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: In this video, Anthony Champi discusses the non-linear nature of the leadership journey, emphasizing that it involves both successes and failures, and may not necessarily lead to promotions. He highlights the importance of selflessly committing to the development of others if one chooses to become a leader of people, as well as the challenges and responsibilities that come with that role. He also advises individuals to seek opportunities for skill development and learning from mistakes, as well as the transition to leading larger teams or other managers and leaders.

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: 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 form of love known as "Agape" is defined and explored in context of its application to workplace leadership. Through use of the principals of Agape love coupled with sound business practices, leaders can have strong positive impact on both their employees and their customers while building a sustainable and profitable business.

Description: It is well established that empowerment of staff is a critical leadership trait. But what are the metrics to recognize that you have achieved it? What steps enable this achievement? Which psychological attributes explain its efficacy?This article proposes to answer these questions through a multi-disciplinary examination of empowerment in the context of three leadership domains.

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.

Description: This article addresses dealing with distractions, avoiding habits like multi-tasking, and providing guidance on how to reach a state of "flow" to concentrate on deep work.