Yorick Reintjens

Leadership communication always needs to be a two-way activity. Leaders, to be blunt, need followers, and a smart leader wants to know what those followers are thinking and doing. Moreover, leaders are in the business of persuasion, and you need to be listening to the people being persuaded or you won’t know how you’re doing.

There’s an even deeper reason that you need to be in the listening business as a leader. I believe that it’s the responsibility of a leader to return the courtesy of your followers by making an equivalent effort to listen as hard to them as they do to you. It’s courteous and it’s right — and it’s necessary in the long run if you’re going to fulfill the leader’s full set of obligations.

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Tags: communication, leadership, skills

TurboFinance: Derivatives explained

10 Mar 2011

Rating: 10.0/10 (4 votes cast)

Credit default swaps? They’re complicated — and scary! The receipt you get when you pre-order your Thanksgiving turkey? Not so much. But they have a lot in common: They’re both derivatives. Senior Editor Paddy Hirsch explains. More coverage of the financial crisis is at marketplace.org/financialcrisis

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Tags: derivatives, finance, video

100 Must Read Business Books

9 Mar 2011

Rating: 9.3/10 (4 votes cast)

If your dream is to own a business, you should know that there are ways around going to business school. In fact, many of the world’s most successful CEOs have never been to college. However, this does not mean they are not knowledgeable about their industry and business in general. Reading books by successful professionals can indeed take the place of an MBA. Get familiar with the following books, many of which are quite well-known, before you start your own business.

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Tags: books, business, essential

TurboBoost: Inside Fastlane Economics

6 Mar 2011

Rating: 9.3/10 (3 votes cast)

The first economists were ancient Greek and Indian philosophers, among them Aristotle (382-322 BC)—who discussed the “art” of wealth acquisition and questioned whether property should best be owned privately or by government acting on behalf of the people. Little of real substance was added to the discussion during the next two thousand years.

The 18^th century brought a virtual explosion of economic thinking. “Classical” economic philosophers such as Adam Smith (1723–1790), Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), and David Ricardo (1772–1823) introduced basic concepts such as supply and demand, division of labor, and the balance of international trade. As happens in so many disciplines, early practitioners were presented with plenty of uncharted territory and proceeded to formulate general maps of their subject that future experts would labor to refine in ever more trivial ways.

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Tags: economics, finance, history

10 Things Successful People Do Differently

5 Mar 2011

Rating: 9.8/10 (5 votes cast)

Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren’t sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle. In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.