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Kathleen Reardon
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Dr. Kathleen Reardon is a Phi Beta Kappa professor of management at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. She was a National Cancer Institute postdoctoral fellow and on the faculty of Preventive Medicine where she has been principal and co-principal investigator on preventive medicine research grants.

She has been a featured blogger with Huffington Post since September 2005. She is the author of numerous articles on communication, persuasion, negotiation, health communication and politics, including in the Harvard Business Review. Her book, Persuasion In Practice, was described by Public Opinion Quarterly as "a landmark contribution to the field."

Her latest book is COMEBACKS AT WORK: USING CONVERSATION TO MASTER CONFRONTATION about what to say on-the-spot when offended, insulted, embarrassed or in some other way facing an awkward public moment at work, home and in politics.

She was awarded membership in Mortar Board and Phi Kappa Phi. Her second book on politics is It's All Politics: Winning in a World Where Hard Work and Talent Aren't Enough(Currency/Doubleday). It looks at advanced politics -- what people need to know to offensively, constructively use politics and to defensively recognize and deal with destructive types.

Kathleen Reardon has also published The Secret Handshake (amazon business and nonfiction bestseller), The Skilled Negotiator and They Don't Get, Do They. She has served as Board Member and is a Trustee of First Star, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit devoted to protecting children at risk. She also conducted the feasibility study as co-principal investigator for the Starbright Foundation (now merged with Starlight) chaired by Steven Spielberg.

Her politics site is politicsdoc or www.bardscove.com

Dr. Reardon is also the author of "Courage As A Skill," The Harvard Business Review, January 2007.

CHILDHOOD DENIED: ENDING THE NIGHTMARE OF CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT co-authored with Christopher Noblet and in collaboration with First Star (Sage Publications) was written to enhance the lives of children at risk. In this book Dr. Reardon proposed the development of foster academies on college campuses -- which has become a major First Star initiative. A summer academy will be at UCLA in 2011. Other universities and colleges are also working with First Star to develop academies.

Dr. Reardon was the recipient of First Star's Achievement Award on October 28, 2008 for participation in founding Starbright and First Star. In 2010 she became the first Distinguished Fellow of First Star.

In 2011 she was invited to serve on the advisory board of the new Harrington School of Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island. The first meeting took place in April of 2011.

As an avocation, she paints and helps people injured in war or with chronic illnesses learn to also at this paintingdoc

Blog Entries by Kathleen Reardon

Election Takeaway: Timing Your Infidelity

36 Comments | Posted December 9, 2011 | 15:14:16 (EST)

What lessons in moral behavior for aspiring presidents may we take away from the events of recent campaigns? With Herman Cain's campaign suspension over accusations of extramarital affairs, the candidate who has risen to first place among Republicans is none other than former Speaker of the House

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The High Political Price of "Some People Say" Journalism

181 Comments | Posted October 17, 2011 | 13:39:24 (EST)

On televised news this evening, expect to hear sentences beginning with "some people say" or "many people think" as a means of positioning a question for an interview or providing support for an opinion being advanced. Look for such deceptive phrases on your choice of early evening televised news, CNN...

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Are We as a Culture on a Mean Streak? Do We Reason Just To Win?

Posted June 22, 2011 | 13:05:33 (EST)

"Shame is dead, officially dead in American public life," Mark Shields has observed. He's not alone in this view. Even Tom Hanks, ever optimistic, believes that while 80 percent of people are good -- the rest are crooks and liars.

How mean-spirited...

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What's Going On in Your Mind? Congressman Patrick Kennedy Brings the Best and the Brightest to Boston for a "Moonshot Moment"

Posted May 24, 2011 | 12:23:23 (EST)

Congressman Patrick Kennedy said yesterday on opening day of the One Mind Research Conference he convened in Boston: "The most personal thing any family can ask for is to help them take care of the people they love." In this sense, Kennedy added, "Politics is personal." It's a...

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When Should You Turn the Other Cheek? A Presidential Lesson in Priorities

Posted May 4, 2011 | 11:59:37 (EST)

President Obama tends not to get out in front of image problems. In fact, his analytical leadership style inclines him toward quite the opposite. His response to the birthers and their latest ringleader Donald Trump is a case in point. It took the president a long time to...

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The 'Mean Girls' Obsession -- As if Women Were the Ones Starting Wars

Posted March 8, 2011 | 12:45:13 (EST)

The term "mean girls" grabs. It's a function of word association -- close to an oxymoron if we think of girls as "sugar and spice and everything nice." Of course, they aren't. Who is? But neither are they meaner than their male counterparts. In fact, the last time I looked,...

