December 2011
2 posts
12 tags
Advanced Facebook People Search
Social Media is a powerful tool for reaching out to like-minded individuals. As alumni leader for the Japan chapter of UCSD, I use Facebook as one way of connecting with other alumni. Up until now, it has been difficult to find people affiliated with the school here in Japan, even though there are so many of us here. With the recent improvements to Facebook Search, finding people is now easy. But,...
6 tags
Struggling to define a Leader
A few days ago while hosting an information session on leadership training for college students, one of the participants asked me “what is a leader?” I hesitated for a moment. This is something I think about often, but I just don’t have a scripted reply for this.
A very basic question and yet not easy to answer, because leadership means different things to different people. To...
November 2011
2 posts
Achievement Vs Effort
When I was in elementary school (a long time ago) I remember receiving report cards with two grades for each subject, one for achievement (A,B,C,D,F) and one for effort (E, S, NI). I remember being perplexed by an A/NI grade I got at one point. Anecdotally, it seems at least the assessment of effort has been in practice for some time.
My father was a NCAA champion wrestler, and I wrestled a bit...
My thoughts on leadership
In the last post, we talked about how people define leadership in different ways. Hearing about these characteristics of leadership further convinces me that we have to look beyond the dictionary to define leadership, because you cannot add all the qualities of a leader in to one definition. That being said, one summary of these characteristics could be that a leader is someone that people in his...
October 2011
1 post
What is a leader?
Most people believe they know what a leader is, but have never thought deeply about how to define a leader. Dictionary.com defines a leader as “a guiding or directing head, as of an army, movement, or political group.” This definition is too simplistic for me. If you have a terrible boss, is he still a true leader? No, he is just your boss (and hopefully, you will have enough sense to quit before...
