A sample 360-degree feedback report: more detail

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Yesterday's post covered what for most people are the highlights of a 360-degree review -- charts comparing how your leadership skills compare to others'. Those charts summarize most of the information in a 360-degree feedback report. One should always remember they summarize. They don't present all the information. Sometimes details tell a different story but get lost…

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Leadership lessons from 360-degree feedback charts

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Just the structure of yesterday's charts teaches a lot about leadership. They emerged as main tools for communicating leadership ability and guiding improvement so even if you're never the subject of one, you can still benefit from knowing about them. Let's see a few reasons why. Let's look at one again. The chart breaks leadership into sub-skills…

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A sample 360-degree feedback: Overview charts

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Let's look at part of a sample 360-degree feedback report. Today I'll show the highlights -- the summary of all the questions. Even if you've never had a 360-feedback for yourself, just knowing how they work can help you. Understanding their structure alone can help you figure out how to improve your leadership skills. First I'll explain…

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Coaching highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students: 360-degree feedbacks

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Before going into the details of looking at a 360-degree feedback report, I want to talk about the structure of the 360-degree feedback process and what it tells you about leadership. What is a 360-degree feedback? 360-degree feedbacks are usually done in corporate and bureaucratic environments as review processes, both to help evaluate performance and to help…

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Coaching highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] I've been posting a lot on personal development, so I'm going to focus on specific leadership and leadership development issues for several posts. I've had the privilege and responsibility of coaching leadership to many Columbia Business School students, both in the regular and Executive MBA programs. For the next several posts I'll cover a few of my…

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See Joshua Spodek at INSEAD Singapore next week

I'll be delivering my seminar on  next weekend in Singapore, October 6 and 7, at INSEAD. Here's the announcement. I hope to see you there. Leadership Through Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence Workshop led by Joshua Spodek, MBA, PhD; supported by the INSEAD Toastmasters Club INSEAD Toastmasters Club is pleased to announce a two-day (half-day) experiential workshop focused on how to develop personal leadership skills, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence by using the latest advances in cognitive behavioral science, evolutionary psychology, and positive psychology. We are lucky to have Joshua Spodek in Asia (he lives in New York City), who has delivered…

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If you want to change something you do, its opposite usually is no better. Look for its complement.

People seem to want to change a lot about them. I see them trying to do the opposite of what they are trying to change. Sometimes it works. More often trying to do the opposite of what they want to stop reinforces doing it more. Food For example, overweight people often think if they eat too much they should try the opposite and try to eat less. But dieting seems to predict obesity more than prevent it -- that is, people who diet tend to be more obese than those who don't (sorry I don't have a source, so feel…

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My essays for getting into an Ivy League business school in 23 days

Here are my Columbia Business School application essays, to complete the series on getting into business school in 23 days. I edited them slightly, mainly to take out personal details. In the optional essay 5, I can see I was blatantly name-dropping Columbia Business School Professors and my experience at the school. I think I could have used more subtlety. My graduate school stipend -- what I lived on in Manhattan for about four years -- surprises me to this day. I think the number was accurate, but wonder if the first number might have been a 2 instead of…

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My background for getting into an Ivy League business school in 23 days

Yesterday I posted about the process I stumbled into for getting into an Ivy League business school in 23 days. How to read this post Today I'll talk about the credentials that made it possible. But please recognize, the point of these posts is not merely to show you how to get into business school, but to show you that you can combine whatever you have in your past into something bigger than you expect. You have to be aware of the possibilities and ready to act on them. If you are insecure and want to justify why can't succeed,…

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I started at an Ivy League business school 23 days after deciding to apply. Here’s how.

On December 10, 2004 I decided to apply to business school. I had written no essays, taken no GMAT, reviewed no school's web site or application process, and asked no one for a recommendation. On January 2, 2005, 23 days later, I began orientation at Columbia Business School (ranked #5 by Forbes, Economist, and Financial Times). I got my MBA the following May, less than eighteen months from deciding to apply. Prep schools (such as Manhattan GMAT and Kaplan) recommend starting the application process eighteen months before starting classes. I completed my entire application and degree in less time than…

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What works in X web page mind map

Following up a comment on my post on the What Works in X web page genius idea, I created a mind map as a rough outline for the site to illustrate it better. It's only a rough outline, but I think a good start. Copying from my response to the reader's comment I envision people at What Works in X sharing anecdotes of things they’ve done at a higher level, like how they got hired by doing something different or got into North Korea or things like that... available in any area. Of course, I put the idea up for…

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Another genius business idea: the “What Works in X” web page

Following up on yesterdays' genius business idea for a book series of successful solved problems in many fields, today let's look at a web page doing something similar. Instead of making it just like a book, let's take advantage of the web's interactivity and let users create content. It's based on the principles of the Art of What Works (the book I mentioned the other day) The product A web site of user-written anecdotes of successful things they did, categorized by field -- eventually, the global repository of solved problems in every field, free for anyone to access or contribute…

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Another genius business idea: the “What Works in X” book series

For the first genius business idea (the series I mentioned a couple days ago) I propose a book series based on the principles of the Art of What Works (the book I mentioned yesterday). The product A series of books like the "for dummies" and "for complete idiot" series, all with the same dimensions, cover design and color scheme, tone, writing style, etc called "What works inX", like "What Works in Selling Your House", "What Works in Nursing", "What Works in Teaching High School", or "What Works in Starting Your Own Restaurant." Each book contains anecdotes of people achieving success…