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Ending Those Maddening "I Wish I'd Said" Moments

Posted March 3, 2011 | 10:54:49 (EST)

No doubt you've been put on the spot, cornered in conversation or didn't quite feel you could say what you wanted to say. Maybe this happened with your spouse, friend, doctor, colleague, son or daughter. There just didn't seem to be a good way to tell him or her what...

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Cowards in Congress: Do They Have No Shame?

Posted February 23, 2011 | 10:07:29 (EST)

The next time you hear the word "bipartisan," think coward. If no one notices, word substitution can be a very effective persuasion device. Someone says to you, "You're stubborn," and you reply, "I am persistent." It's a useful technique and can be a respectable one -- but not when used...

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The King's Speech: Power in Confident and Engaging Communication

Posted February 8, 2011 | 12:27:50 (EST)

If you haven't yet seen The King's Speech -- you should.

Having heard so many good things about the movie, I was sure that my expectations would be too high and I'd be disappointed. That didn't happen. I'd see The King's Speech again in a...

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Being Predictable -- the Relationship Kiss of Death

Posted January 28, 2011 | 16:12:50 (EST)

Tomorrow is the day -- the one when you surprise people. Why not? After all, being predictable does two things none of us should want: (1) Makes us easily managed by others who know how we'll react, and (2) Makes us boring. Neither is good for relationships -- whether personal...

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Civility: Far More Than Timidity and Nice People Being Nicer

Posted January 19, 2011 | 12:42:11 (EST)

I've been thinking about the calls for greater civility delivered eloquently by President Obama and many in the media. David Brooks, for example, with whom on occasion I've disagreed, wrote of civility as "the natural state for people who know how limited their own individual powers...

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Can Pathological Politics Be Reversed?

Posted January 9, 2011 | 16:40:02 (EST)

Each of us is at least 75 percent responsible for how others treat us. If they are disdainful and we do not respond in a way that causes them to change their tone and attitude, then we essentially encourage them to continue to berate us.

This is what...

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Why Republicans Get to Cry

Posted December 13, 2010 | 10:09:47 (EST)

On 60 Minutes Sunday you may have seen a story about John Boehner, presumptive speaker of the House. He cried a few times, almost losing it once. And yet he's one of the most powerful people in Washington.

While it's interesting that men like George Bush, Mitt...

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Presidential Potshots: Is There Any Excuse?

Posted December 8, 2010 | 12:51:06 (EST)

Leaving aside the controversy surrounding President Obama's proposed tax cut "deal," he is becoming his own worst enemy. Yesterday's demonstration of how to alienate as many people as possible was a disaster. Who is advising him?

After a few words about priorities, Obama shifted into a...

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Abdicating to the Right: The Ascendant American Aristocracy

Posted December 1, 2010 | 19:03:35 (EST)

Income inequality is about to get worse, according to David Segal's article in Sunday's New York Times. Those of us not in the beneficiary column, the article suggests, had better start thinking of which "artisanal services" we can provide. In short, we need to identify what the rich...

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GOP Spring Loaded to a Hostile Position: The Response George Soros Wants

Posted November 18, 2010 | 12:49:47 (EST)

This level of GOP hostility is an image the president should keep firmly in his mind. Spring loaded to a hostile position is a frame and frame of mind he should stop to remember before meeting with any of that party's members.

The vote against

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Technology Actually Can Rot Your Teenager's Brain -- and Maybe Yours Too

Posted November 15, 2010 | 19:45:30 (EST)

Recently a reporter asked a question I get asked often now: Is dependence on social technology hurting how people communicate? Are we less agile than before, less attentive to nonverbal cues because, frankly, we're getting out of practice? So many messages, including ones where two people break off a relationship,...

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Could This Be 'Learning on the Job'?

Posted November 12, 2010 | 15:27:51 (EST)

That was one of the criticisms of candidate Barack Obama -- that he would be learning on the job how to be president. It seemed a bit scary, but worth the risk as he had so much to offer. But now, don't you find yourself wishing he would learn on...

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When Compromise Is a Fool's Paradise

Posted November 10, 2010 | 12:31:12 (EST)

Many of us learned as children about the nineteenth-century American statesman and Secretary of State, Henry Clay, known also as the "great compromiser." A man admired by Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, no doubt he was a skilled statesman and communicator.

Years after initially learning about...

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Waiting for Obama: 60 Minutes of 'Nothing Very Definite'

Posted November 8, 2010 | 12:11:08 (EST)

Perhaps we are like Samuel Beckett's characters Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting For Godot. These men wait for a man they admit to hardly knowing but nonetheless someone they expect to change their lives. They anticipate he will sort out their problems. Yet as they wait and wait,...

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