My humbling leadership start

Business school humbled me from before I started my first classes there. I came in thinking, "I have a PhD in physics, so all the math will be easy, and I ran a company, so I know all the business. I'll have fun for a couple years and earn a degree that will be my passport to success." On the contrary, I found finance and accounting not about math, but organization that I didn't understand. Moreover, all my classmates understood it better. And business was about people, emotions, relationships, and other blind spots I didn't know I was blind to.…

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Join my free networking webinar Friday: Making Meaningful Connections (noon eastern)

This Friday, join my free webinar, hosted by Columbia College's alumni, open to the public. Register here or click the screen shot below We'll cover how to create meaningful connections with anyone in minutes, even if you're shy or consider yourself an introvert. Everyone loves the exercise, as far as I know. You'll see it in practice and you'll be able to use it in your life with anyone immediately. I still use it at least weekly. It's the exercise from my book Leadership Step by Step that introduces Unit 4: Leading Others. See you Friday! Register here

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Inspired by the first women to wear pants

The latest crazy talk people have hit me with is describing not flying and avoiding garbage as "unsustainable" and "impossible." Many say I'm wasting my time. As best I can tell, they're excusing themselves for living against their values, but it's let me to see my behavior in new ways. Call me crazy, but I believe polluting less is the future, no matter how impossible it seems for people who prefer to delay action by saying they're building "awareness" or making themselves more "conscious," as if they need more front-page news to remind them that nature isn't waiting around for…

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Amtrak, Japan Rail, and the Environment: Changing Systems

  • Post category:Leadership

I saw some Japanese people on an Amtrak train. I wondered what it must feel like to ride decrepit trains running slowly, stopping often, late by hours, and creaking when they're used to fast trains, where 1 minute late is significant. I got to thinking how to modernize Amtrak if we wanted. A technological change won't do it. You can't just bring their fast trains over and run them at top speed. They won't, given our tracks, signaling, power systems, and so on. You have to change everything. Changing any one technological part won't show results. Even changing lots of…

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Martin Luther King and the Environment

People keep praising my polluting less by avoiding packaging and avoiding flying, but few change themselves. Would-be leaders talk about how others should change their behavior while they don't change themselves. Here's an article by the CEO of Coca-Cola, Why a World Without Waste is Possible, describing some change other people did but not change he did. Maybe he's reduced his personal pollution, but I don't see it. I suspect he flies a lot and has all the excuses in the world justifying his flying. Most people I talk to about their personal pollution claims that their pollution Doesn't hurt…

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Why Every Parent Should Watch This Movie

Have you noticed how many of today's most successful people chose to leave our educational system--Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, Erin Brockovich, Elon Musk, Sean Combs, Lauren Hill, Michael Dell, Whoopi Goldberg, Larry Page, and Sergei Brin, to name a few. Ever wonder why people who chose to leave mainstream education became so successful? Why did breaking the once-standard advice "stay in school" not work for them? As a professor of entrepreneurship and leadership at NYU, their consistent success drove me to learn and practice what works that school misses. My recent piece Why Every…

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Environmental inaction and selfishness, Environmental action and selflessness

I've spoken to a lot of people about environmental action and inaction. While I haven't done double-blind randomized controlled experiments, I have seen one broad trend: People who act on their environmental values do so for others. People who don't act on their environmental values do so for themselves. Action Typical reasons people give for acting include: "I want to leave the world better than I found it," "Other people breathe that air," "This beautiful world is a gift and it's my responsibility to steward it for others," and "I want the next generation to have as clean and pure…

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Leaders: Seek This Outcome From Your Followers

Leaders: Seek This Outcome From Your Followers This simple feedback from your followers can tell you how you're leading. By Joshua SpodekAuthor, 'Leadership Step by Step' @spodek One of the great joys and tragedies of leadership is that you'll never exactly how well you led. An engineer can take a test. A baseball player can look at his stats. But leaders have no objective measure. Is that frustrating? It gets more difficult. What few measures we have rely on other people, whose thoughts we can never know. If they say something nice, we'll never know if they meant it or are sparing our…

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A Nobel Peace Prize winner, a couple Greatest of All Time candidates, Olympic medalists, An Americas Cup winner, bestsellers. . . I’m the weak link!

