An MBA can help professionals build expertise in finance, strategy, analytics, and emerging technologies. But applying that knowledge in a leadership role requires another set of abilities: communicating decisions, collaborating across teams, solving complex problems, and adapting when circumstances change.

These abilities are known as power skills. Sometimes called soft skills, they are increasingly important as businesses adopt artificial intelligence, rethink how teams work, and look for leaders who can manage both people and technology.

At American University's Kogod School of Business, MBA students develop power skills alongside their technical knowledge through coursework, team projects, case competitions, and dedicated professional communication resources. These experiences help students practice the judgment, communication, and leadership skills they will use throughout their careers.

What Are Power Skills in Business?

Power skills are transferable abilities that help professionals work effectively with people, information, and unfamiliar challenges. They include critical thinking, communication, collaboration, adaptability, problem-solving, active listening, and leadership.

These skills shape how professionals use their business knowledge.

A manager might use financial analysis to evaluate an investment, but deciding whether to move forward requires more than understanding the numbers. The manager must weigh competing priorities, explain the recommendation to stakeholders, address concerns, and work with others to implement a decision.

Power skills connect technical expertise to these responsibilities. They become particularly important as professionals move into roles where their success depends not only on their individual work, but also on their ability to guide teams and influence organizational decisions.

Why Do Employers Value Power Skills in MBA Graduates?

Employers need business professionals who can analyze complex problems and communicate what their findings mean for an organization.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers' 2025 Job Outlook report identified communication, critical thinking, and teamwork among the highest-rated career readiness competencies employers seek in college graduates.

These capabilities are especially relevant to MBA graduates pursuing management, consulting, strategy, and other roles that require working across business functions.

A consultant may need to explain a recommendation to a client who disagrees. A marketing manager may need to coordinate colleagues with different priorities. A finance leader may need to communicate the implications of a forecast to executives who do not work directly with financial data.

Artificial intelligence makes these human capabilities even more relevant. AI tools can help professionals analyze information, generate ideas, and automate tasks, but employees must still evaluate outputs, ask appropriate questions, exercise judgment, and determine how to act on the information.

MBA students preparing for leadership roles need to understand both what technology can accomplish and where human decision-making remains essential.

How Do MBA Programs Help Students Develop Power Skills?

MBA programs create opportunities for students to practice communication, collaboration, and critical thinking while working through business problems.

At Kogod, these skills are integrated into coursework and experiential learning rather than treated as separate from technical business education.

Students work in teams, analyze business challenges, develop recommendations, and present their reasoning. These assignments require them to consider different perspectives, defend their assumptions, and communicate with audiences who may approach the same problem differently.

Kogod's Negotiation course offers another example of how students can develop interpersonal skills alongside emerging technology.

Professor Alexandra Mislin incorporates AI-assisted negotiation exercises that allow students to prepare for conversations, test different approaches, and reflect on their strategies. Students practice identifying interests, listening to other perspectives, and responding when a discussion does not unfold as expected.

The exercises connect directly to professional situations, from negotiating employment offers to managing disagreements and reaching decisions with colleagues.

The technology supports the preparation, but students must still determine how to communicate, build trust, and respond to another person.

How Do MBA Students Apply Power Skills to Business Challenges?

Case competitions offer another setting for MBA students to combine technical analysis with communication, teamwork, and strategic decision-making.

Kogod's 2026 Case Competition, held in partnership with LinkedIn, challenged student teams from universities across the country to examine how artificial intelligence and skills-based hiring are changing the workforce.

Students used LinkedIn's Economic Graph data to analyze labor market trends and develop proposals addressing challenges such as workforce mobility and transferable skills.

One winning graduate team from American University proposed a solution to help professionals translate their existing experience into language relevant to new industries. The proposal included two product offerings, a regional pilot, and an implementation framework.

Developing the recommendation required more than analyzing workforce data. Students had to identify a problem, evaluate possible approaches, work together on a solution, and explain why their proposal made business sense.

During the final round, teams presented their strategies to industry professionals and alumni, answered questions, and received feedback.

These are the same types of responsibilities professionals encounter when presenting recommendations to clients, evaluating strategic options, or persuading organizational leaders to support an initiative.

The competition also reflected a central idea behind power skills: professionals need to make their expertise understandable and useful to others.

How Does Kogod Help MBA Students Strengthen Professional Communication?

Communication is one of the most visible power skills in business, but effective professional communication involves more than delivering a polished presentation.

Managers need to tailor information to different audiences, write clearly, listen to feedback, and communicate decisions in situations where people may have competing priorities.

Kogod's Center for Professionalism and Communications (ProComms)—open to all Kogod students—provides dedicated support in developing these abilities.

Through its peer-coaching model, trained undergraduate and graduate students work with fellow students on business writing, presentations, and other professional communication assignments.

MBA students can use ProComms to strengthen executive summaries, business memos, case analyses, presentations, and elevator pitches. Coaches can help students organize their arguments, communicate data clearly, and prepare to respond to audience questions.

This support complements the communication practice students encounter throughout their coursework.

A student preparing a strategic recommendation, for example, may understand the analysis but need to refine how the findings are presented. Working through the structure, language, and delivery helps make the recommendation clearer and more persuasive.

These are practical skills for professionals who need to communicate with clients, colleagues, and senior leadership.

How Do Power Skills Support Career Growth and Leadership?

Power skills remain relevant throughout a professional career, but the ways people use them often change as their responsibilities expand.

Early-career employees may focus on communicating their work, collaborating with colleagues, and responding to feedback. Managers must also coordinate teams, navigate competing priorities, and make decisions that affect other people.

Leadership roles place additional demands on communication, judgment, and adaptability. Professionals may need to explain organizational changes, manage difficult conversations, or build agreement among stakeholders with different interests.

An MBA can help students prepare for these responsibilities by combining business knowledge with opportunities to practice decision-making and professional communication.

At Kogod, students can apply these abilities in coursework, refine them through ProComms coaching, and test them in competitions involving industry challenges and professional feedback.

The value of power skills is not limited to a particular job title or industry. Finance, marketing, consulting, technology, and entrepreneurship all require professionals who can work with others and turn information into decisions.

Technical expertise helps professionals understand business problems. Power skills help them communicate solutions, lead teams, and put their expertise to work.