Positive Leadership: Is academic intellectualism alone enough if the Scottish economy is to prosper?

Is academic intellectualism alone enough if the Scottish economy is to prosper from Graham Watson

Positive Leadership: Is academic intellectualism alone enough if the Scottish economy is to prosper?

Positive Leadership: The Role of Business Education in 2013

The Wall Street Journal sounded the death-knoll for business schools back in 1985. Applications were dropping. Mass closures were on the cards. The same headlines have appeared periodically since. Eight years later the New York Times headlined with “Business Schools Hit Hard Times Amid Doubt Over Value of MBA”. Last year it was Forbes asking “Is the MBA Obsolete?” 

If you scan the latest stories on business sites and in magazines, it seems to be in fashion to give the impression that innovation and talent trumps education. But is it true?

What is true is that the nature of business has changed. Lines of communication have evolved. Globalisation has opened up new markets and competition is fierce. Innovation is now a global catch-cry and anyone with a half-baked idea is trying to sell it. Yet we are still short of quality business managers.

In reality, it isn’t a competition between natural talent and formal education. We need both. What is important is that business schools adapt their style of teaching. They must ensure our next generation of leaders are learning techniques relevant to today. In America alone, 10,000 baby boomers retire every day. These are the people who have been our business leaders for the past 30 years and we are struggling to replace them.

Business schools know this. They also know the demands on modern managers are unique in the information age. Yale rewrote its curriculum back in 2006 and continues to regularly review it. Wharton rolled out a whole new plan last year. We are seeing a shift to customised courses tailored for 21st century enterprise. There is a greater focus (particularly in North America) on leadership, trouble-shooting, problem solving and communication skills.

Business isn’t just about brilliant product, it’s about people (ideally, both brilliant). Success will come from ensuring that young people who have chosen business as their career have the right knowledge, skills and attitudes to lead.

Positive Leadership: The Role of Business Education in 2013

Positive Leadership: Where Are US CEO's Educated?

Positive Leadership: Where Are US CEO's Educated?

Positive Leadership: The Benefits of Education in the Humanities

Stanford University political science professor and former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice endorses the way education in the fields of humanities and social sciences cultivates people’s writing abilities: 

“Those of us who have been, for instance, in government—where a lot of my students want to end up—know that the well argued, well written two-pager [put] before the secretary of defense or the secretary of state can actually make a difference, let alone one before the president of the United States. It can make a difference in decision making.”

Positive Leadership: The Benefits of Education in the Humanities

Positive Leadership: The Education Olympics

For more, see: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/08/education-olympics-how-does-the-us-rank-1.html and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/9475959/Sir-Steve-Redgrave-Competitive-sport-is-all-very-well-but-helping-every-child-reach-their-potential-must-be-Britains-Olympic-legacy.html

Positive Leadership: The Education Olympics

Positive Leadership: The Importance of Education

In this recent video, President Obama urges Congress to take action now to put teachers back to work in classrooms, because the best predictor of individual and American success in this economy is a good education. 

This is a good lesson for all countries and is reflected in the relative success of Singapore, which understands the significance of public service - https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/public_sector_engagement_culture_making_of_talent_magnet/

Positive Leadership: The Importance of Education

Positive Leadership: Being Average is No Use

In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over. Being average just won’t earn you what it used to. 

It can’t when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labour, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius. Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra — their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment. Average is over.

There will always be change — new jobs, new products, new services. But the one thing we know for sure is that with each advance in globalisation and the I.T. revolution, the best jobs will require workers to have more and better education to make themselves above average. 

By way of illustration, here are the latest unemployment rates from the Bureau of Labour Statistics for Americans over 25 years old: those with less than a high school degree, 13.8 per cent; those with a high school degree and no college, 8.7 per cent; those with some college or associate degree, 7.7 per cent; and those with bachelor’s degree or higher, 4.1 per cent.

In a world where average is officially over, there are many things we need to do to buttress employment, but nothing would be more important than passing some kind of Recovery Act for the 21st century that ensures that every Briton has access to post-secondary school education.

Positive Leadership: Being Average is No Use

Positive Leadership: The Importance of Character Education

Positive Leadership: The Importance of Character Education

Positive Leadership: Rebecca Watson, Lady Vol Student Athlete

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the USA prides itself on developing 'student-athletes'. As their advertising says - 'most of us go pro in something other than sports'.

Today, I want to pay tribute to my older daughter, Rebecca, who graduated yesterday from the University of Tennessee. Rebecca is a Lady Vol; a two-time Academic All-American who graduated cum laude in business. Rebecca played on the  Lady Vol golf team for four years and is now returning to Scotland to begin a CA traineeship with Ernst & Young.

