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Professional Buzz

Professional Buzz

Professional Buzz is a blog warehousing relevant information, tips and tools for students and professionals looking for career development and advice. Topics range from leadership and management skills to interpersonal communication and innovation in the workplace. The blog is written and curated by Associate Dean of the Graduate College, Anne Converse Willkomm – drawing on her academic and professional experience to provide insight into the latest professional trends, challenges and skills needed to thrive in today’s everchanging workplace.

Categories

Professional Development & Career TipsLeadership & Management SkillsInterpersonal CommunicationInnovation in the Workplace
Image of the Fellows wearing Drexel t-shirts in front of Mario the Dragon

Personal Reflections on the Mandela Washington Fellowship

Learn about the impact the Fellows had on the Drexel community and what they're up to today!

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The Power of Connection: 3 Ways to Build Relations

I don’t know anyone who has been able to succeed in their career without making and developing strong connections and relationships. Sure, we all know someone who has been promoted, maybe more than once, despite being terrible at relationship building. However, in the end, those folks usually don’t rise to the top, they don’t build a coalition of folks under and around them, they often reside on their personal island. It is the process of building connections and forging relationships that helps us succeed and grow in our careers.

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Keyboard that says "success failure"

We can learn more from our failures than our successes

In developing a failure résumé, the intent is not simply to list the failures but to focus on what lessons you learned from those failures.

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dog with big ears

6 Tips for Better Active Listening

Being an active listener is an important communication skill to master, especially in the workplace. Discover the benefits & unlock the power of listening. 

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Image of the Museum of African American History and Culture. It is brown stricture depicting 3 levels with a reflection of it in the water.

Stepping Out of Your Own Experience

We get stuck in our own worlds, doing little to step out of our experience and that has an impact on us both personally and professionally. By broadening our experience, we open ourselves up to new ideas, new people, new perspectives, which in turn provides a space for creativity and collaboration.

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Cartoon of a man with no face in a suit jacket and red tie juggling 6 colored balls.

Too Many Balls in the Air?

A leadership exercise I facilitated with the Mandela Washington Fellows teaches us to think about the number of balls we are continually juggling.

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Welcoming the 2019 Mandela Washington Fellows to Drexel University

Learn about the Mandela Washington Fellowship and how much we can discover together.

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Navy blue mortar board with a gold tassel

The Drexel Legacy: A Message for Our Graduates

To each of you – this is the beginning of so much more. Capitalize on what you have learned. Use it to leverage your future, but also use it to empower others. A diploma from Drexel University should also be about using your skills and knowledge to benefit others.

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Image of a notebook with the words: I am too Important and other "indispensable" words written on it.

Think You're Indispensable - Think Again

It could be a specific system only you know how to navigate or a software program unique to your job. It could be a process you have managed for years or improved over time. It could be relationships you have cultivated over time to yield results. These situations can lead employees to assume that since no one else knows the system, the program, the process, or the relationship, they cannot be replaced. This is a completely wrong assumption.

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Cartoon image of a screen with a colorful pie chart in the upper left corner and lines representing text to the right and below to look like a Power Point Presentation.

Advantages and Disadvantages of PowerPoint Presentations in Business

PowerPoint has been around since the mid-1980s and has helped business professionals sell their products and woo clients. Over the course of the past twenty or so years, other visual presentation software has emerged, programs such as Prezi, Visme, Keynote and Haiku Deck claim to offer flashier or more creative or personalized presentation options. But let’s face it – not all visual presentations are created equally – and it has little to do with the software, and more importantly, there are pros and cons when it comes to using visual presentations.

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A blue silhouette of a world map with 7 women in black silhouette standing across the map

5 Ways Women Can Empower Other Women in the Workplace

In the age of the continued gender gap, wage gap, the Time's UP movement, it is imperative that, as women, we actively work to empower one another. Here's how.

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Using Improv Comedy to Improve Organizational Culture

Learn how leadership at the Delaware River Port authority applied the concepts of improv comedy in the workplace to stimulate creativity and collaboration. 

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