Description: The article presents specific operational guidelines when managers and staff are having difficult conversations. The article reviews half a dozen "popular" guidelines but shows that they are not specific. The article then in two layers presents specific operational guidelines. First the article based on a commonality of principles of email etiquette and Jewish Speech Laws reviews five guidelines for ordinary conversations: focus on events vs. people, focus on fixes vs. blames, being holistic (acknowledge any good done), be operational (indicate outcome and how to accomplish it), and use of tentative tone. The article concludes by adding three specific guidelines for difficult conversations: shared-self-evaluation, skillful use of breaks when emotions flair, and use of open-ended lead-on questions coupled with continuous empathy and offers of collaborative support.

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

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 about the little things that impact your personal brand, and how that personal brand helps you influence others.

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: In this article, we aim to outline the advantages of smaller programs and gather opinions on the challenges these programs face in their efforts to emphasize these strengths. For our purposes, we define small actuarial programs as those with a relatively low student enrollment count. The following are three key advantages of small programs, which are similar to those of small colleges:(a) Enhanced benefits from small class size; (b) Adaptable curriculum; (c) Increased opportunities for each student. A variety of similar other issues are also discussed with recommendations, challenges, and invitations for further dialogue.

Description: Latest installment of a series applying lessons from Buddhist philosophy to the working world of actuaries. This installment focuses on practicing the yogic principle of "ahimsa" or non-harming with ourselves, and the importance of respecting and caring for oneself in order to better serve the needs of others.

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: 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.