Rebecca embodies everything which the term 'student-athlete' stands for and we wish her every success in her future career. 

Positive Leadership: Rebecca Watson, Lady Vol Student Athlete

Leadership in Education

Teach for America CEO Wendy Kopp speaks in conversation with Stanford University Political Science professor, Robert Reich.

Leadership in Education

Do Ivy League alumni make better CEOs?

Does an Ivy League education make you a better CEO? According to new research from the University of New Hampshire, the answer is a resounding "no". 

Whether or not a CEO holds a degree from a top school has no bearing on their firm's long-term performance.

For more, see: http://www.management-issues.com/2010/9/20/research/do-ivy-league-alumni-make-better-ceos.asp

Do Ivy League alumni make better CEOs?

Gifted Children No More Likely To Succeed

Well hurrah, let’s trample on the Non-Verbal Reasoning test papers immediately, mes enfants. And while we’re at it, please stop all those silly French mornings when our children have to do le badinage. And can we can the violin practice before school, and all the other preposterous hurdles we expect our children to vault. 

Because the news is that hot-housing your child and encouraging them to walk the path of mathematics, musical or linguistic genius doesn’t make a blind bit of difference to their future success, happiness or material gains.

Prof. Joan Freeman, who studied the adult careers of 210 child prodigies for her book Gifted Lives: What Happens When Gifted Children Grow Up, has discovered that not every child who is labeled an infant Mozart will necessarily become one. Far from it: of the 210, only six became incredibly successful in later life. 

Indeed, the book reveals that the old schoolboy riposte “Winston Churchill failed his exams at school and he didn’t do too badly, did he?” might have something in it after all. Apparently, fate, personality and good old-fashioned drive are just as important to adult success and fulfillment as the ability to describe Shape A after twisting it by 90 degrees, or describe Pi to 60 decimal points. Probably more, in fact. 

For more, see: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/8028543/Gifted-children-no-more-likely-to-succeed.html

Gifted Children No More Likely To Succeed

The Importance of Education

“The single most important step we can take is to make sure that every young person gets the best education possible, because countries that out-educate us today are going to out-compete us tomorrow.” 

President Obama, 27 September, 2010

The Importance of Education

Encouraging Early Entrepreneurship

We have written recently about the true national challenge being the need to create jobs - http://positiveleadershiplimited.blogspot.com/2010/08/creating-new-jobs.html - and we have also pointed to the role of business in helping to support education - http://positiveleadershiplimited.blogspot.com/2010/08/great-teaching.html.

Encouraging early entrepreneurship and developing business leadership skills in young people is another way of creating the conditions that create jobs and secure the future. Getting young people to think about a business they could start and into the entrepreneurial habit earlier in life can help jump-start jobs.

Here is one great idea which Positive Leadership supports fully, which many leading companies around the world are already backing and which could easily be replicated in the United Kingdom:

Encouraging Early Entrepreneurship

Great Teaching

Great teaching is the centre piece of a strong education; everything else revolves around it.’ 

Bill Gates, speaking to the American Federation of Teachers, 

10 July 2010

One example of how business can contribute to education in a very meaningful way is IBM's 'Transition to Teaching' Programme. Through this initiative, which was launched in 2005, IBM is helping address the critical shortage of maths and science teachers in the USA by leveraging the brains and backgrounds of some of its most experienced employees, enabling them to become fully accredited teachers in their local communities upon electing to leave the company.

The Future is in Our Classrooms - Pledge version from TakePart on Vimeo.

For more, see - 

http://www.ibm.com/ibm/ibmgives/news/transition_to_teaching.shtml)

Great Teaching

Great Teaching is the Centre-Piece of a Strong Education

'Great teaching is the centre-piece of a strong education; everything else revolves around it. This is the main finding of our foundation’s work in education over the past ten years.

I have to admit – that is not where we started. Our work in schools began with a focus on making high schools smaller, in the hope of improving relationships to drive down dropout rates and increase student achievement.

Many of the schools we worked with made strong gains, but others were disappointing. The schools that made the biggest gains in achievement did more than make structural changes; they also improved teaching. If great teaching is the most powerful point of leverage – how are we going to help more teachers become great?

In 2008 and 2009, our foundation partnered with Scholastic on a national survey to learn the views of 40,000 teachers on crucial questions facing your profession.

Teachers said in huge numbers that they don’t get enough feedback. They’re not told how they can improve. When I was working in software, many times I would look at the computer code someone wrote and I’d say: “Oh, wow, this guy is good. That’s better than what I would have written. What process did he go through? How did he model it?” Whenever I found someone great, I would study how they worked. I looked at every factor that made that person successful.

