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s of highly ineffective non leaders i ve been thinking a lot about leadership lately i think about it a lot in connection with some volunteer work i do and in connection with my star trek podcast managers are people who have formal authority in a particular job or responsibility leaders are people who exert influence through social relationships and engagement sometimes managers are leaders but not always sometimes leaders are also managers but not always often the true leader in an organization is not the person with formal authority it is not hard to find lists of the habits of highly effective leaders but here from the michael marek management handbook are 12 habits of highly ineffective non leaders come in late and leave early keep them guessing manage by edict asking people what they think might undermine your authority don t let them predict when you are going to micromanage and when they have discretion assume that people don t really want to work so you have to be a taskmaster never admit you were wrong about anything don t give people feedback on their work before it is time to fire them take credit for everything never give credit where credit is due make sure you know what your superior wants before you voice an opinion knee jerk everything planning takes critical thinking and that s hard let your temper go it will scare them into obeying never socialize with your subordinates review machiavelli at least once a month leadership when combined with management is both an art and a science leaders should never knee jerk their reactions and always think their responses through for the secondary and tertiary ramifications is possible courses of action posted by michael marek at saturday november 13 2021 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels leadership management success friday august 6 2021 what does wearing a mask really mean the resurgence of covid 19 in the form of the delta variant means people are returning to mask wear and vaccinations are ramping up but the anti mask anti vaccine voice in american society is still loud vaccinated people can still contract the virus and while this usually does not lead to hospitalization for them the effects can still be staggering i know people who have covid despite being fully vaccinated and are struggling physically and psychologically so what does wearing a mask or not really mean we can answer this by drawing on religious patriotic and ethical teachings read more posted by michael marek at friday august 06 2021 email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels covid pandemic religion patriotism ethics mask social distance vaccination tuesday february 23 2021 how to fail at podcasting or not i ve been podcasting for some time now and listening to podcasts for a lot longer there are some great podcasts out there but also some stinkers here are my nine rules for how to fail at podcasting and some of my reflections on the alternatives 1 don t have any clear subject matter for your podcast be all over the map listeners seek out podcsts because of the content they are looking for as a result your podcast needs to have a clear niche if listeners can t predict what your next episode might be about they are unlikely to subscribe or stay subscribed very long you need to brand what your show is about and preferably make it about something that 147 other podcasts are not also about a narcissictic it s about whatever i want subject won t attract much of an audience other than maybe your family and close friends 2 use bad video and off mic sound theorist marshall mcluhan said the medium is the message if you are an audio only podcast you need excellent audio quality sounding like you are a yard away from the microphone will turn off listeners fast you don t necessarily need expensive professional microphone equipment but use what you have professionally which means having your microphone close to your mouth recording in a quiet location and avoiding distractions like popping ps if you are also doing video you also need a well composed screen for each participant and good lighting weird camera angles and bad lighting appears unprofessional and ruins your credibility 3 ramble and use free association as you talk you need to have a solid plan for your episode and stick to it at least have a rundown of topics planned in advance so all particiants can keep track as you record many podcasts use a relatively complete script written in advance and plan to edit your podcast before posting it at the very least remove most or all of your ums and generally tighten up the flow if you did end up wandering away from topic maybe it s best to cut that section out the common professional audio editing software is adobe audition but the open source free package audcity will also do everything you need 4 it s great to have multiple people all talking at once no it s not only one person at a time should be talking and you should not be interrupting each other whoever the host is for this episode should also be the discussion leader and moderator when you re verbally stepping on each other s toes or talking over each other it doesn t feel professional and again blows your credibility 5 laugh uproariously at your own jokes humor is fine in a podcast but remember that your focus has to be your audience not your own narcissism you aren t entertaining yourself you are entertaining your audience be like the late night talk shows if you are telling the joke you re the straight man or woman or other gender choices of course your side kicks may respond but nothing is more of a turn off than people laughing at their own jokes 6 spend at least 20 minutes talking about your personal lives before you get around to the announced topic of today s episode this takes finnesse some talk about yourselves self disclosure can help make connections with the audience but too many podcast people take way too long to get to the point of the episode best is to make any opening small talk short and sweet also remember that people may be listening weeks or months into the future so references to today s events need a light touch 7 monster files are no problem even if they take ages to download save your finished podcast file in a way that is easy to download quickly for audio only that means as an mp3 file but wait there s more unless you must have stereo save your final as monaural it will be smaller and will download faster a sample rate of 44 100 hz 16 bit is plenty of quality for a podcast that is mostly voice try a format setting of mp3 192 kbps if you use lower than these numbers listen to test recordings critically in headphones to ensure quality if you use bigger numbers you probably won t hear an appreciable improvement in voice quality 8 violate copyright nobody will notice probably the biggest point here is that you need to be really careful about what music you use in your podcast there is no way to blanket license your podcast to play commercially recorded music although a few companies are cautiously getting their feet wet so if your podcast actually plays the music by name recording artists you may easily be subject to copyright infringmenet legal actions there are ways to find royalty free music to use for your opening and closing themes and transitions but beware many of the sites that claim to have royalty free