More than a decade ago, I taught at a small, private school for Native Americans in Santa Fe. There were only about a dozen faculty for our school in grades 7-12, and we were close.
It is with great sadness that I read about the murder of one of my former colleagues, Sister Marguerite, on Halloween. She was extremely kind to me when I was a fledgling teacher, and she was greatly committed to social justice work in the poorest communities. My prayers are with her roommate, and my teaching mentor, Sister Magdalena, and the community of Navajo, New Mexico.
I’ve noticed that many of us have become addicted to our Blackberries. We bring them everywhere; we check them incessantly. But how do you get the attention of a group of people who are using Blackberries rather than listening to a presentation? Or using Blackberries rather than participating in a meeting? Or using Blackberries to fact check you as you are speaking? This article, How to Deal with a Blackberry Junkie, addresses the issue in part using K-12 teaching techniques:
Make meetings more interactive. Push for participation. Call on — and call out — that CMO. Create expectations that inhibit leaning back and promote the lean forward. If people think they can get away with diverting their attention, they will. Do you think commercial airline pilots all over the world will think twice before they spend more than 15 minutes on their laptops doing non-flight-related calculations? I do. Do you think students will think twice about IM-ing their sweetheart if there’s a better than even chance they’ll be called on in class? I do. Do you think a CMO will think twice before checking her messages if two of the best-regarded advertising agencies simply shut up — or decline to present — until she makes it clear to everyone in the room that she’s fully engaged? I do.
It’s not bad advice, but I wonder if it will work if we are dealing with genuine addictions to electronica. Thoughts?
Tenure is a big deal in the academic community. It’s the equivalent of a permanent position, and most of us in other areas of the workforce know how rare those are.
At DePaul University, five of seven professors denied tenure were women, and four of them appealed the decision, but were turned down by the president. The tenure review process is described this way:
Professors are initially evaluated by their departments and colleges — that is, by colleagues in the same field — but ultimately by a universitywide academic board. Under that system, the task force concluded, “the judgments and expertise of dozens of faculty are overturned by the majority of a small committee, most of whom may not have any expertise in the areas they are assessing.”
Unlike at other universities, the tenure review board at DePaul does not just defer to the judgment of a professor’s departmental colleagues. That board’s actions go to the president for a final decision.
Tenure review isn’t fair, and can determine the composition of a university in terms of professorial makeup for decades to come. But how can you fix a system, such as the one at DePaul, when management doesn’t think it needs to be fixed?
How to Spoil a Day at the Office has numerous real-life examples of passive-aggressive behavior. What is striking is how proud of their behavior people are! You can read the entire article here, but here’s an example:
I have a co-worker who relies on e-mails and phone calls anytime he wants to communicate–even though we all work together in the same office building, on the same floor! Most of the time, it would be quicker for him to just get up out of his seat and tell me something face-to-face than it is for him to dial my extension or type it out, but he always avoids personal contact. It is really annoying, so I make it a point to never answer phone calls when I see they are from him and to ignore anything he sends in an e-mail!
In light of David Letterman’s statement, “I have had sex with women who work for me” a former writer on Late Night with David Letterman has written an essay in Vanity Fair that describes the workplace:
Without naming names or digging up decades-old dirt, let’s address the pertinent questions. Did Dave hit on me? No. Did he pay me enough extra attention that it was noted by another writer? Yes. Was I aware of rumors that Dave was having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Was I aware that other high-level male employees were having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Did these female staffers have access to information and wield power disproportionate to their job titles? Yes. Did that create a hostile work environment? Yes. Did I believe these female staffers were benefiting professionally from their personal relationships? Yes. Did that make me feel demeaned? Completely. Did I say anything at the time? Sadly, no.
And the writer did what many of us do: we walk away. Talking to someone in HR seems too difficult, and too filled with potentially devastating reprecussions.
Surviving the Workday contributor, GhostGirl, wrote a post on meeting anxiety a while ago that has received many hits recently, and even some new comments. This makes me wonder if our recession is causing us to be more anxious about meetings in the workplace.
Generally speaking, I think meetings make people anxious when they don’t know know what is going to happen at the meeting and what their role might be. Will I be called on? Will I need to lead a portion of the meeting? Should I do anything to prepare for the meeting? This leads to a sense of uncertainty about the meeting, which can cause anxiety. As a meeting organizer, you can address these concerns by clearly assigning roles in an agenda, which is distributed ahead of time. It seems obvious enough, but often is not done.