This happens in a lot of fields.

Some of you may have read a book by Steven Jay Gould about baseball. Gould explains that in the 1920s and ’30s, there was a big gap between the highest and lowest batting averages. But over time, people learned from each other, the gap narrowed – and the average hitter today is much closer to the best hitter.

That’s an important mark of a profession: the difference between the average and the great becomes smaller – because everyone is eager to get better, and they’re doing everything they can to learn from the best. That trend improves the entire profession. But it requires a process: you have to identify the skills of the best and transfer them to everyone else.

That hasn’t been happening enough in teaching. And that give us a big opportunity.

This is the work our foundation is trying to foster in Pittsburgh, Hillsborough County, and other communities that have agreed to be part of two projects we’re funding: the Measures of Effective Teaching project, and our Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching.

The first of these projects addresses a big gap in our knowledge: There has been a lot of research done about the impact of effective teaching, but little research has been done on what makes teaching effective.

That’s the research we’re doing now with nearly 3,000 teachers in six school districts who have volunteered to open their classrooms to visitors, to video cameras, to new assessments, to watching themselves teach and talking about their practice. Many of these teachers are members of the AFT. I want to thank those of you who are here today for being part of this project.

They’ll put special focus on classes that showed big student gains and try to map it backwards to identify the most effective teaching practices. They’ll also look for what doesn’t work. If a struggling new teacher comes to a veteran colleague and asks: ―What am I doing wrong? –  he should get an evidence-based answer. Some years ago, if you wanted to watch a great teacher, you had to find one who was teaching in your building during the hour you had free. But today, every teacher should be able to watch great teachers – to see how a master in classroom management handles a disruptive student, or how a great geometry teacher makes a proof interesting. Even just watching your own class can offer huge insight. One teacher in Hillsborough County said: “It’s amazing how much you can learn when you just sit and watch yourself teach.”

No one can choose a world without change. We choose only whether we drive change or react to it. If you want teachers unions to lead a revolution in American education, please remember: sometimes the most difficult act of leadership is not fighting the enemy; it’s telling your friends it’s time to change.'

Bill Gates 

Great Teaching is the Centre-Piece of a Strong Education

Driving Bold Change

We have talked before on the Positive Leadership blog of what business leaders can bring to education:
http://positiveleadershiplimited.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-business-leaders-can-bring-to.html

Here is a fascinating interview with the Chancellor of the New York City public schools, Joel Klein. Klein is a product of the schools he now runs. He attended New York City public schools for 12 years, then went to Columbia University and Harvard Law School. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell and eventually became the Justice Department's antitrust chief under President Clinton.

The video interview is instructive for business and education leaders in the UK also: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2009/12/16/VI2009121600664.html#

Driving Bold Change

Suggestions on How to Develop Positive Children

The latest research in neuroscience and positive psychology demonstrates that we can mold our brains and ourselves to be more positive. Simple strategies and daily rituals can make a tremendous impact on our mindset, belief system and outlook on life.

We believe that positive children become positive adults and as parents we can play a significant role in shaping our children’s perspective and mindset. In this spirit we would like to share with you several tips to develop positive young people:

1. Success of the Day - Each night before bed, at dinner or while taking an after dinner walk ask your children their success of the day. The success could be a great conversation, an accomplishment at school, something they are proud of, a situation where they helped someone, etc. The important thing is to help them focus on accomplishments instead of failures. When we help our children expect success, look for success, and celebrate success they find more success and gain more confidence. Of course they need to learn from their mistakes and failures, but let’s help them to not dwell on them.

2. Bedtime Prayer - A ritual such as this provides your children with a foundation of peace, security, and confidence that gives them the strength to take on the daily challenges of being a child.

3. Implement the No Complaining Rule - It’s a simple rule that says you’re not allowed to complain unless you identify one or two possible solutions to your complaint. This empowers children to become self directed learners and self starters. They also learn to use complaints as a catalyst for positive change and positive action.

4. Teach them that we can’t control the events in our life, but we can control our positive response to these events and our response determines the outcome. This helps children develop a strong locus of control which is a perspective that through their beliefs and actions they have an influence on their life. They come to believe that they are not a victim of circumstance but rather a hero in their own inspirational tale and that they can turn their challenges into opportunities and transform bad events into good outcomes. This helps them stay optimistic and believe that their best days are ahead of them, not behind them.

