One of my biggest lessons in transitioning from traditional education to active, experiential learning is the difference between reading, writing, talking, analyzing, and debating about something you care about and acting on something you care about. Can you imagine a parent saying he or she cared about a child but not helping the child when the child was hurt, sick, or needed help? Without acting, talking about values—or reading, writing,[…] Keep reading →

Useless advice “Just be yourself.” Have you received this advice before a big presentation? Or maybe before a big date? Who else can you be? Or how about, “Play with feeling!” before a musical performance? Or how about, “Just stay calm” or “don’t worry about it” before an anxiety-causing interaction? These are examples of useless advice given more for the person giving it to feel good about themselves than for[…] Keep reading →

I wrote, to follow Ryan Holiday’s Here’s The Technique That Ambitious People Use To Get What They Want, I teach and coach people to get jobs through performance and it works. Schools teach people to react, take tests, and show how great they are. For a posted opening, you’re presenting yourself as a commodity — a slightly shinier one, you hope. It’s based on compliance. Most analytical, geeky types got[…] Keep reading →

I’ve quoted Martha Graham many times. At last I got the video of her saying the words. She describes how a performer achieves freedom through conforming and discipline better than anyone, in my opinion. I believe what she says holds for any active, emotional, expressive, social, performance-based field, including leadership and entrepreneurship. The dancer is realistic. His craft teaches him to be. Either the foot is pointed or it is[…] Keep reading →

Our educational system has evolved to deliver credentials—diplomas, your GPA, honors, and such. Even business plan competitions act like credentials. Credential comes from a root meaning trust. Schools credentials say, “trust us, we vouch for this person for finishing our requirements.” But academic values of compliance, factual recall, abstract analysis, test-taking skills, and so on aren’t as valuable as they were for a century or so when being a “knowledge[…] Keep reading →

RJ Khalaf took my course at NYU, Fundamentals of Social Entrepreneurship, a few years ago. His class project evolved into LEAD Palestine, which led the Dalai Lama to name him a Dalai Lama fellow. He also appeared on the Leadership and the Environment podcast and was a panelist on our expert panel last week. Saturday he gave his first TEDx talk at TEDx NYU. All credit goes to him for[…] Keep reading →

TOMORROW NOON eastern (9am pacific) see me live on the LEADx webinar, “Lead without authority.” LEADx told me that over 100 people have registered so far. It’s free, but you have to register. LEADx is important. They created Inc.’s annual influential list of 100 top public speakers (16 of whom have been on my podcast or I’ve been on theirs). We’ll cover a set of skills that will get you[…] Keep reading →

The Leadership and the Environment podcast team is growing, which means expanding to new ways to Develop people’s leadership and Act on the environment I’ve interviewed Ryan and Ben, the podcast’s newest teammates so you’ll get to meet them when their interviews get processed. In the meantime, we’ve organized two leadership development workshops THIS WEEK: Wednesday and Thursday, 6pm–8pm at NYU. Click these links to register and for the details,[…] Keep reading →

Joshua Spodek Uneducated at Any GPA Is the Ivy League Today Big 3 Auto of the 1960s? America’s top universities today are like America’s Big 3 car manufacturers of the 60s: hugely profitable, projecting growth for decades, the envy of the world, dominating their markets, dictating terms to customers and employees, and accelerating to bankruptcy. Cars aren’t diplomas, but besides the obvious differences between the fields, systemic similarities suggest a[…] Keep reading →