Inside BUV: Why People Skills Matter More Than Ever

Inside BU Virtual offers a behind-the-scenes look at the people, ideas, and innovations that make Boston University’s online programs flexible, accessible, and impactful. Through candid Q&A conversations with staff, students, and faculty, this series highlights award-winning faculty who bring academic rigor and creative approaches to online learning, students’ experiences in virtual programs, and the ways these programs prepare learners to succeed in a rapidly evolving workforce. By reaching learners wherever they are and opening doors to new opportunities, BU Virtual, in collaboration with BU’s schools and colleges, helps expand access to transformative learning and drive meaningful impact in careers and communities.

Q: You teach in Module 3 of Questrom’s Online MBA, which focuses heavily on leadership, negotiation, and working with people. What do you most want students to take away from this part of the program?

Moshe Cohen: At its root, this module is about helping students develop into more self-aware, mindful, ethical leaders. Since many of these students are already in leadership positions and have considerable work experience, this course offers them the opportunity to take a step back from their responsibilities and reevaluate their choices. Too often, in the rush to get things done and manage daily lives, people have little time to think critically about their decisions and instead operate largely out of habits. This module throws everything open — challenging students with exercises, cases, scenarios, and discussions around practical and ethical dilemmas that encourage introspection, dialog, and skill development. In the end, we hope they become more effective and thoughtful versions of themselves.

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Q: We hear so much today about AI and the technical skills people will need for the future of work. Does that make distinctly human skills—communication, negotiation, leadership, and conflict resolution—even more important?

Moshe Cohen: AI and technical skills are important to success in the workforce. At the same time, as AI continues to develop, it may reduce the value of certain technical skills by making those capabilities more widely accessible. Coding, for example, has long been a highly marketable skill, but AI can now perform an increasing share of that work, potentially leveling the playing field. Similarly, in writing, design, and other skilled disciplines, AI tools may narrow some of the differences between employees by enabling more people to produce creative, polished work.

Organizations depend on relationships—with colleagues, customers, suppliers, and partners—which means communication, conflict management, leadership, and other interpersonal skills will remain essential. People will still get upset with each other, direct reports will need guidance and coaching, groups will want leadership and vision, and tough decisions will still require a human touch. Employees in the workplace of the future will therefore be able to distinguish themselves by developing enhanced self-awareness, strong emotional management, heightened empathy toward others, and powerful people skills to complement their AI and technical skills.

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Q: On the first day of Module 3 this fall, you gave more than 200 students what initially seemed like an impossible assignment: memorize a tongue twister together in just ten minutes. Tell us what happened—and what you wanted students to take away from the experience.

Moshe Cohen: Ten minutes into the start of this course, we break up the students into groups of five and send them into breakout rooms to memorize the tongue twister. I briefly give them the task, show them the poem, and send them off.

Ten minutes later, we bring them back, at which point, my first question to them is, “What was the first thought that went through your mind when I assigned this exercise?” Their responses are hilarious: “This is impossible,” “I can’t do this,” “This isn’t even my first language,” “This is stupid!” One student even responded with “I still have until September 14th to drop this class.”

Then, I ask them, “How did things change over the course of the ten minutes you were together?” and their responses change. They reveal that once they got over the initial shock, they started discussing different strategies for accomplishing the task. Some parsed out the logic of the poem, some used music, and others divided roles. The conversation moved from, “This is impossible” to “What might we try?” or “How might we do this?”

I then use their experience to discuss with them the difference between “Fixed Mindset” and “Growth Mindset” thinking. I also review the Emotional Response Curve from their readings (Collywobbles: How to Negotiate When Negotiating Makes You Nervous, Chapter 2) to explore ways of managing strong emotional reactions to surprising or overwhelming events.

The students have fun, I have fun, and they learn the concepts I’m trying to teach through a visceral, personal, and bonding experience. They also use the exercise to get to know each other better and apply the ideas to their work outside the program.

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Q: You’ve said that when you plan a live online class, you ask yourself, “What can I do here that I couldn’t do in a pre-recorded video?” How does that question shape the way you teach?

Moshe Cohen: It defines how I plan and deliver my classes, both in OMBA and in person. My purpose is to deliver value to my students by helping them internalize ideas and skills. Since we give them readings, cases, pre-recorded videos, and other materials prior to class, my hope is to create engaging, challenging, and emotionally impactful learning experiences to make the material come to life.

I don’t want them to learn things but to feel them. In negotiation, for example, I don’t want to just tell or show them the importance of aiming high but instead to have them feel the painful sting of realizing they’ve asked for too little in a class simulation, so they become more effective self-advocates when they negotiate in real life.

