When and Why To Put a Lid On It

Advice for managers in this short review of an article by Marshall Goldsmith. Click on the Excerpts, News, Reviews link to the right, under Pages

Links of the Week are up 3/31/09

Find free stuff, important world news, and research confirming what women have known for a long time. See the link to the right, under Pages.

No posts for a while

Just a note – we are at flood stage here in Fargo, North Dakota. I have not been putting time into blogging in the past 2 weeks and may not for a few more. Best wishes until next post. ~ Catherine

How Albert’s 5% Trick Can Get You Going

See the Excerpts, News, Reviews page for more on this really practical way to get started working on an overwhelming or dreaded task. (See toolbar to the right, under Pages)

Are You Ready? Finally, A Way to Learn About Our (Possible) Prejudices

Take a scientifically designed demo test at a site called Project Implicit:

http://implicit.harvard.edu.implicit/demo/takeatest.html

Here you will have a chance to discover where you may have unconscious prejudices about other people.  The above link goes to a page with a disclaimer (we might not like what we learn from taking these tests).  At the bottom is the link to take the demo tests.

3 Reasons to Check it Out

I’ve got some  surprises, both serious and fun, in a new page called ‘Links of the Week.’  I’ll be updating that regularly.

I’m also adding a page called ‘Beside Still Waters’ where I’ll post inspiring and thought-provoking quotations, questions, articles and such.  The first post is definitely worth reading – have a look.

Look to the sidebar just to the right (under Pages) and you’ll find both new pages.

Cheers and have a good week!      ~ Catherine

OpenZine

Create & Contribute – Free service will help you create your own online magazine:          www.openzine.com

Excerpts, News, Reviews

In The Secret Language of Leadership, Stephen Denning describes his experience of transforming the World Bank into a knowledge-sharing organization better positioned to take on the task of relieving global poverty.

The book describes how transformational leaders can engage and inspire, or lose the people and constituencies that are key to the changes they are proposing. Denning’s words and ideas are useful for leaders, managers, supervisors in all sectors, and, essentially, for anyone who is communicating a message they care about to any audience.

Pointing out a common and yet commonly unrecognized error on the part of leaders, Denning writes, “If leaders succumb to the fundamental attribution error and think of their followers as obstacles, as enemies, as resisters, as opponents, as malcontents, or as stupid or obstinate or irresponsible or ill-willed, the risk of a disconnect will be significant.”

To counter this potentially fatal error in thinking and relating, Denning describes the importance of truly understanding one’s audience, and realizing that any audience today is likely to include cultures, values, opinions, backgrounds, and styles that are different from one’s own:

“[Leaders] need to understand the current story that their listeners are living . . . On the surface, this world will consist of the familiar, observable, routine, predictable activities of the human animal. But below this surface . . . is a realm of deeper feelings, of the desire of loving and being loved, of the pain of not realizing deep ambitions, of the dilemmas of balancing personal goals with those of others, of a looming sense of mortality. It is this deeper world that is the source from which all enduring enthusiasm for change will come. And it is this world that leaders must understand.”

The book is filled with passage after passage of thought-provoking and practical advice. Check it out.  It might transform the way you work.

The U.S. does not torture

I watched the news tonight and saw footage of Obama signing the executive orders of the day. He restated what he’s said before, emphatically – “The U.S. does not torture.”  I was surprised, shocked, even, to find that upon hearing our nation’s president say this with such conviction, and enacting his statement with an order banning torture – I immediately burst into tears. I wept. I sobbed.

I worked in Thailand for 4 years with people seeking refuge there from Burma’s oppressive military regime. I heard countless stories of rape and torture of ethnic minorities by the Burmese military.  Having been close to people who suffered so horribly from torture and brutalization of a military waging war on civilians, I have been more deeply appalled by the actions of our own military, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions and other international law.

I had not realized until tonight quite how deeply, viscerally appalled I have been feeling for years. I am unspeakably grateful that the tides are turning and that the public who elected Obama president are in agreement.

More Poetry and Politics

J.K. Rowling on Imagination:

“Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared . . .”

“We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”

Find more excerpts from “The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination,” J.K. Rowling’s speech at Commencement, Harvard University, June, 2008, on Norah Dooley’s blogspot (see links).