Please God...

Please God, would you make business schools include psychology in their curricula!

I just came from a Harvard Business Review LinkedIn forum that had 560 comments discussing whether or not behavior can be measured.  Many of the participants are saying, no behavior can't be measured.  Or they are confusing behavior with attitudes, personality, etc.  The lack of understanding of the fundamental building blocks of human performance in this (what I can only assume is an intelligent and highly competent) group of business people scares me.  It had gone on for days and I couldn't stand it anymore, so I posted the following.

We measure behavior all the time. The field of psychology is defined as "an academic and applied discipline that involves the scientific study of mental functions and behaviors". The domain of psychometrics within psychology is dedicated to establishing ways to measure many constructs related to understanding and predicting human behavior, such as behavior, personality, interests, values, motivation, attitudes, etc. The field of Industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology is the scientific study of the workplace. Rigor and methods of psychology (including measurement) are applied to issues of critical relevance to business, including talent management, coaching, assessment, selection, training, organizational development, performance, and work-life balance.

It would seem to me that if you are preparing people to be leaders of people (i.e., humans) that a basic understanding of the science of predicting and understanding human behavior and mental processes would be fundamental. It is not -- most business programs, both undergraduate and graduate, do not require psychology or any social science for that matter.  Which might explain why we have a crisis of leadership effectiveness. 

Well, that is my rant for today.  Now back to work.