Where the marks really are in Strategic Business Leader
Hannah Whitfield6 min read
Twenty of the eighty marks in SBL are professional skills, and they are the marks technically strong candidates leave on the table most often.
Strategic Business Leader is the paper that catches out the candidates who were strongest at Applied Skills. The technical content is broad but shallow; the difficulty is that twenty of the eighty marks are awarded for how you communicate, not what you know.
Professional skills marks fall into five families — communication, commercial acumen, analysis, scepticism and evaluation. Each is awarded for a demonstrated behaviour in your answer, not for a correct number. A perfectly accurate answer written in the wrong register scores zero against them.
The practical fix is structural. Answer in the format the requirement asks for. If the requirement says "draft a briefing note for the board", the marker is looking for a briefing note: a heading, a purpose line, short paragraphs, a recommendation. Writing an essay instead costs communication marks before a single technical point is assessed.
The second fix is to answer the scenario in front of you. Generic model answers score generic marks. Naming the company, quoting its numbers and referring to its specific circumstances is what commercial acumen credit is for.
Written by
Hannah Whitfield
Tutor at The Ilum. Teaches the papers they write about, and marks them.