MBA, second in the world only to the Wharton MBA from the University of Pennsylvania, according to global rankings published annually by the Financial Times. But such courses are not for every student. Think carefully about your key criteria: do you want to study full-time or part-time? Do you want to stay in the UK or go overseas? Do you seek to specialise, for example, in small business or in global management? It's possible to acquire an accredited MBA for less than £10,000 via distance learning and part-time study over two, three or even five years, alongside full-time employment. Better still, some companies will sponsor their most able executives as a way to retain and encourage talent.

AMBA's Purcell says that applications are increasing in the current economic downturn, possibly swollen both by executives who have been made redundant—and are investing their redundancy cheques in their future employability—and by those who are feeling vulnerable in the current climate and think an MBA will help to secure their position. Some far-sighted—and wealthy—employers may be sponsoring their aspiring leaders through an MBA as an alternative to under-employing them or laying them off.

A word of warning: while an MBA should boost confidence and skills and will certainly strengthen your CV, it requires great personal commitment. "It's very, very hard work," says Purcell. "Be sure that you really have a hunger for learning."

Leadership coaching
A more manageable option for many senior executives may be personal coaching, especially if you are facing specific goals in your business.
"In our experience, people who are at board level are usually managing the managers and their time is spent on leadership—that's the skill they most need to develop," says Professor Sharon Turnbull, director of  The Leadership Trust's Research Centre for Applied Leadership. "Many programmes for senior executives include leadership rather than focus on it, particularly if it's a discipline-related qualification such as marketing or finance, and often with an MBA," she says.

A dedicated leadership programme covers emotional intelligence and communication skills, both inherently important for leadership. It often begins with a 360º audit, where feedback from peers and seniors, and from people reporting to you, increases self-awareness. "On a dedicated programme, the leader's time is focused solely on themselves, a rare situation for most executives," says Professor Turnbull. "They discover what they need to change to be more effective."

A dedicated leadership development programme takes three-to-five days, either at a business school, where it is predominantly classroom-based, or at an "experiential centre". Experiential learning is designed to draw out leadership capability by challenging the leader under controlled conditions, enabling them to experience the emotions and deal with issues that they may face at critical times in their working life.

An experiential—and residential—course at The Leadership Trust costs about £3,500, although executives will often benefit from follow-up one-to-one sessions with an executive coach, to embed their learning.
Laurence Lyons, a pioneer of executive coaching in the UK and author of Coaching for Leadership, warns companies about the plethora of unregulated coaches—even some qualified psychologists can do more harm than good. "Psychologists are swarming into this area," he says. "They've hijacked leadership coaching and created a growing belief that business is nothing more than psychology."

The problem, says Lyons, is that most have a clinical background, working with dysfunctional people, and that they tend to misapply this psychology in the boardroom, providing analyses that are non-directional and non-judgmental. "But in business you have to be judgmental—you have to make a profit."

When selecting a leadership coach, the watchwords remain "caveat emptor". The Vancouver-based World Association of Business Coaches (WABC) is improving the standard of accreditation, but for many UK companies referrals remain the most trusted method. Chemistry is vital, so it is worth getting two or three recommendations—and talking in-depth with them—to find the right one for you.

Director and board development
Director education is now as important as the learning undertaken for any other role—perhaps even more so, given the accountabilities and recent changes enshrined in the Companies Act 2006, which is more prescriptive on the liabilities of directors, the effectiveness of boards, and the transparency with which they operate. Many directors do not realise the full extent of their duties, responsibilities and liabilities in relation to the board and to the organisation (employees, shareholders and other stakeholders).

With the concept of the "professional director" gaining currency, the IoD is the natural home of director and board development, providing programmes across the private, public and third sectors—both in supporting boards to become more effective and in individual director development.

The IoD has a suite of assessments, leading to the award of Chartered Director. The suite comprises: a certificate in company direction, covering a range of disciplines crucial for all practising directors; a diploma in company direction, which assesses individual candidates' abilities to manage board dilemmas; and the Chartered Director peer review, which assesses experience in a number of defined areas known as the "key tasks of the board".

"There's no single type of candidate," says Simon Bull, head of Chartered Director at the IoD. "Our programmes are aimed at all directors with ambition for themselves and their businesses."

The IoD's qualifications are wholly complementary to vocational qualifications, with many chartered directors already highly qualified in their own professional disciplines. Chartered directors come from all areas of the private, public and third sectors. "One key advantage of the programme is the ability to exchange views and experiences with directors from different backgrounds," says Bull.

To qualify as a Chartered Director—having first completed the certificate and diploma—takes 15 full days of education, typically spread over 12 months. The course is flexible, with two or three of the days completed by distance learning. The cost is around £10,000, and applications are increasing. "At a time of economic instability, directors realise that qualifications and skills are more important than ever," says Bull.

The choice is yours
So, there is no single business education "solution" for senior executives. "Each has its merits, none is necessarily 'better' than others and often they are complementary," says Anna Bateson, a senior executive coach whose consultancy, Cutting Through The Grey, has designed and led a number of open and in-house programmes for the IoD.

The right approach depends upon the individual concerned, their background, current situation and future ambitions. Says Bateson: "The better director will use a mix of interventions—including tapping into their own sources of independent learning and e-learning—and knit them together".

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