- Category: Managers & Teams
Nature and Nurture
In his bestselling book, The Shallows, author Nicholas Carr draws from personal experience as a user of the Internet to assert that media aren’t just channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. That is, our brains change in response to what we expose it to.
Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist, disagrees. As he puts it, the brain is not “a blob of clay pounded into shape by experience.” In fact, he insists that the brain’s wiring, “may change a bit when we learn a new fact or skill, but its basic cognitive architecture remains the same.”
- Category: Managers & Teams
In working with a well-known company who had conducted system-wide diversity training, I learned from the attendees that the gist of the message was to make them wrong for their hiring policies of the past. The managers were made to feel guilty for hiring the best and the brightest college grads, and, along with other guilt-laden discussions, were provided a simple answer: just hire more women and minorities. The purpose of doing so was not clear to them, other than that this was the law. The women and minorities in the room said they felt undermined, embarrassed. I am sure there was more taught than this, but that is the message they heard.
- Category: Managers & Teams
Lou was standing when Gary came into his office. He opened impatiently, “It’s been a bad morning, Gary. I hope this won’t take long. I’ve got to catch a plane this afternoon. I just found out an hour ago.” Uh Oh, thought Gary, but, typical for his brainstyle, he showed no visible reaction when under pressure.