August 11, 2020

Leadership and Emotional Contagion

“Employees are not emotional islands. Rather, they continuously spread their own moods and receive and are influenced by others’ moods. When they work in groups, they literally can catch each others’ emotions like viruses, a phenomenon known as emotional contagion. ” Wharton @ Work, University of Pennsylvania There has been an important finding in neuroscience that should impact on how […]
August 18, 2016

Seeking Human Kindness

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” ― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas Is kindness “compassion in action?” While there are distinctions made between kindness, empathy, compassion and altruism, most people experience kindness as action. With kindness we take our cognitive experience of […]
July 9, 2015

Choices That Matter

Nothing is precious except that part of you which is in other people, and that part of others which is in you.  — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin It should be self-evident to all of us that the choices earlier generations made resulted in the quality of life we’re living now.  The past is prologue. Since the vast impact of the […]
April 28, 2015

Why Do We Have To “Promote” Kindness at Work?

 “I now realize I have been working with my eyes closed. I appreciate even more a professor with whom I work occasionally: he always makes the point that leaders, managers — everyone in fact — should never underestimate the importance of kindness at work.” Gill Corkindale, Harvard Business Review An article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) by author Gill Corkindale,  “The […]
February 1, 2015

The "Management Model" You Can’t Manage Without – Part 2

“Brain science’s transformation of management isn’t just about another new technique or model. It’s about shifting our paradigm to incorporate the hard data of science and fundamentally changing the way we think about business.”                                   Charles S. Jacobs, Management Rewired Neuroscience will revolutionize the way we do business. It will do that because it will eventually transform the way we view […]
October 30, 2014

Question The Answers ~ The Importance of Critical Thinking

It strikes me that this is an era of pressing choices – personal and collective.  Conditioned and habituated thinking cannot address the complexities we face. We’re  caught up in old, polarized, binary thinking that is not only an impediment to our growth – but regressive and potentially dangerous.  How do we make complex decisions in the face of such pressure?  […]
October 6, 2014

Listening to Empathy

 “The existentialists have constantly reminded us that what is worth understanding and knowing is our existence, the human condition, and that engagement and involvement are superior to a detached stance. Our mirror neurons show that we are not alone, but are biologically wired and evolutionary designed to be deeply interconnected with one another.” Marco Iacaboni, Mirroring People: The Science of […]
October 24, 2013

We’re Up Against our Mindsets

Mindsets aren’t a new concept to me. I’ve been working with my own for a long time. I’m now conscious that I’ve constructed walls and obstacles that are buried deep within my thinking patterns.  I’ve also had the good fortune to understand that many of these blocks in my thinking aren’t even my own. I inherited them or was taught […]
September 12, 2013

Work Isn’t Life

The historian and author, Studs Terkel, famously wrote, “Most of us have jobs that are too small for  our spirits.”   A few of you might be reacting to the title of this article thinking, “Hey, my work is my life,” or “My job is the most fulfilling thing in my life.” But that’s not what this article is about. Because life isn’t work. […]