5. Feel Blessed instead of Stressed - As parents we need to realise that children, like adults, deal with a lot of stress...and stress is the enemy of positivity. Well, the great news is that when you are feeling blessed you can’t be stressed. The research says we can’t be stressed and thankful at the same time. Thus, a simple ritual is to help your children identify 3 things they are thankful for each day. You can create a gratitude journal together or you can encourage them to write these blessings on their blog, diary or simply talk about them at dinner. And anytime they are feeling stressed you can encourage them to recall something they are thankful for.

Think of your child’s mind like a garden. Each day you want to help them weed their negative thoughts and plant positive thoughts. One day of weeding and planting won’t do much. However if you practice these strategies each day, over a week, a month, a year, a lifetime, the garden grows more healthy and vibrant. Nurture your child. Take time to coach them and nourish them with lots of love and positive energy and you shall see the fruits of your efforts. Stay Positive!

Suggestions on How to Develop Positive Children

Developing Young Leaders in the Military

The philosophy of the Norwegian Naval Academy in Bergen is that “It is people, not technology and strategy, that win wars. Further, fighting spirit and endurance is shaped not by material benefits, but by a close and determined bond between leaders and crew.”

The Naval Academy places practical and theoretical leadership training at the heart of their bachelor program in military science – preparing officers for operational leadership at sea.

A key challenge to this leadership development is a healthy balance between theory, coaching and practical training – in a realistic context out of the classrooms. HNoMS Statsraad Lehmkuhl, a 95 years old barque, with fifty sails, three masts, and a solid old fashioned rig – system meets this challenge. A three months cruise in the North sea and the Atlantic ocean in the storm – season marks a significant starting point for the cadet’s leadership training. The old lady does not carry advanced computer technology, electric engines or hydraulic systems that reduce the role of humans merely into computer operators. The sailing ship demands human cooperation at its best, to overcome and work with the rough weathers at sea. The ship and the nature immediately give feedback on poor leadership and cooperation.

Inspiring leadership is based on practical seamanship skills and tradition. At HNoMS Statsraad Lehmkuhl the cadets learn old-fashioned seamanship, knots, tackling, shanties, and maintenance in a way often ignored in modern navies. By this, they develop a sound respect for practical knowledge and traditions grown from thousands of years of accumulated experience. These skills also stimulate the cadet’s identity and pride as sailors. Military professionalism builds also on high academic standards. During the cruise professors are giving lectures in history, English, international affairs, leadership, psychology and ethics.

Leadership calls also for social skills, moral character and emotional intelligence. The cruise is a challenging kind of social training. Three months working and living together 24-7, sleeping in columns of hammocks with 20 cm “private” space on each side represents a good training ground for social interaction. The cadets are not allowed to bring computers, music, cell phones etc that can help them escape from boredom, homesickness, conflicts etc. They must develop their skills to communicate and face problems in a constructive manner. They learn to lean on their shipmates when facing hardship and difficulties. By this, comradeship, esprit de corps, and mutual trust may develop; for some, lasting the rest of their professional careers.

The cruise works. Research shows that the cruise influences the cadet’s leadership skills more than any other single activity at the academy. Emotional intelligence and transformational leadership changes significantly – in a positive way. The same goes for cohesion and ability to participate in - and build high performance groups. And last, but not least, the cruise leaves most cadets with a new confidence when it comes to both seeking leadership, and meeting the sea as sailors.

Developing Young Leaders in the Military

General Colin Powell Receives American Patriot of Character Award

General Colin Powell, former US Secretary of State, received the American Patriot of Character Award presented by The Character Education Partnership during their 16th annual National Forum on Character Education, in Alexandria, VA, last week.

The American Patriot of Character Award honours one American citizen whose leadership exemplifies the very best of the nation's founding principles. The award recognises individuals not only for great success in their chosen field, but also for upholding the highest ethical standards in service of the common good.

"General Powell is a remarkable public servant who has truly made a positive difference in our nation," CEP's executive director Joe Mazzola said. "He is a shining example of integrity for young people, and all American citizens, to emulate. We are honoured to have him as the first recipient of this award."

In his acceptance remarks Powell talked about his family's emphasis on good character and achievement. He said a turning point in his life came about when he entered the ROTC program in college, and it emphasised West Point's code of ethics.

General Powell also congratulated the National Schools of Character award winners who were in attendance to receive their awards. He commended the educators for their efforts to develop students of good character.

The purpose of the National Schools of Character awards programme is to identify, honour, and showcase exemplars in character education and facilitate their leadership in mentoring others. The goal of the national program is to provide a variety of models of comprehensive, quality character education, representing America's diverse educational system.

Here are General Powell's 13 Rules of Leadership:

General Colin Powell Receives American Patriot of Character Award