I met Karen Salmansohn (www.notsalmon.com) through her work on the Big Beacon’s posters & book cover (see www.facebook.com/bigbeacon), and since then I’ve become a big fan of her posters. She talks about internet posters as pattern interrupts (see here), and I do find that when my day is headed in a bad or unproductive direction emotionally, that […]
90% of your happiness is due to internal, not external matters. Watch this video to put a smile on your face for a week. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLJsdqxnZb0 Shawn Achor’s message of positive psych, gratitude, and positive action turns normal ideas of success on their head. Normally, we think that if we are successful then we will be […]
As I’ve read more on predictable patterns of adult development by such authors as Jane Loevinger, William Torbert, Robert Kegan, Susanne Cook-Greuter, and others, I’ve been thinking about the ways in which universities encourage and inhibit the development of their faculty. For example, in a framework presented by Cook-Greuter (here), there are three conventional stages of adult […]
I’m attending a course on negotiation at Harvard and we were shown a one-minute clip from Frans de Waal’s TED talk on Moral Behavior in Animals (full video here): httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8mynrRd7Ak Capuchin monkeys are fed different foods and the monkey fed a less desirable food has a surprising reaction to it.
It is increasingly commonplace to hear calls for student-centered education, but increasingly I’ve been thinking that the term doesn’t go far enough and have been using the term student-led learning instead. First, a lot of language concerning education has teacher-centered bias built in. One example is the recommended shift from the sage on the stage, lecturing with 20-old course notes, to the […]
Medalists: Gold, Bronze & Silver As the memory of the London Olympics fades into the rearview mirror, an interesting piece of psychological research gives us a clue to the origins of a certain kind of dysfunction in a number of universities. Researchers have noticed that among medalists in the Olympics, gold medalists and bronze medalists […]
I was watching the 1972 movie Young Winston with Robert Shaw, Anne Bancroft, and Simon Ward, and a number of the most powerful scenes were those when young Winston faced the criticism (and approval) of his father Lord Randolph Churchill, played by Robert Shaw. Watching these scenes reminded me that when working with male clients, […]
In strategic thinking circles, the SWOT model is a commonly used framework for strategic planning and stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The model is generative and has been helpful to many strategic planners over many years. Having said this, there’s an alternative that is getting increasing attention called SOAR or strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results. SOAR grows out of the […]
Readers of these posts may remember a brief discussion of Brene Brown’s work and video on the Power of Vulnerability here. Today, her latest book was released, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. In the following promotional video she talks about the book and its title’s origins in […]
Guest post by Garza Baldwin, www.baldwindavis.com Below is a nugget that may interest students of leadership. It comes in the form of a letter to Winston Churchill written by his wife Clementine in June 1940, just after her husband became Prime Minister. Speaking truth to power, she makes some observations that we all might wish […]