Doodling for the whole new engineer
Sunni Brown’s TED talk extolls the virtues of doodling to enhance complex thinking skills.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fx0QcHyrFk
For more information check out her website sunnibrown.com.
Has the Internet Changed Your Brain?
OnlineCollege.org’s, 15 Big Ways The Internet Is Changing Our Brain , can take you inside on how scientists have begun to note that the internet has not only served to fulfill our brains’ curiosities, but also rewired them. The internet has provided us with a wealth of knowledge, but also a wealth of junk. But how does that impact our brain? Take a look at these surprising theories. The shortened form of the list appears below:
1. The Internet is our external hard drive
2. Children are learning differently
3. We hardly ever give tasks our full attention
4. We don’t bother to remember
5. We’re getting better at finding information
6. Difficult questions make us think about computers
7. IQ is increasing over time
8. Our concentration is suffering
9. We’re getting better at determining relevance
10. We’re becoming physically addicted to technology
11. The more you use the Internet, the more it lights up your brain
12. Our brains constantly seek out incoming information
13. We’ve become power browsers
14. Online thinking persists even offline
15. Creative thinking may suffer
How has the internet impacted the way you think?
Push forward with self-determination
Bev Jones writes about self-determination at Clearways Consulting. Why is it that some people can make one more step and push forward to reach a goal? Bev Jones shares the personal story of Municipal Judge-elect Gayle Williams Byer who exemplifies self-determination. Whether fighting breast cancer or staying in a tough election, self-determination moved Gayle Williams Byer forward:”You dig really deep when you don’t want to and you decide to take one more step.”
Read the full article here.
Resolution for the new year: learn to draw
Brian Bomeisler’s class, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (here), can take you from childlike images to actually drawing your portrait in five days. See my before drawing on the first day of class
and my drawing on the last day of class:
If you’re interested in more information about these classes a schedule is available here.
Keeping winning streaks alive
Bev Jones writes about winning streaks over at Clearways Consulting:
Why is it that some people can go from success to success, while others stumble fairly quickly, then seem to spend more time down than up? Of course luck can help, but the people who keep landing on their feet tend to have something in common. The perennial winners don’t take success for granted — they keep hustling, even in the good times.
Read the full article here, follow Bev Jones at clearwaysconsulting.com, or on Twitter @beverlyejones.
A list of leadership lists for 2011
Its the end of the year and time for lists. The following is a list of lists concerning leadership for 2011:
- The best leaders of 2011: Washington Post (here), Harvard/USNews (here), Time (here)
- The best leaders in educational technology of 2011: EdNet (here)
- The best leadership books of 2011: Washington Post (here), leadershipnow.com (here)
- The best blogs for future leaders of 2011: onlinecolleges.net (here)
- The best leadership development programs of 2011: leaderexcel.com (here)
- The ten big development goals for 2012: greatleadershipbydan.com (here)
For those interested in broader coverage of 2011 lists of lists the list here may be of value (or maybe not).
Give the gift of coaching
Stacia Garr at Bersin & Associates has a nice blog post about the value of coaching to organizational culture:
Consider giving the gift of coaching. In our 2011 High-Impact Performance Management research on coaching (click here for free webcast replay), we found that organizations with a coaching culture have much stronger employee engagement, employee productivity and customer satisfaction (see Figure 1). We also found a strong relationship between the effectiveness of organizations at teaching coaching and business outcomes. In short, coaching organizations are more effective organizations.
Read the full post here.
What coaching is not
Coaching as hot & what it is not. Executive or leadership coaching is hot according to a recent article in Forbes magazine (here), but what coaching is and is not is a topic of debate and confusion among coaches and clients, both. Some of the confusion stems from the number of practitioners who use the term “coach” in their service offerings without any training or study in coaching methods. ThreeJoy practices coaching according to the body of knowledge and ethical guidelines of the International Coaching Federation (ICF), and a consequence of that orientation is that a coach is not a mini-consultant or personal advice giver. Rather, in the ICF framing, a coach comes in service to a resourceful, creative, and whole client by engaging in a process of reflective inquiry to help the client uncover and strengthen the leader within.
Coaching as questions & listening. Practically, what this means is that clients come to coaching looking to the coach for answers or solutions to particular problems they face and the best coaches will not know–or even think they know–what the client should do in response to this or that problem or situation. Instead of answers or solutions, clients get questions, usually open-ended questions–that help sort out the problematic situation–the presenting issue–clearly and at an appropriate level of detail. Moreover, instead of advice, clients get listened to in a very deep way, in a way that can be powerfully enabling in and of itself. Feeling felt by the coach’s listening, to use a term used by Dan Siegel (here) and Mark Goulston (here), can be deeply satisfying in a way that builds a client’s confidence to be able to examine and address problems him- or herself.
Coaching as building meta-skill. And at the end of the coaching day, as an engagement progresses, the client finds that what he or she is learning is not solutions to particular problems or situations at work. Yes, the presenting issue gets solved (or resolved), and the other situations that were once so daunting no longer seem much like problems, but the reason this occurs is not so much that the coaching is addressing a series of challenges or issues. What happens in the coaching process is deeper and more profound–and much longer lasting and effective. Successful coaching engagements help clients build a certain kind of meta-skill, a skill about about building skill, that the client can use in their work lives, in their lives generally. This meta-skill is composed of the heightened ability to
- notice their own thoughts, feelings, and stories and the thoughts, feelings, and stories of others,
- reflect and make sense of those thoughts, feelings, and stories,
- move forward based on those reflections,
- and learn from the overall experience.
Of course, these deep skills are not built overnight, but in a certain sense a good coach is working hard to put him- or herself out of business by enabling the client to manage more frequently, effectively, and reliably without the coach’s aid. For more information about coaching, contact Dave Goldberg at deg@threejoy.com.
iFoundry in one paragraph
ThreeJoy president, Dave Goldberg, writes a paragraph on the activities leading to and thru the Illinois Foundry for Innovation Education over at Students for a Smarter Planet (here).