Description: This article highlights the importance of communicating concisely and effectively through email and other written forums, and when/when not to use written vs. other forms of communication.

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: An essay on how the lyrics of the Simon and Garfunkel hit song helps the author keep perspective and be a better leader by slowing down and taking the time to listen and lead.

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 very new actuarial manager trying to deal with a disruptive employee.

Description: Humor in the workplace can improve productivity. This article describes a typical office relationship problem and how humor helped disparate teams work together.

Description: February issue of The Stepping Stone

Description: This article considers ways actuaries can meet the growing demands of senior executives by redefining their role and the actuarial operating model.

Description: This articles showcases the principles of effective servant leadership.

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 management hiring someone to make changes, then ignoring all suggestions.

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.