The primary reasons I sought to pursue an Executive MBA Online from Washington State University was twofold. First, having been given the privilege and responsibility of leading a company, I felt my military experience had well-prepared me for the role, but I still had several blind spots. Secondly, as a leader, I wanted to ensure I had the right skill set to contribute to the team’s overall success. Not wanting to be just good enough, I wanted to not only fill my blind spots, but take it a step further and improve my entire leadership skillset. Without a doubt, I personally feel WSU’s EMBA program did just that, by helping me specifically:

• Learn the Language of Business – Transitioning from the military has many advantages, but it doesn’t fully provide leaders the ‘Rosetta Stone’ needed for success
• Ask the Right Questions – Armed with ‘Rosetta Stone’, I could now more effectively ask the right questions in a parlance they best understood, vastly improving the quality of communications
• Leverage Teamwork – It’s no secret that teamwork is the foundation to any organization’s success, the real victory is maximizing effectiveness through communication. I personally found even in business there are multiple languages, being able to speak finance, accounting, and operations simultaneously was a real boon in being able to improve our team’s success
• Lead to Better Outcomes – By speaking the right language, asking the right questions, and best leveraging the strengths of our team through effective collaboration, we routinely develop better plans of actions which directly result in better outcomes for our organization

The bottom line is that originally, I had pursued an Executive MBA from WSU to closeout several business blind spots my military transition had left me. In reality, I gained so much more…improving all my leadership skills. This has allowed me to contribute so much more to the overall success of the team and organization. Their success is my success as a leader.

By #CougaMBAssador Shane Sullivan