In Neuroscience, there are two types of perspective-taking - cognitive and affective.
Before we go into why perspective-taking for MBA essays is important, you must think from the admissions team’s perspective.
Most essays are in a way a hero’s journey where the applicant is always shown in a positive light while other stakeholders are these one-dimensional characters.
The problem is that all essays sound the same.
In an extremely competitive application pool where everyone has a similar GPA/GMAT/GRE score, how will a reader root for you?
One way you can influence the admissions team is by demonstrating empathy in your thinking.
Cognitive Perspective Taking relies on your ability to interpret a person’s thoughts or beliefs.
Affective perspective Taking relies on your ability to interpret a person’s feelings or emotions at that time.
Only Columbia Business School has explicitly asked about perspective-taking through their PPIL essay. You may download F1GMAT’s Columbia MBA Essay Guide from store.f1gmat.com/columbia-mba-essay-guide to learn how I have incorporated perspective-taking into MBA essays.
Even to stand out for all top schools where your essay requires narrating interactions with stakeholders, learn to mix Cognitive and Affective perspective-taking.
Cognitive Perspective-taking or interpreting a person’s beliefs or thoughts works in essay examples where you had to negotiate for a deal or a decision and interpret the decision maker’s perspective. The least effective essays are where only the applicant’s thinking is shown in a positive light.
I edited an essay of a VC client, who had an interesting evaluation model and a suggestion to invest in a region that was considered saturated. The stakeholder – in this case, a partner opposed the idea. For us, the entire narrative was about changing his perspective. We didn’t demean his character, thinking, or perspective. Instead of that, we build a case around the stakeholder’s perspective by sharing with the reader how the person began to have this opinion not to invest in the region. One obvious reason was a previous failure. Again, the low-hanging fruit was to attribute risk aversion as the cause, but we dug deep and found an evaluation model that confirmed his position. So, then it became all about how the applicant found a dataset that revealed a new insight.
By balancing the partner’s skepticism and the client’s unique data set, we established a narrative with sufficient W-pattern to create an essay that took advantage of Cognitive Perspective Taking. And it showed the client’s maturity and empathy for the stakeholder.
The second kind of perspective taking is Affective perspective taking where you are assessing a stakeholder’s feelings or emotional state. The best examples I have read were all outside professional work. It is around helping a peer pick up a new skillset or overcome a cultural barrier or in some cases overcome a personal loss (death, or divorce/breakup) or feel welcomed in a group.
If you are strategic, you will mix both affective perspective-taking that assesses a stakeholder’s emotional state and then narrate their belief to establish why a person behaved or communicated in a certain way.
If you need examples of perspective taking, Download F1GMAT’s Winning MBA Essay Guide where I have included 240+ essay examples of Top 15 MBA programs.
You may also buy individual essay guides of Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Columbia, Kellogg, MIT, Chicago Booth, INSEAD, Yale, Tuck, Darden and many more top schools from F1GMAT Store
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