While I do review important skills and models in class, I try to lecture as little as possible and instead to provide experiences. As a teacher, I see myself less as a purveyor of knowledge and more as a guide, taking students on a journey where they learn from me, each other, and their own experiences.

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Q: Negotiation is something we often associate with major deals or formal business situations. Where do you see negotiation—and the ability to navigate conflict—showing up in the everyday professional lives of your students?

Moshe Cohen: Negotiations happen anytime we need to make a decision with someone else and don’t start off in the same place. People do business with people, and conflicts are not only inevitable but necessary. We have to work out different values, needs, and constraints in every aspect of work and life, and our ability to navigate these often fraught and emotional situations is critical to working effectively with others.

Everything can be thought of as a negotiation, from scheduling work to assigning responsibilities and more. Discussing PTO with your manager or direct reports involve negotiating competing interests, and deciding where to go on vacation and what to do with your friends or family members is yet another negotiation. Communication often goes awry, emotions impact how we interact with each other, and our narratives about ourselves, others, and situations impact what we do, how we feel, and how we negotiate.

Emotional intelligence, negotiation, communication, and other interpersonal skills show up in every aspect of our lives and are therefore key to our personal and professional relationships as well as our effectiveness in getting things done.

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Q: You continue to work with companies and professionals outside the university. What are you seeing in the workplace today that makes strong people skills particularly important?

Moshe Cohen: I’m seeing a great deal of anxiety and stress. The relationship between employers and employees has changed dramatically over the past few decades, leading to uncertainty, distrust, and fear. Things seem more transactional and short term, and the social contract is strained. It is therefore critical that people develop strong emotional management, communication, and conflict resolution skills, that they connect with others around them, and learn to both support their colleagues and ask for help when they need it.

In addition, many people in the workforce have become accustomed to communicating electronically with each other through email, text messaging, and other means. While these tools have their place, employers are noticing that employees are often less comfortable in conversation, more conflict averse, and less likely to express empathy or make themselves vulnerable to those around them. Those who possess superior people skills can therefore stand out and provide unique value to their employers while simultaneously turbocharging their own career trajectories.

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Q: Your own path is an interesting one: you studied physics, worked as an engineer, earned your MBA at Questrom, built a career in mediation and corporate training, and eventually joined the Questrom faculty full time. How has that journey shaped the way you teach business students today?

Moshe Cohen: That’s a hard question to answer, as so many things influenced my approach to teaching. I had great teachers along the journey, from Yael Zif at Questrom to Allen Tannenbaum at McGill and many others at BU, Cornell, MIT, and elsewhere. From these people, I not only learned important concepts and ideas but also different ways of teaching, and in particular, the value of experiential, intuitive, and emotional learning. These experiences were formative in developing my teaching style.

From my physics and engineering days, I learned strong analytical and problem-solving skills which help marry the people skills I teach with the practical challenges of business confronted by my students. I bring all that background into my classes.

A career in mediation and starting my own business were particularly impactful, as that introduced me to a new slate of challenges and forced me to develop new skill sets around communication, resilience, and applied emotional intelligence. I took everything I learned during my MBA at Questrom, combined it with experimentation, opportunism, and a whole lot of trial and error, and figured things out as I went along.

I often use my own experiences, and especially mistakes, as teaching opportunities. For example, I describe to my OMBA students an experience I had as part of a failed partnership and invite them to analyze the situation while pointing out everything I did wrong. They seem to enjoy this and learn a great deal as they criticize my decisions.

In addition, as a mediator, I had to develop strong listening, communication, and emotional intelligence skills. My mediation skills have helped me become attuned to my students’ needs and to provide them with an impactful learning experience. I learned to think of everything as conversation – negotiation, mediation, leadership, teaching, and more, and to turn class time into a collaborative and lively conversation with my students.

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Q: If you could give working professionals one piece of advice for becoming better negotiators—and better colleagues and leaders—what would it be?

Moshe Cohen: I usually give three points of advice as one: Prepare, slow down, and listen!

Do your homework before you negotiate or interact with others. Manage your emotions, so you can respond rather than react to situations. And spend more time actively listening rather than talking, with the explicit goal of understanding those around you.

About Moshe Cohen

Moshe Cohen is a faculty member at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, where he has taught negotiation, leadership, and organizational behavior since 2000. An experienced mediator, executive coach, and corporate trainer, he has spent more than two decades helping individuals and organizations strengthen their negotiation, communication, leadership, and conflict management skills. He is the founder of The Negotiating Table and the author of Collywobbles: How to Negotiate When Negotiating Makes You Nervous, which explores the intersection of negotiation and emotional intelligence. His teaching and professional work emphasize experiential learning and the development of practical people skills that can be applied in the workplace and beyond.