Announcing Spodek Academy!

See my new web page... My courses (available now!) and book (launching in February!) are growing beyond this blog and deserve their own site. Click Spodek Academy or the image below! You'll see videos, fuller explanations of the courses, testimonials, and more. ... And new social media sites! To create business connections with customers (and in contrast with my aversion to Facebook and LinkedIn), I'm creating Facebook and LinkedIn pages. So... Please like Spodek Academy's Facebook page Please connect to the Joshua Spodek LinkedIn page And connect to @spodek on Twitter You'll probably receive LinkedIn connection requests anyway.

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See me on an entrepreneurial leadership panel, October 13 in Manhattan

See me on a panel on entrepreneurial leadership with the Columbia Business School Alumni Club (all are welcome, membership not required), Thursday, October 13, 6pm-8pm at Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP, 1301 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY. Register Here! I look forward to seeing you there. From the event page: Entrepreneurial Leadership: Leadership in Starting a New Business Effective leadership is of vital importance at all stages of a business. Particularly to a new venture, have you thought of the impact of leadership on transforming an innovative idea into a successful business? Do you know what particular leadership…

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How world leaders learn

I'm reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography, which I find fascinating and highly recommend, even if you know a lot about him already. Teaching and coaching at NYU and Columbia, speaking at Harvard, Princeton, MIT, INSEAD, and so on, I see a lot of what many would consider the pinnacle of our educational system. Teaching a non-lecture-based non-test-based style shows me the flaws in this system, how much of it is designed for administrators more than students, and why so many leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, and such exited it. By contrast to what our society holds as elite, read how Mandela finished college…

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Take my Leadership Course this fall at NYU, Wednesdays starting September 21

I am offering my leadership course at NYU this fall at NYU's School of Professional Studies Wednesdays 6pm - 9pm September 21 - December 13 (12 sessions, no class Thanksgiving) Here is the syllabus Register here! Limited seats available (9 last I checked) Student reviews from my courses The course will show you why my courses get reviews like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxo-msa9dGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnblmP_VlHg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzm7iL6reFY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoL4zWav8Hw Register here! Limited seats available (9 last I checked) “This is one of the greatest classes I have ever taken. It was engaging, thought provoking, challenging, and fun. Josh is an incredible teacher, mentor, and friend to…

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Why leadership, sales, influence, and motivation is about them, not you

People didn't follow Martin Luther King because he wanted equality and freedom. They followed him because they wanted equality and freedom. Elon Musk isn't so popular because he loves electric cars. He's popular because we love electric cars, and their benefit relative to gas-powered cars. Dwight Eisenhower didn't enjoy leading the D-Day invasion. The allies, soldiers, and their families feared Hitler and wanted to protect themselves. Eisenhower's description of leadership is one of the most concise and effective I've seen, not surprising, given his leadership experience beyond nearly anyone's: Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something…

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Leadership you can’t teach

Since every leadership situation is unique, I can't teach you what to do in every situation. I can teach you to lead so you can figure out how to lead in every situation. It's like saying I can't teach you how to get from any place to any other place but I can teach you to ride a bike so you can get from any place to any other.

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What I do

A friend read my book, ReModel, and asked me: Josh, what's your model about yourself? He clarified: You wrote about how people can be Cathedral-Builders instead of being miserable. What's your equivalent of being a Cathedral-Builder? "Cathedral-Builder" refers to the parable of The Three Stonecutters: Many years ago, a passerby saw three workers cutting stones in a quarry. Though they were doing similar work, one looked unhappy, another looked content, and a third looked overjoyed. The passerby asked them what they were doing. The unhappy stonecutter replied, “I’m doing what it takes to make a living.” The content one answered,…

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Breakthrough Science on Leadership and Why You Shouldn’t Read This Article

My Inc.com article yesterday, "Breakthrough Science on Leadership and Why You Shouldn't Read This Article" began Breakthrough Science on Leadership and Why You Shouldn't Read This Article How great leaders who never learned leadership from science, books, or classes became great. As a leader, entrepreneur, and professor, I used to enjoy TED talks and learning about frontier science. Do you feel, watching them, like I felt: "This is forefront stuff. Since most people don't know it, I can use it to get ahead!"? Same with Malcolm Gladwell books: "He knows breaking research. When I know it too, I'll have an insight to get ahead."…

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Despite What Harvard Says, You Don’t Need a Crucible