What makes you anxious about meetings?
Why Contracting May Be Your Next Move seems to be a pretty biased article masquerading as journalism. However, the comments seem to provide far more realistic feedback about the realities of contracting. Although the article does describe the drawbacks (less of a sense of permanency, less benefits, less chance to search for permanent work), these seem underplayed when placed against considerable benefits named of contract work (get hired faster, build your resume, boost your confidence, expand your network, it goes on and on in this fashion). It’s worth reading in case you’re considering contracting, but please don’t consider it necessarily factual.
I hear that the Millennials are Poised to Replace the Baby Boomers in the workplace:
In the coming years, Gen Y will replace the Baby Boomers in the workplace. Gen Y brings its own unique demands. Cathy Benko, co-chairman of Deloitte, in her book, Mass Career Customization, sees the corporate ladder motif being replaced with a latticework based on workers’ personal goals and aspirations.. Smart companies are reacting to the new workforce conditions dictated by Gen Y. And while Gen Y likes the 24/7 social networking connection and dislikes long working hours , they are fundamentally conservative in their lifestyle, with a dislike of ambiguity and risk.
I’ve heard this notion of Baby Boomers being replaced by Millennials a number of times. The article suggests that Generation X has family issues to deal with and is in the process of shifting in and out of the workforce, so that Boomers will be replaced by Millenials rather than Gen X.
You know that being a college student can be difficult, right? That’s why you need a personal assistant. At least one Georgetown undergraduate thinks that he does. What’s truly amazing is that this student isn’t actually willing to pay for your time in full:
Tasks such as doing laundry that involve a lot of waiting around (time when you could be doing other tasks or doing your own stuff) will be counted for the approximate amount of time it would take to do the labor involved. For instance, laundry will be counted for half an hour even though a laundry cycle takes 1.5 hrs to complete.
It’s a good thing we’re not all paid like that! Other tasks include making the student’s bed, organizing the closet, and picking him up from work.
I’ve been pondering criticism recently, and 8 Ways to Encourage Your Pastor prompted some more thinking.
Some of the difficulty of being a writer (and also a minister) has to do with the regularity of feedback. As a working writer, I receive a lot of feedback, and most of it negative. If I were truly a bad writer, I’m convinced I simply wouldn’t get work (or not repeat work and not repeat clients). So, in my mind, it’s not so much that my writing is bad, but that the feedback is negative because that’s how people are used to operating in the world. They don’t tell you what works; they tell you didn’t work for them.
In 8 Ways to Encourage Your Pastor, the number one way to encourage your minister is to cut the criticism:
Presbyterian minister Fred Rogers, creator and host of television’s “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood,” recently gave an address describing the time he was a student at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and attended a different church each Sunday in order to hear a variety of preachers.
One Sunday he was treated to “the most poorly crafted sermon (he) had ever heard.” But when he turned to the friend who had accompanied him, he found her in tears.
“It was exactly what I needed to hear,” she told Rogers.
“That’s when I realized,” he told his audience, “that the space between someone doing the best he or she can and someone in need is holy ground. The Holy Spirit had transformed that feeble sermon for her and as it turned out, for me too.”
If you’re a boss, you should definitely read How to be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy. It reminds us that an ill thought out turn of phrase can lead to rampant speculation in a bad economy. More importantly, it also reminds us that being the boss leads to a certain world view that it’s difficult to overcome. A little power goes to our heads:
In this study, teams of three students each were instructed to produce a short policy paper. Two members of each team were randomly assigned to write the paper. The third member evaluated it and determined how much the other two would be paid, in effect making them subordinates. About 30 minutes into the meeting, the experimenter brought in a plate of five cookies—a welcome break that was in fact the focus of the experiment. No one was expected to reach for the last cookie on the plate, and no one did. Basic manners dictate such restraint. But what of the fourth cookie—the extra one that could be taken without negotiation or an awkward moment? It turns out that a little taste of power has a substantial effect. The “bosses” not only tended to take the fourth cookie but also displayed signs of “disinhibited” eating, chewing with their mouths open and scattering crumbs widely.
So there you have it: a little power, and you’re taking the last cookie, chewing with your mouth open, and eating like a slob. It’s difficult to overcome, but it’s not impossible with some foresight and manners.
