How immersive global experiences can transform your MBA journey

Studying an MBA degree often means engaging in hands-on projects and fully immersive experiences in other countries. Combining international travel with real-world business learning, immersive global experiences present MBA students with the opportunity to apply classroom learning in unique business settings.

 Taking MBA learning outside of the classroom, such experiences place students in unfamiliar environments where they can develop the analytical, leadership, and intercultural skills needed to succeed in a global career. That’s alongside providing ample opportunity to encounter new perspectives and grow on a personal level.

By engaging in international travel experiences during your MBA, you can develop a richer sense of how commerce and society operate differently while working directly with organizations and local communities. Engaging with people in different cultures and contexts can help you explore how to tackle complex business challenges.

We spoke with insiders from Bentley University’s MBA program to learn more about the value of an immersive global experience during your MBA.

What can you learn from in-person experiences?

Brianna Harding recently graduated from Bentley’s MBA program with a concentration in leadership. As part of her program, Brianna had the option to complete a Global Business Experience (GBE), an intensive international trip offered during semester breaks.

Each GBE involves a Bentley professor taking their students on an immersive learning experience in a region of the world relevant to their expertise. Students visit local businesses, NGOs, and other organizations, meeting senior leaders and analyzing how they approach complex organizational challenges.

Bentley designs each GBE around a specific learning theme, aiming to enable students to observe business issues within an international context while applying the concepts they’ve explored throughout their MBA studies.

Brianna spent her GBE in Scotland, focusing on environmental sustainability and examining how communities and organizations respond to pressures created by tourism.

“As a class, we traveled from Massachusetts all the way to Scotland. We went to Edinburgh, St. Andrews, and a village called Edzell,” says Brianna. “We learned about environmental sustainability, and how you can protect the environment in a situation where you've got a lot of tourists every year.”

After returning to campus, students were required to reflect on their experience and connect what they had learned to concepts studied throughout their MBA.

GBEs and other similar study abroad experiences provide students with an understanding of how organizations function in a global context, regardless of industry or hierarchy, explains Iris Berdrow, director of the MBA program and professor of management at Bentley.

For Brianna, seeing organizations operating in a different country helped reinforce lessons she feels can only truly be learned outside of the classroom.

“There's only so much that can be learned in a textbook, and you have to be able to experience and see things that you're going to experience throughout your career,” she says.

What’s the value of understanding new cultures?

Understanding other cultures is a vital part of effective leadership today. Those who operate in international markets must recognize how to adapt to different communication styles, decision-making processes, and organizational structures that vary across countries.

For students at Bentley, GBEs are one piece to ensure that students gain the necessary global skills. While the program’s day-to-day cohorts are inherently international, Bentley also partners with an organization that manages separate international internships for graduate students looking for a deeper workplace immersion.

Similarly, dedicated portions of the curriculum explore how organizations are structured in different countries and highlight universal issues faced by all, such as sustainability and social responsibility.

“The MBA gives students an opportunity to understand that people from other parts of the world have different views,” says Professor Berdrow. “They communicate differently, they behave differently, most importantly, they function within different structures.”

The school’s new Professional MBA, for example, takes[KL1.1][IB1.2] students abroad where they visit various companies, talk to CEOs and regulators, and work on a project directly with businesses focusing on a specific challenge. At the end of the week, students give presentations to the principals of those organizations and gain direct feedback from them, before writing a reflection paper and a research paper.

“It’s not just about the conceptual work but also the experience. Students will understand more about a new culture and themselves,” says Professor Berdrow. “It's very much a layered cultural and content course in country.”

How can your own perspective impact your learning?

Just as important to leadership, though, is understanding your own cultural and social position─including regional differences, and how this impacts your way of thinking. Bentley builds on the value this can bring early on in its programs, using two self-assessment methods.

First, the Intercultural Effectiveness Scale assesses your predisposition to learning about other cultures, developing relationships with other cultures, and managing the stress that comes with this.

The second, Globe Smart, works as a global mapping tool that analyzes what we mean by different values and attitudes and how we understand them.

Professor Berdrow uses herself as an example. She was born in Canada to German parents and now lives in the US. “I must understand ‘where does the Canadian in me come out?’ ‘How is that now influenced by my American context?’ and ‘What behaviors still echo back to what my German parents gave me?’”

Once learners understand their ‘line of sight’ they can then look at how people interact, she explains. Learning to understand these differences helps them further understand the impact this can have for communication, decision making, and group work.

How can international study prepare you for a global career?

While immersive global experiences can help you develop critical skills that are vital across a range of industries, an MBA can also give you the ability to effectively demonstrate these skills to future employers.

As they come to the end of their MBA, Professor Berdrow often points students towards the leadership development tracks at top companies. Many organizations offer these programs for people who can function in international environments. She says one of the key benefits graduates gain is that they can take expertise from the program and apply it to jobs around the world, working with different cultures in varied locations.

Students and graduates also benefit from having business school faculty available to help them through career support. “I've had professors meet with me over Zoom on Saturdays when they were in a different country to help me better understand concepts. I've had professors bring in people that they have worked with throughout their career. They really just put in that extra mile,” says Brianna.

How can an MBA help build transferable skills?

Through initiatives like the GBE, Brianna believes her MBA was more than just important for her professional development. “It’s also an investment in your personal growth,” she says.

The degree helped her build skills that are valuable in various ways, including communication, critical thinking, and understanding how different stakeholders can impact business decisions.

She says the program offered a combination of practical application and basic business understanding, while also building up soft and technical skills. “The MBA has done a great job in teaching us how to be very well-rounded professionals,” she adds.

For others considering doing an MBA, Brianna’s advice is to “100% do it”.

The skills you’ll learn, the international experiences you’ll take part in and the network you’ll build will shape you into a leader who will thrive in an international business environment. And you might just learn something new about yourself, too.