  • Post category:Leadership

In an under two-week period this month, pursuing influential people for the podcast, I met one of the greatest golfers of all time, Gary Player, at the Gary Player Invitational golf tournament, along with a few other greats and Michael Douglas. I actually shared a golf cart with Mr. Player. I'm scheduled to record a conversation with him for the podcast. I met a Nobel Peace Prize winner and invited her to be a guest. She shared her email and I'm emailing her about it. Bestseller Eric Schlosser introduced her. I invited him to be a guest. He shared his…

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Why I’m not waiting for the government to act on the environment

Social and cultural change generally start from outside government. Government nearly always follows. Mandela, Gandhi, King, Havel, etc all started outside government. I'd love to see government lead, but the most effective thing for anyone who wants government to act to do is to act first. That's why I'm acting, or one of the reasons. When enough other people see the pattern, they'll stop blaming others' inaction and act themselves. Then politicians will see where the votes are going. I'm pretty sure Gandhi had situations like this in mind when he suggested to be the chance you wanted to see.…

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“Punch A Nazi”? You couldn’t help them more.

There's a phrase out there "Punch a Nazi." Here's a video of someone acting on it. What effect do you think it has on people who agree with the guy being punched? Or people attracted by his message? I submit that punching the guy overall advanced his cause. When I search "Punch a Nazi," the top results ask the ethics and morality of doing it. Talk about ethics, morality, and judgment are guaranteed to generate clicks. Don't you want to click these headlines? The 'punch a Nazi' meme: what are the ethics of punching Nazis? Yes, It is always OK…

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Student reviews of my leadership course, summer 2018

Last summer, I taught a short version of my course to working professionals. I taught it through NYU, though it's one of the courses I teach independently online and in corporations. It overlaps with my coaching for leadership clients. Here are the student reviews---as usual, all of them, no cherry-picking. Summer 2018 leadership student reviews Yes, I would definitely recommend this course to others. The combination of interactive classes, consistent feedback loop, historical examples, and in-person troubleshooting made it a very productive use of a mere 12 hours. I will definitely use these techniques in the future both at work…

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What Personal Leadership Takes

Which is more common--an athlete becoming a business or political leader, or a political figure becoming an athlete? Many athletes and become leaders in business, politics, and so on, but the reverse never happens. The difference tells me that sports teaches skills useful and essential to leadership. I had the honor of interviewing Marquis Flowers of the New England Patriots for the Leadership and the Environment podcast. His vulnerability and raw emotion revealed what athletes learn through their struggles, what no school, TED talk, book, or magazine can teach. Only experience borne of competition can. You know Marquis from the highlight reels of last year's Super Bowl: Plays like that on…

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086: Awareness means nothing. Or less.

Neither the environment nor your life responds to your awareness. They respond to your behavior. People who speak the truth say, "I'm telling the truth." People who lie say the same thing. People who are aware say they are aware. People who are unaware say the same thing too. Only we're all unaware of what we're unaware of. Saying we're aware only reveals our ignorance of our unawareness. That's pride. If you want to improve the environment or your life, claiming awareness may sound like progress and may get you social approval, but in more cases it stops people from…

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Handling Trigger Warnings, Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and Other Outrages

Handling Trigger Warnings, Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and Other Outrages Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff's new book, The Coddling of the American Mind, takes on offense and outrage with calm resolve and effective insight Jonathan Haidt's latest book, released today, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, coauthored by Greg Lukianoff, takes on one of the issues of our time—public discourse, especially in higher education—expanding on their widely discussed Atlantic article of the same name. Whether leading a small team, a company, a nation, a family, or oneself, research…

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Join the 1L1P movement

#1L1P Kevin Huhn contacted me because our spheres overlapped. We got to talking about acting on one's values even when nobody is around---that is, integrity---which acting on your environmental values teaches. I shared with him my new initiative to promote picking up 1 piece of litter (or producing 1 less) per day and inviting 1 other person to join the initiative too. I shortened 1 litter 1 person to the hashtag #1L1P. So to join, just pick up one piece of litter per day, enlist one other person to do the same, and post a picture with #1L1P, and the…

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How to beat Trump

Seeing as he faces no competition yet, it's not too early to figure out how to win in the next election. I already wrote in How to get votes for Donald Trump my simple rule that if you follow it, you’ll create votes for Trump: Every time you call someone sexist, racist, xenophobic, privileged, islamophobic, mansplaining, manspreading, narcissistic, or the like, you create a new vote for Trump. including the note for those who think, “But that person is sexist!” or racist or whatever, that I’m not commenting on your rightness or wrongnesss. I’m commenting on why people vote. Our…