In universities are ruled by married people, the author discusses the fact that 89% of university presidents are married. She wonders if there is an unwritten expectation that presidents must be married in order to have this top level position. It’s an interesting thought. We probably all carry some assumptions about the sort of life a person must lead to be a university president. Is married part of the assumptions?
The Chronicle of Higher Ed has an interesting article about blogging as an academic on a job search. The long and short of the advice? Just don’t do it.
We all have quirks. In a traditional interview process, we try our best to stifle them, or keep them below the threshold of annoyance and distraction. The search committee is composed of humans, who know that the applicants are humans, too, who have those things to hide. It’s in your interest, as an applicant, for them to stay hidden, not laid out in exquisite detail for all the world to read. If you stick your foot in your mouth during an interview, no one will interrupt to prevent you from doing further damage. So why risk doing it many times over by blabbing away in a blog?
We’ve seen the hapless job seekers who destroy the good thing they’ve got going on paper by being so irritating in person that we can’t wait to put them back on a plane. Our blogger applicants came off reasonably well at the initial interview, but once we hung up the phone and called up their blogs, we got to know “the real them” — better than we wanted, enough to conclude we didn’t want to know more.
It’s probably worth noting that most of the blogs that candidates had were personal blogs, in which they overshared their lives.
In Arguments Against ENDA, Dr. Jillian Weiss describes the arguments against transgender people in the workplace as “business necessity,” a common type of prejudice. Examples include, “It’s not me, but the customers won’t stand for it.” “I can’t have this person working for me because I’ll go out of business.” Generally, it is a way of transferring the prejudice to others in the interest of saving the business.
David Lazarus uses his column to describe some of the history and problems with employer-based healthcare:
Since the employer-based system took root during World War II as a way for businesses to cope with a government-imposed wage freeze, the deal has been fairly straightforward: Employers would offer this great benefit as a way to attract and retain workers, and workers in turn would be guaranteed affordable coverage for themselves and their families.
Your basic win-win situation.
But things have radically changed as healthcare costs continue to soar and as employers cut back on coverage, or require workers to shoulder an ever-growing share of expenses. Or both.
As a result, what was once a win-win now works primarily in employers’ favor. More than ever, their role as the provider of insurance for the vast majority of Americans serves as businesses’ most powerful tool in maintaining a stable and complacent workforce.
Clearly I’m playing with templates. You’ll just have to ride it out.
Neuroscience can contribute to better managing techniques. Here are two particularly interesting reviews of books from Psychology Today that examine “constructive feedback”:
Charles Jacobs, author of Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn’t Work and Other Supervisory Lessons From The Latest Brain Science, says the brain is wired to resist what is commonly termed constructive feedback, but is usually negative. When people encounter information that is in conflict with their self-image, their tendency is to change he information, rather than changing themselves. So when mangers give critical feedback to employees, the employees’ brain defense mechanism is activated because that information conflicts with what the brain remembers and knows.
Jacobs’ views are supported by management guru Aubrey C. Daniels, writing in his book, Oops! 13 Management Practices That Waste Time and Money. He cites a study by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) which found that 90% of performance appraisals are both painful and don’t work and further, produce an extremely low percentage of top performers. Modern brain research questions the validly of psychological testing, such as the Myers-Briggs test, used for employment decisions. These tests were developed long before we knew very much about how the brain processes anything.
Indian women have welcomed female-only trains to avoid harassment on the way to work:
For many years, women traveling by train sat with men, until crowding and security concerns prompted the railroad to reserve two compartments per train for women. But with trains badly overcrowded, men would break into cars for women and claim seats. Mumbai started operating two women-only trains in 1992, yet the program was never expanded. Then, with complaints rising from female passengers, Mamata Banerjee, the new minister of railways, announced the eight new Ladies Specials trains.
Possibly the Ladies Specials is not the best name for these trains.
The LA Times has a photo-essay on work and school lunches the same day as the New York Times. Must be time for back to school lunch packing. Also, this seems totally disgusting to me, and I really like empanadas.
I’ve never run into a chaplain at the airport, but it sounds like a great job in community ministry.
I’ve written about Bento box lunches before because I think it’s a great way to create an artistically pleasing lunch, if that’s important to you, but today the New York Times has a slideshow here that is delicious. And look how much they are enjoyed.