Locus of Control

There's a psychological concept called locus of control. It refers to where the control of your behavior comes from--internal or external. For example, the adolescent relies on others to guide his/her behavior where the adult tends to guide their own behavior. Bad example maybe, but the adolescent smokes because it's cool and it helps the smoker identify with some group. The adult smokes because they to or need to--both reasons are internal to the person, one is emotional and the other physical.

We can see the same thing in learners. Some learners have an external locus of control. They need others, mainly the professor, to tell them what to do, maybe they work for grades or for approval of their parents. We see this mostly through the undergraduate degree. For graduates, we hope the motivation is intrinsic, a sort of hunger for information and knowledge brought on by the felt belief that the effort will be worth it. One of the reasons we encourage MBA students to have some business experience is to give them time to build up this hunger, to come to know what they want and to settle for nothing less.

As you are learning, of course I believe in the latter. My feeling is that you should be pushing me for answers, rather than me trying to pull information from you. We are going to conduct our class that way--push vs pull. You've sen that in the syllabus where I've asked you to tell me what you want. What information do you expect to accumulate? What decision making power do you want? What skills and attitudes do you want to develop? What capabilities do you have on your checklist? I have some ideas--good ones, I think--but I don't live in your shoes, report to your employer, have the same career ladder in mind. You have to tell me, er push me in that direction.

Sure, we have assignments, deadlines, grades, etc., but these are more mechanical in my mind, created by the necessity of giving you a grade as required by the University. I guess, they are also for the folks who need some external locus of control. If you are not hungry--and/or I don't make you hungry in the first few weeks--we need to talk. If you're intrinsic, my experience is that grades will take care of themselves.