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How to Influence Every Audience, Every Time

How many conversations have you had this week in which you’ve tried to convince someone to adopt a certain opinion or act a certain way? As a leader, you’re constantly working to influence others, whether you’re convincing investors to continue backing the company, consumers to purchase your products or services, or employees to support your…

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Developing Transformational Leaders for a Changing World

Once upon a time, leadership was a little more standard than it is today. Would-be executives emerged from MBA programs into a corporate world in which, for the most part, they knew what to expect. Business as usual was the norm. Today, however, the status quo is anything but, with the World Economic Forum reporting on…

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Combining Classroom and Online Courses to Improve Learning

Online learning often gets a bad rap. As we’ve written before, the remote, automated nature of these programs can make them feel too low-touch to provide the same quality learning experience students can receive in the classroom. And often, that’s the case. When each student is simply clicking through a standardized lesson and answering a…

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Authentic Leadership in the Age of “Radical Transparency”

At the University of Virginia Darden School of Business Leadership Communication Council last month, the headline was this: “Social media, digital communication and technology-enabled connection have created an era of radical—sometimes painful—transparency for businesses,” and “…the best means to communicate successfully given the disruptive state of constant transparency is to align communication with action.”

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The Secret to Great Communication

Do you remember a time, as a kid, when you wanted to ask your parents for something—a new toy, a raise in your allowance, a dog? How did you go about it? Did you just come right out and ask, or did you spend time preparing your arguments, collecting your reasoning, and maybe even making…

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Beyond Theory: Making Room for Practice in Higher Education

There’s a problem plaguing corporate learning and development leaders: to put it simply, they can’t get trainings to “stick” in employees’ brains, so they struggle to achieve significant returns on investments—not to mention increases in productivity and engagement.

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To Give MBA Graduates a Real Advantage, Focus on Communication

According to the Graduate Management Admission Council, 89 percent of employers are planning to increase the number of MBA graduates they hire, and they expect to offer those MBA grads a median starting salary of $110,000 compared to $60,000 for those with only a bachelor’s. So what’s setting those MBA grads ahead of the pack?…

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Managing Up: What to Do When Your Boss Is a Poor Communicator

We often talk about leaders as particularly great communicators, able to share information, persuade doubters, and inspire employees with ease and finesse. (Or if they’re not there yet, they’re at least working on it.) But what happens if your boss is a not-so-great communicator?

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Networking for Introverts: What You Don’t Learn in School

If there’s one thing our professors, mentors, and advisors drilled into us as we prepared to finish school it’s that networking, and building a robust group of professional contacts, is foundational to a successful career. But for many of us, the traditional idea of networking— waltzing into a room full of strangers and yukking it…

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