music offer it only for personal use and a podcast available to the general public is not personal use be sure to read their terms of service 9 believe that if you podcast it they will come you need to not only produce a podcast with good technical quality and engaging content you need to promote it get it listed with many podcast hosting sites as you can promote it on social media get yourself a professional looking website and promote promote promote still more when podcasts instantaneously go viral it is usually a freak occurance how to really succeed at promoting would take tens of thousands of words but promotion needs to be an importnt part of your planning i hope that this reverse psychology format has generated some ideas for your podcast a podcast is not something to start on a lark those who do usually close down again soon your podcast doesn t have to exist to make money although that is possible once your audience grows some but you should still treat it as a professional undertaking posted by michael marek at tuesday february 23 2021 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels audio content copyright fail guidelines podcast production quality recommendations sound success technical video saturday february 13 2021 free speech may not mean what you think there s been a lot of talk recently about free speech but a lot of people have a very superficial understanding of what free speech actually means i taught several semesters of communication law and here is what the constitution and the courts say free speech means read more posted by michael marek at saturday february 13 2021 email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels advocacy constitution facebook first amendment free speech journalism media social media twitter sunday january 24 2021 crowd sourcing political persuasion in social media update although this post was written a while back people are still finding it and reading it i have updated it here and there to reflect the post trump realities right after the 2016 us election we heard a lot about the echo chamber that saw a lot of people talking about issues in social media but mostly to people of similar beliefs why did neither side have much success persuading people of conflicting beliefs and what should we do differently for the futute read more posted by michael marek at sunday january 24 2021 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels activism advocacy communication conservatives critical thinking democrats electronic media leadership liberals marketing opinion persuasion politics republicans social media saturday november 7 2020 maybe we needed trump for a while with the election of joe biden as president we are about to see an abrupt change in direction in the policies of the us leadership in washington it is one of the benefits of american democracy that the public has the power to pull the country back when they perceive it has gone too far in one direction or another i created this graphic at the beginning of donald trump s term to show that over multiple presidential administrations our course first tacks one direction and then another but generally speaking the long term course remains in the middle toward the better history is likely to conclude that the last four years pulled us toward white supremacy isolationism limiting rights and general divisiveness the next four years will likely lead us in different directions it may well be that historians 50 100 years from now will see the trump administration as revealing a deep darkness in american society that had mostly been hidden maybe we needed trump s authoritarian tendencies chaos and bluster in order to learn important lessons and reimagine who we are as a society what kind of country we were meant to be for example the obama administration was pretty dramatic in terms of the liberal progressive agenda the electorate decided it was time to take a break not counting questions of election meddling now that we have experienced the opposite direction for a while the electorate has decided it s time to take the next steps in addressing importing things like climate change health care the tax code and meaningful immigration reform american democracy often doesn t get it right bad decisions get made and sometimes it takes a long time to correct them but elections allow the electorate to correct the heading and preserve the long term course posted by michael marek at saturday november 07 2020 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels biden democrats election government harris politics republicans trump saturday october 31 2020 four ways to tell is it news or advocacy i wrote this originally in 2016 but in the trump era it became even more important to know how to judge what is actually journalistic news and what is political advocacy when people politicians journalists and others talk about the media everybody seems to mean something different for decades the media referred to established mainstream news sources that pursued ethical and meticulous journalism today social media has flattened the playing field and given everyone a voice at little or no cost but this new everyone dynamic is largely made up of people who are not trained in journalism not committed to telling all sides of a story or are actively promoting a one sided agenda how do you tell if what you come across is news or advocacy here are four ways 1 value judgments are not attributed real journalists do not tell you what they think as part of their stories any time a headline or story body makes a statement about something being good or bad admirable or not or any other opinion it needs to st somebody other than the journalist saying that means we have to attribute it as a quote or paraphrase if the story contains a value judgment without indicating the source it is advocacy not journalism 2 loaded words have hidden meaning journalists are trained to use descriptive language but to avoid words that have social connotations stereotypes or other hidden meaning attached to them 3 doesn t really tell both sides of a controversy advocacy thrives on giving you loaded information that is weighted to a particular agenda if a supposed news story brushes off an opposing point of view or only gives it lip service it is likely not journalism 4 contains ad hominem criticism not attributed if the writer criticizes a person or group of people as opposed to the person s group s position on issues it is a logical fallacy and it is advocacy not journalism such ad hominem might appear in a quote and still be journalism but when it is not attributed and this is a contention of the writer it is not journalism conclusion these four rules of thumb are just the beginning you have to scrutinize and evaluate the source of information check snopes or politifact ask yourself is the writer promoting an agenda the more you do this the more it will become clear what is news and what is advocacy pretending to be news posted by michael marek at saturday october 31 2020 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels clinton democrats deniers global warming hate journalism love nodapl oil industry opinion politics republicans sunday october 25 2020 star trek continuity in the 32nd century before the premiere of star trek discovery season 3 pretty much every article about the series was saying words to the effect of the p...