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Meaningful Connection in other languages

My Meaningful Connection exercise is one of my most popular and effective (they're all effective) from corporate speaking, one-to-one coaching, teaching, my personal practice, and my book. Since I have non-native English speakers in nearly every audience, I've decided to ask some to translate the script into various languages. My leadership class this summer afforded my first two translations. If you can help with others, please let me know. I'd love to feature your work. German Frage was sie neben Beruf und Familie gerne machen. Ich empfehle, "Was ist Deine/Ihre Leidenschaft?" oder "Was sind Deine/Ihre Interessen?" Sie werden erst noch etwas…

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Hear me on Kevin Kruse’s Leadx podcast: “This Leader Only Produces One Bag Of Trash Per Year”

I met Kevin Kruse through his annual top 100 leadership speakers in Inc., which included 15 or 20 guests of my podcast, podcasters who have hosted me, and people who have been over for dinner. Kevin is also from Philadelphia so we got to know each other and today, I appear on his podcast. Listen to the conversation. Listen to the conversation. From the notes: Joshua Spodek is an Adjunct Professor at NYU, columnist at Inc., and host of the Leadership and the Environment podcast. He has 5 Ivy-League degrees, including a PhD in astrophysics. His new book is Leadership Step by…

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Environmental leadership resources

Here are resources I learn from and return to about joy, discovery, meaning, purpose, community (not doom, gloom, new-age fluff, etc), in no particular order. I'll keep adding to it. I recommend bingeing on all of it. Leadership and Teamwork The This Sustainable Life podcast When people hear my podcast name, they focus on the environment part. I consider leadership incomparably more important. We know what to do. The question is changing our behavior, which is leadership. I consider my book, Leadership Step by Step, the top resource on learning to lead. The Spodek Method: Making Meaningful, Sustainable Changes The…

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Jordan Harbinger and how rehearsal *improves* spontaneity and authenticity

I'll soon post my podcast interview with Jordan Harbinger, one of the world's top podcasters. First I'm sharing this example of Jordan and how to learn to communicate authentically and genuinely---through practice and rehearsal. Think genuineness and authenticity matter in business? How about marriage? This recording features Jordan's wife talking about how Jordan came off, when she knew he practiced, rehearsed, and taught others to. Practice and rehearsal work because they make you authentic and genuine---the opposite of fake. No one was born with it. Everyone had to learn it. Jordan and Jen show how effective practice is in the…

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The Big Talk with Tricia Brouk

Tricia Brouk is an incredible director, TEDx Executive Producer, actress, choreographer, and more. She's worked with names like Richard Gere, James Gandolfini, Kate Winslet, Susan Sarandon, John Torturo, Eddie Izzard, Christopher Walken, Steve Buscemi, and Bobby Canavale. Wow! As host of the Big Talk podcast, she posted our conversation, "Put Yourself in the Background." From the liner notes: Put Yourself in the Background – Joshua Spodek Summary What is the best way to lead and influence an audience? Today’s guest reminds us that the best way to impact others is to put ourselves in the background and focus on them.…

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Technology won’t solve environmental issues and you know it

EDIT: I recorded a podcast version of this post (episode 63) that covered same views beyond this post: If anything marked the beginning of the industrial revolution, it was James Watt's steam engine. It wasn't the first steam engine, but was more efficient than any before. More efficient means using less energy and less pollution, right? Wrong. Each engine, yes, but more people used engines, so Watt engines used more energy and polluted more than anything. They drained mines, which helped collect more coal, which fed more engines. The direct result is today's polluted world. If you fantasize that technological…

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How to get votes for Donald Trump

Since most people I know voted for Clinton, I presume most of my readers did. Though I don't like Trump as president, as long as tens of millions of Americans voted for him, I hope my readers represent the population more faithfully than the population of lower Manhattan. Trump's win surprised most Clinton supporters. My reaching out to Trump voters and speaking with them explained a lot to me. The Trump voters I spoke to weren't the racist, sexist, xenophobic, etc people so stupid as to vote against their own interests that Clinton supporters made them out as. The tragedy…

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How you probably disrespect leaders (and yourself in the process)

  • Post category:Leadership

How to disrespect a leader: Assume he or she was born with something special and didn't have to work at it. Developing leadership skills and experience is hard and takes years, even decades, risking failure and disaster time and again. Assuming people were just born that way or have something others don't ignores all of it. I think people believe it to excuse themselves from trying.

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