Date: 15th, 16th, & 17th July 2026
Mode: Offline
Duration: 90 minutes
Audience: MBA Students
Location: Pillai University Respective Classrooms
The School of Business, Pillai University, successfully organized a session on “7 Effective Habits for Managers” for the newly inducted management students on 15th July, 16th July and 17th July for the 4 respective batches within the university campus. Delivered as a 90-minute foundation session, it was designed to help incoming MBA students build the professional mindset and daily habits that distinguish highly employable managers, moving beyond theoretical understanding toward habits students could begin practicing from day one of the programme.
The session was conceptualized and led by Dr. Betty Sibil, and Prof. Anish Pillai. Their combined effort ensured that students received both a conceptual grounding — knowledge, skills, and attitude eventually give way to habits as the layer that truly compounds over the two years of the MBA — and hands-on exposure to applying these habits in real managerial situations.
The session was delivered through a combination of lecture and interactive workshop activities, structured around seven core habits:
- Curiosity — cultivating the instinct to question and understand the business environment around them.
- Daily Reading — building a short, consistent daily habit of following business news and analysis from Indian and global sources, to stay informed and interview-ready.
- Communication — understanding how visual and vocal delivery shape perceived confidence, and identifying common delivery mistakes such as filler words, monotone speech, and weak eye contact.
- Discipline — distinguishing motivation from discipline, and using prioritization tools to protect time for important, non-urgent activities before they become crises.
- Networking — treating relationship-building as a genuine, long-term professional habit rather than a transactional exercise, including practical guidance on maintaining an active, credible LinkedIn presence.
- Problem-Solving — applying a structured, stakeholder-first approach to framing and solving business problems before jumping to solutions.
- Reflection and Continuous Improvement — using structured weekly reflection to convert experience into actionable insight, reinforcing the other six habits over time.
Each habit was reinforced through a mix of real corporate examples and interactive exercises, giving students the opportunity to apply concepts rather than absorb them passively. Activities included a class icebreaker, a self-recorded one-minute “elevator pitch” video exercise to practice verbal and non-verbal delivery, and a guided personal action-planning exercise in which each student committed to one specific habit to build first, along with how they would track and review their progress.
The interactive format allowed students to examine their own working styles and identify habits they could consciously develop as future managers. Faculty facilitation encouraged students to connect each habit to real managerial challenges — decision-making under pressure, team leadership, and stakeholder management — reinforcing the practical relevance of the framework to contemporary business environments.
The session witnessed enthusiastic participation across the newly inducted management students, offering an engaging platform to strengthen self-awareness, communication, prioritization, and collaborative skills, while reinforcing theoretical concepts through practical application.
