Description: Author of Content won "Best Quote" category of L&D writing contest. Looks at the source of courage both in history and in his own professional life. Valuable to better understand how to face moments in leadership that could inspire fear and trembling. Discusses ways to improve courage when called to lead.

Description: This article covers the importance of letting teams lead you as a leader, that it's okay to admit you're not okay even at work, and that it's important to find informal ways for virtual teams to connect.

Description: Latest in series of articles exploring the adaptation of Buddhist philosophy to actuarial practice. This installment examines the challenges for actuaries in dealing with external opinions of actuarial work, and how to best manage these forces so that the work remains aligned with professional standards.

Description: Taking a look at Julia Child's signature TV show The French Chef, and how aspects of her show gives us tips on how to train others.

Description: A compilation of reader responses is presented to a real life situation posed involving a management, leadership, or other business decision. This issue’s case study involved a dilemma involving an ASA who decided to stop taking exams, and communication difficulties with the Chief Actuary.

Description: This article identifies four root causes of poor performance and four remedies to address them that every leader should know.

Description: A real life situation is posed involving a management, leadership, or other business decision, and readers are invited to submit their responses to "What Would You Do?" This issue’s case study involved a communication and mentoring issue.

Description: Over the last two years, we experimented with online peer assessment platforms in undergraduate courses and saw them deliver major learning advantages and be highly popular with students. We explain why peer assessment shows great promise for actuarial science education and the main factors to consider when designing peer assessment activities. We also detail our use of online platforms in two undergraduate courses. By sharing our experience, we hope to provide you, our fellow educators, with a solid starting point for experimenting with this format.

Description: This article is an overview of the SOA Leadership & Development Section Council's current projects, recent accomplishments and some immediate focal points of the Leadership & Development Section Council's efforts.

Description: The article describes principles for optimal sub-tasking of a project goal. Two experiments each one comparing different approaches are presented. A summary of principles for optimal goal setting presents seven key points: i)levels of outcome goals should be recognizable and lack ambiguity; ii) each subtask should be atomic, i.e. not be capable of being broken up into further subtasks, iii) the subtasks should be uniform, lacking ambiguity, so that any new trainee could master it without the need for further guidance; iv) each subtask should be attainable in a reasonable amount of time; v) mentor feedback should be provided during the initial stages of learning or training; vi) upon mastery of each subtask trainees should be encouraged to maximize their overall score; vii) after mastery of individual subtasks, while attempting to maximize scores, trainees should be provided with a mixture of easy, intermediate, and difficult tasks.