My Inc.com post, "Despite What Harvard Says, You Don't Need a Crucible" begins Despite What Harvard Says, You Don't Need a Crucible While some have become leaders by overcoming great challenges, don't believe the myth that you need to. In September 2002, Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas wrote in Harvard Business Review's, Crucibles of Leadership, In interviewing more than 40 top leaders in business and the public sector over the past three years, we were surprised to find that all of them--young and old--were able to point to intense, often traumatic, always unplanned experiences that had transformed them and had become the sources of their distinctive leadership abilities. We…

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At Princeton’s ELab: How to get job offers by acting entrepreneurially

I got a few short clips from my presentation on entrepreneurship when I spoke at Princeton’s Elab recently. In this clip I describe how to use behaving entrepreneurially to get job offers. If you want similar experiences, take my entrepreneurship course. It develops you in small steps to work up to handling interactions like this. Even if you don’t, call valuable people. Err on the side of making things happen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6LbymltzNA

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The Unmistakable Creative podcast interviews me

Listen to the podcast The Power of Experiential Learning with Joshua Spodek The Unmistakable Creative podcast just released its interviews of me. The interview covered leadership, entrepreneurship, education, and a bunch of my life and growth. Their lead quote from the interview: "No one who is learning to play a musical instrument, no one who wants to learn a musical instrument would ever take a class where they would lecture you for a year on theory for putting it into practice. And in fact if you did want to learn piano theory or music theory, you still learn to play…

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At Princeton’s ELab: How to become a “genius” entrepreneur that people want to help

I got a few short clips from my presentation on entrepreneurship when I spoke at Princeton’s Elab recently. Entrepreneurs are often so busy pitching their ideas, they miss opportunities to attract people to help them. They don't realize their pitching is leading people to evaluate them, which tends to separate them. Here I talk about how to talk to people to Improve your project Feel vested in your success See you as a genius Put you in touch with others who can help and more. https://youtu.be/cANE9fdoMZ0

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A student interviewed me!

My in-person leadership course, being project-based, has a project. One of my students last semester for his project created a web page---partly to express himself, partly to meet and interview people he wanted to create connections with, partly to share with the world his passion for marketing. Here he is: His name is Joe Yaqian Zhang. His blog is here. He shares his perspective on marketing things and interviews relevant people. Here is his post on interviewing me, "Tips from the Pros: Joshua Spodek." I hope he doesn't mind my sharing the video here. It's not yet professionally edited, but…

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Listen to Outlier Magazine’s podcast of Joshua Spodek, published today!

Outlier Magazine's Ever Gonzalez interviewed me recently and posted the podcast today, "Ep 331: Joshua Spodek Interview – Finding Your Hudson River" We talk about Learning entrepreneurship Learning leadership Swimming across the Hudson River Failure and learning from it My last book, ReModel (and hinting at the next one) Increasing your self-awareness through mental models Sidchas Check out the podcast here. If you prefer using Stitcher, here's that link. If you prefer using iTunes, here's that link. Thank you Ever, Paige, and the Outlier Magazine team! Or listen here:

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One Way Science and Business Don’t Match

My Inc.com post today, "One Way Science and Business Don't Match" begins One Way Science and Business Don't Match Learning facts about leading doesn't teach you to lead. Practice does. I stopped reading Daniel Pink's bestseller Drive before chapter 1. I bet it's entertaining, but if you read it to improve yourself and your career, it helps less than you think. Not to single-out Drive. I'm only using it to illustrate what a big category of books, TED talks, and others do, that people think help more than they probably do. Read the rest at One Way Science and Business…

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Video: What a leadership course can deliver, part 4

Here is an interview with a student who took my online leadership course, Chris, a born salesman and entrepreneur. Hear how the leadership course increased his business while calming his life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzm7iL6reFY Reach your potential in business and life. My courses don't take time from the rest of life. You work with people in your life that you care about on projects that you care about without distracting from the rest of your work and life. Learn more about the course and register here Read testimonials about my courses here I look forward to having you aboard.

