Joshua Spodek Uneducated at Any GPA Is the Ivy League Today Big 3 Auto of the 1960s? America's top universities today are like America's Big 3 car manufacturers of the 60s: hugely profitable, projecting growth for decades, the envy of the world, dominating their markets, dictating terms to customers and employees, and accelerating to bankruptcy. Cars aren't diplomas, but besides the obvious differences between the fields, systemic similarities suggest a need to act for leadership asleep at the wheel. Missed Opportunities I participated in an NYU committee to promote entrepreneurship. Nobody seemed to notice the irony in the following two…

Leadership, entrepreneurship, and other performance-based professional practices are fundamentally social and emotional. Traditional academics teaches you to comply, not to lead or take initiative. It teaches intellectual skills, which are perfect for the knowledge worker of the mid-twentieth century. Those days are gone. Today's challenges are social and emotional—how to create relationships and learn people's problems so you can solve them. Learning to lead, innovate, create, and solve people's problems requires self-awareness, teamwork, empathy, and other social and emotional skills. Most graduates of traditional education learned to analyze, recall facts, and other intellectual skills, which, today, keep you from promotion.…

Sometimes people who want to know to lead ask directly, How do you lead? I don't think they're asking a question that will help them improve their leadership. You can walk and talk, but you'd be hard pressed to describe how you do it beyond generalities like “you put one foot in front of the other.” No one taught you the theory behind language or walking. You practiced until you succeeded. You fell along the way. You would never lecture to a child on how to talk. Same with playing an instrument, sport, or any performance-based practice. You learn by…

Meeting with Frances Hesselbein means talking about service. Her touchstone phrase is "to serve is to live." All the men in her life served in the military. She taught at West Point and led me to my co-teaching for three days last fall. By contrast, when I grew up, I associated the military with the draft, whose compulsory nature seemed unconstitutional. My sense of community has changed---I would say matured. I find discipline valuable and lacking in the United States. A civilian service, maybe mandatory A year or so ago, Frances mentioned the idea of civilian service, maybe even compulsory…

Influencive's Surya Prakash Singh posted an interview of me, "Nurturing Millennial Leaders," of how to start leading, especially if your traditional education didn't help. The article begins Nurturing Millennial Leaders I get the chance to speak with author and leadership specialist Joshua Spodek. According to a survey, each day approximately 10,000 baby boomers retire. By 2020, 48% of the workforce will be made of millennials. Because of this scenario, 84% of organizations are bound to feel the lack of leaders in the organization in the next 5 years. How can we mold Millennials to embrace and develop leadership skills? Being…

[EDIT: Lloyd Austin has since become the United States Secretary of Defense. He also endorsed my book, Leadership Step by Step, saying: Great leaders aren’t born with a ‘leadership gene’; great leaders develop the necessary skills and gain confidence through practice and hard work. In Leadership Step by Step Joshua Spodek presents a thoughtful approach to becoming a highly effective leader that emphasizes the importance of experiential learning. It will serve as a valuable resource for leaders at all levels in any profession. Indeed, Joshua’s practical exercises will help prospective, as well as experienced leaders, to master their craft and…

Columbia University's Alumni Association posted a piece I wrote, "An Alum's Inside Look at the World of Career Coaching," which included a video of my WBECS talk from a couple months ago. It begins An Alum's Inside Look at the World of Career Coaching By Joshua Spodek '93CC, '96GSAS, '99GSAS, '06BUS of the Columbia Career Coaches Network Spodek shares valuable insight from his job as a career coach and details the real value in working with the Network to better your career. With five diplomas from Columbia, I love our alma mater's education, but I recognize the limitations of traditional education. What we…

I woke to emails that media coverage of my book, Leadership Step by Step, is appearing in elevator TV screens in office buildings. Naturally, being interviewed to appear in the pieces means I knew it was coming, but it still feels great for people to see it. Thank you to C-Suite TV for hosting!

In June and July, I posted videos from my participating in the premier online coaching summit: World Business and Executive Coach Summit (WBECS) online summit. They were part of the pre-conference. I'm in touch with the organizers and scored two passes for the full summit, which starts THURSDAY, and I'm offering these free passes to my readers. If you're interested in one of those passes, email me how it will help you help others. Please make the subject "Spodek WBECS". I'll pick two people at random tomorrow at 5pm who are subscribed to my newsletter (my page has subscription forms).…

My webinar on leadership, education, and learning to lead is on the Transformative Leadership Summit TODAY. It's valuable, but is a teaser that will only be free for 48 hours. I recommend watching. No obligation to participate in the summit, buy you may find you want to. I'm very impressed with Jethro, who is running it. I'm doing it as a friend who likes his work. I don't get anything out of it. Here's the link, featuring my video TODAY and TOMORROW.

If I weren't proud enough of my article in the current issue, the Hesselbein Institute's summer newsletter featured me and the article. Here's the feature (click the image for a pdf of the article): Here's the full newsletter: