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: 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.

Description: Read about how a great leader lays a tone upon which the harmonics of their followers are naturally amplified, rallying them together, while the tone of a great follower provides harmonics that further provide a layer of resonance for supporting those around them. These qualities help drive motivation, morale, and productivity within an organization.

Description: Article presents the basic terminology and theory of attribution theory, the theory explaining the causes that people attribute their successes and failures to. The article reviews i) typical attributions(e.g. effort, luck), ii) dimensions of attribution (controllability, stability), iii) useful and non-useful attributions, and iv) attribution retraining and v) other aspects of the theory (such as accompanying emotions)

Description: This podcast is the first in a series focused on key topics in the professional development edge plus product. It features Jon Forter, Chris Lombardi, and Jeanne Stokke discussing goal setting and people development. Topics include SMART goals, the differences between maximizers and satisfiers, and strategies for maximizing employee potential.