On the evening of 4th March, the SBC Guest Lecture series welcome distinguished speaker Professor Fred Garcia, an adjunct professor of management at New York University’s Stern School of Business Executive MBA Program and NYU’s Master’s in Public Relations/Corporate Communication Program. Professor Garcia is also on the leadership faculty at the Center for Security Studies of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. He is a frequent guest lecturer at the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania), the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College and Officer Candidate School, the Brookings Institution, Tsinghua University and other institutions. The lecture was held in the SBC auditorium and attracted around 100 SBC students.
During the lecture, Prof Garcia shared his research on the power of communication and leadership in business world. He talked about principals and barriers to effective communication, giving suggestions on how to overcome those barriers. Professor Garcia actively interacted with students through three engaging tests to illustrate the point that people have a hard time paying attention and there is no such thing as multi-tasking; this leads to the first concern of effective communication, which is to have a purpose. After the lecture, Prof Garcia donated three copies of his book The Power of Communications: Skills to build trust, inspire loyalty, and lead effectively to SBC library as a gift.
Students who participated in the lecture expressed that improving communication skills was not only for workplace but also was an important social skill for all places. Those attending said were happy to have had the opportunity to learn and exchange ideas with professors from other top level universities. They also expressed the hope to attend more similar lectures in future.
The Guest Lecture series is organized for the purpose of giving SBC students opportunities to communicate with senior academics from UK Owner Universities and other top level academic institutions like University of Wisconsin in Madison and New York University. For the past two years, we have hosted around ten guest lectures covering a wide range of topics like climate change, city culture, business management, business etiquette, banking, sports events management and so on.