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Six Lessons I Learned at Lunch With the Best Leader in America

My post on Inc.com today, "Six Lessons I Learned at Lunch With the Best Leader in America," begins Six Lessons I Learned at Lunch With the Best Leader in America Experience trumps everything in leadership and she has more than you do. From the Girl Scouts to the White House. Is Alan Mulally, former CEO of Ford, whose stock price went up 18 times under his watch, a fair judge of good leadership? How about Peter Drucker, the "founder of modern management"? How about Marshall Goldsmith, named the #1 leadership thinker in the world in 2015? If we can accept them as reasonable judges, they all named…

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Video: What a leadership course can deliver, part 3

Here is an interview with a student who took my online leadership course, Isabeaux, an undergraduate at NYU who hadn't taken an experiential course before, which initially threw her, before she came to find it led to more growth than she'd ever seen, despite going to an elite university. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxo-msa9dGQ Reach your potential in business and life. My courses don't take time from the rest of life. You work with people in your life that you care about on projects that you care about without distracting from the rest of your work and life. Learn more about the course and…

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Video: What a leadership course can deliver, part 2

Here is an interview with a student who is taking my online leadership course, Ellen, who is an entrepreneur who recently sold her latest business. As you'll see, she is also finding that the lessons she's learning apply to other deeply challenging areas in life.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnblmP_VlHg Reach your potential in business and life. My courses don't take time from the rest of life. You work with people in your life that you care about on projects that you care about without distracting from the rest of your work and life. Learn more about the course and register here Read testimonials…

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Video: What a leadership course can deliver, part 1

Here is an interview with a student who took my online leadership course, Bethany, who is an Associate Partner at IBM and has an MBA from Columbia Business School: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoL4zWav8Hw Reach your potential in business and life. My courses don't take time from the rest of life. You work with people in your life that you care about on projects that you care about without distracting from the rest of your work and life. Learn more about the course and register here Read testimonials about my courses here I look forward to having you aboard.

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If you think business is about money, people will control you with it. If you offer value, they’ll want to hire you.

If you think business is about money, people will control you with it. If you want money and they have it, you'll do what they want. What do you think looking for a job is? It's finding people with money and asking them what you can do for them. It reminds me of a student of mine at NYU who came to me asking for referrals for a job. After a short conversation explaining that I didn't find that method of looking for a job helpful, I suggested doing something to give to a community. We decided to organize a…

Continue ReadingIf you think business is about money, people will control you with it. If you offer value, they’ll want to hire you.

Hustling

What do you do when they cancel your flight? In the late 70s, a man and his fiancée were visiting the Caribbean. They found themselves stranded in an airport when their airline canceled their flight to Puerto Rico. The man was disappointed, but based on his experience running a record business that he had founded, he took initiative to solve the problem. Noticing other people from the same flight were also stranded, he called a chartering company to find the cost to charter a plane. $2,000. He agreed to charter it. He divided that cost by two less than the…

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My courses will lead students to leave traditional, lecture-based universities — to greater success and reward

I loved university. Studying physics, universities are about the only places to learn it. I value university for many things. They do a lot of valuable things better than any other institution or alternatives---the hard sciences, for example. It's not right for everyone and it does some things terribly. Places other than universities do some non-academic activities so much better than school. Experiential learning---how I teach leadership, entrepreneurship, sales, and hustling---is so much more effective at teaching leadership, entrepreneurship, sales, and hustling, than traditional, lecture-based education, that you could consider the latter counterproductive. Moreover, experiential courses where students create major…

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Learn Feedforward with me in London, Monday March 14!

Want to learn and practice one of the most effective leadership techniques? Then join me for a workshop, Monday, March 14th at 6:30pm. Click here to register! I look forward to seeing you there. From the announcement: Feedforward by Professor Joshua Spodek Interesting Talks is incredibly excited to welcome Joshua Spodek. Joshua is professor at New York University and is visiting London. We are lucky enough to have him speak at our group. This will set out FAST! We are truly honoured to have a speaker of this stature visit our group. Feedforward by Professor Joshua Spodek  What if you could…

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Webinar: How to Make Meaningful Connections, Sunday 1pm EST

After teaching, coaching, studying, and practicing leadership for twenty years, I announced my online leadership course, “Introducing the most effective leadership course available anywhere.” I’m hosting a series of free webinars on the most actionable, useful, effective, and exciting parts of the course. My webinars will always deliver exclusive, valuable lessons you can use that day and how to build for the long term. Attend my fourth webinar, free, this Sunday, March 6, 1pm Eastern Standard Time! All you need is an internet connection. How to Make Meaningful Connections If you want to lead or influence others in business and…

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