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The Art of What Works

One of Columbia Business School's most popular courses in recent years has been in strategy, called Napoleon's Glance, named after a book by the instructor, Bill Duggan. Former students I've talked to rave about it. I was fortunate to do an independent study with him before his course exploded in popularity. Now it's so successful I doubt he could devote that kind of attention to a single student. Despite the course's immense popularity at one of the world's great business schools, I was more influenced by his book The Art of What Works. This excerpt from the back cover gets…

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A leadership dream

Since posting on lessons leaders can learn from method acting, I've been thinking about parallels between acting and leadership -- in particular how acting changed when Constantine Stanislovski led changing the art to expressive and internal from impressive and external. "Impressive and external" means the actor tried to impress the audience with outward showiness. "Expressive and internal" means the actor tries to find emotions inside and express them. You know what acting before looked like. Jon Lovitz and John Lithgow mocked that style on Saturday Night Live in its Master Thespian sketches in the late 80s (this transcript of a…

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Why don’t they teach emotional intelligence and self awareness in school? (part 1, K-12)

I write a lot about leadership skills and how to improve your life through understanding how emotions work in general, how yours work in particular, and becoming aware of your emotions as well as everyone else's. As a result of focusing on leadership, my community has become full of people with similar interests (you, perhaps?). They all tell me learning and practicing it improves their lives. We prefer having each other in our lives to people who complain all the time or complacently never improve things they could. People complain they don't like their jobs, relationships, identities, hobbies, and so…

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The slides from my North Korea talk at Columbia Business School

Saturday's talk on North Korea at Columbia Business School went great -- a full room, an attentive audience, and great questions at the end. I didn't leave as much time for questions as I wish I had, but the organizer told me people told her they liked the talk a lot. Several people asked for copies of the slides so I'm posting them here instead of sending multiple emails.

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A solution to all ethics problems

During orientation I learned one of business school's most valuable lessons. I learned the first step in resolving all ethics problems. Orientation included a case study on ethics. The case involved a guy who witnessed someone else breaking a rule at a company. If he told on the employee he would escalate the problem, possibly identifying himself as not a team player, no matter how justified his actions. Remaining silent would make him complicit, and who knew how many other rules the person he observed might be breaking? The details were relevant to the case, but keeping things at a high…

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Understanding Kim Jong Il from a systems perspective, and what to do now

Reading the spate of articles on Kim Jong Il and North Korea, I've seen what look from my perspective misinterpretations. Reporters repeatedly succumb to ascribing to the leader what I consider properties of the system. I think they adopt a great-man model that says if something is working, someone must be making it happen. With only Kim Jong Il or Kim Il Sung around, it must be them. Misallocating causes to events leads to ineffective or counterproductive strategies to act on them. I'll illustrate with two New Yorker articles, not because they misallocate most, but because they do least. In…

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Audio interview: why leadership? what’s so great about leading?

In today’s interview, my business partner, Christina Black, asked me about differences in leadership between in a business environment and outside of business, in particular how my seminar relates to them. Note that the ability to lead differs from leading. I list a few reasons having the awareness and skills to lead others and yourself benefit anyone. You don't have to lead or take a leadership position to get those benefits. Small interface: [audio:https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/why_leadership.mp3] Large interface:[videofile]https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/why_leadership.mp3[/videofile]

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How to bring happiness and emotional reward to your life by analogy with pleasure, part 3

[This post is part of a series on creating happiness and reward by understanding pleasure. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Two days ago and yesterday I described how seeing how easily you can create physical pleasure in your life shows how easily you can create emotional pleasure -- as much as you want. Today I'll go a step further -- how to create as much reward as you want. Remember, emotional reward is the feeling that everything in…

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How to bring happiness and emotional reward to your life by analogy with pleasure, part 2

[This post is part of a series on creating happiness and reward by understanding pleasure. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Yesterday I wrote about how to bring about emotional pleasure in your life. Today I'll clarify and explore the analogy physical pleasure : emotional pleasure :: physical environment  : social environment In particular, you can bring about emotional pleasure the same way you bring about physical pleasure, just with healthy social situations instead of healthy physical situations. By…

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How to bring happiness and emotional reward to your life by analogy with pleasure, part 1

[This post is part of a series on creating happiness and reward by understanding pleasure. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] You may have heard the phrase that we aren't designed to be happy. I agree with the concept. More than that, since in the Model we consider not only happiness but emotional reward, other pleasurable emotions, and physical pleasure too, I would further say we aren't designed to feel physical or emotional pleasure either. By emotional pleasure I…

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See Professor Srikumar Rao at the New School December 13, 6:30pm

Anybody who knows my material knows the debt I own Srikumar Rao for how much of it derives from his work, his class Creativity and Personal Mastery, and his books Are You Ready To Succeed? and Happiness At Work. I can't recommend his material enough. Here is your chance to see him in person. I am privileged to help organize his next talk with the Columbia Business School Alumni Club (all are welcome), which will be at the New School's Kellen Auditorium, December 13 at 6:30pm. Click here to register and for more information. From the alumni club web page:…

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Audio interview: the difference between my seminar and traditional business school leadership classes

In today's interview, my business partner, Christina Black, asked me about the differences between my course and a traditional business school leadership class. [sc_embed_player_template1 fileurl=https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/difference_between_MBA_leadership_course_and_my_seminar.mp3]

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