Psychopath MBAs have been banned at NYU Stern School of Business

Psychopath MBAs have been banned at NYU Stern School of BusinessPsychopath MBAs have been banned at NYU Stern School of BusinessDo your friends know you better than your boss does?Thats whatNew York Universitys Stern School of Business is banking on as they update their admissions requirements.Stern wants friends to narc on each other, to find out whether applicants really are who they say they are. The Wall Street Journal reports that NYUs M.B.A. program is now asking applicants to get a friend or co-worker to write a 250-word statement that highlights the applicants empathy and emotional intelligence. The change comes because the business school felt that too many recommendations of applicants were being lazily produced to show the applicants as walking on water. The friends statements are required in addition to two other recommendations.Will this work? There are some obstacles. For one thing, peoples friends usually say nice things about them thats why theyre friends, and bedrngn is enemies. In addition, this penalizes people who may be brilliant at business but not especially social, or who have challenges that keep them from forming close friendships, like autism, past trauma or social anxiety.In addition, it probably wont be hard for narcissists or psychopaths to get those recommendations from friends research has shown that those personality types are exceptionally charismatic and good at talking people into following their agendas.A 2014 survey found that 36% of managers ask M.B.A. applicants to write their own recommendations. If applicants are ghostwriting their own evaluations, they are unable to give the right kind of insight business schools want to see. Sterns associate dean of admissions said that applicants would either embellish or undersell their accomplishments in ways that the admissions committee found confusing and unhelpful.Other business schools are following suit with changing their application process. University of Pennsylvanias Whart on School of Business now has strict word-count limits. After seeing that recommenders would all put their applicants in the top percentile, Wharton has shifted from a percentile system to a more qualitative analysis. Now, recommenders are asked to describe specific characteristics in an applicants personality, such as their humility or self-consciousness.360-degree feedbackThese top business schools are engaging in a more holistic evaluation process that many businesses already do, particularly Wall Street investment banks including Goldman Sachs. Its called 360-degree feedback, in which your performance review not only comes from your boss, but also your peers, relevant staff members, co-workers, and customers.Its not a perfect system. It depends on everyone buying in for the right reasons. As this Forbes columnist explains, 360-degree feedback fails when feedback becomes personal and not constructive, or when its used to highlight just weakness, or when theres a lack of confident iality. Where 360-degree reviews are supposed to be thorough and helpful, at their worst they can become tools of social control.But it can find gaps your superior would overlook. If multiple employees are giving the same feedback, the finding deserves closer attention.While no one persons opinion is in itself necessarily predictive, the aggregate average of several raters really does provide a very accurate gauge of the skills of a leader, Harvard Business Review recommends.To know where you really stand in your organizations, you shouldnt just be looking up, you should be looking down and sideways.