Description: Negotiation has been a critical skill for me for most of my career. I’ve worked as a product actuary, represented a major distributor and now I’m a reinsurance intermediary. Technical actuarial skills were never my strength. However, I’m often able to get parties with differing goals to find a common ground, enabling a project to be completed to everyone’s satisfaction. From The Stepping Stone, April 2005, Issue No. 18.

Description: Principle #4: People make buying decisions based on emotion and justify these decisions with logic. To be influential, we need to take into account both logic and emotion. Of the two, emotion is a much more powerful motivating force. Unfortunately, too many people ignore the emotional component and focus solely on logic - neglecting what compels people to buy.

Description: To persuade successfully and non-manipulatively, it’s important to understand five key principles of influence. In this four-part series, I’ll be covering these five principles that are based on human psychology and behavior. Let’s look at the first two now.

Description: This article is a review of the book by Joshua Foer. It covers the history of memory techniques, the way a human brain organizes memory, and various problems and successes in memory recall. The author starts by interviewing memory savants, and learns from them that the ability to perform seemingly impossible memory tricks is simply a matter of studying and practicing proven techniques used for millennia. This review suggests that actuaries can benefit greatly from some of these techniques despite the availability of electronic hand-held devices to recall facts because the person who does not need to rely upon such devices can have a huge perceptual advantage in executive presentations.

Description: The Stepping Stone issue 60, November 2015

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: Harding's opinion on an actuary's role in management. Abridged version of a paper presented to the Younger Actuaries Section of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries on March 28, 1967.

Description: Effective communication