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.

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

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.

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.

“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).