With Christmas around the corner, I asked my mentor the other day why he has been volunteering to organise the department Christmas party for years. I was intrigued.
Actually, I shouldn't have been.
A story from BBC News today gave me the reason. That comes from an experiment conducted by a graduate student at Stanford University's School of Business. Volunteers were first requested to select an answer from a number of emotional responses to different hypothetical scenarios. Stories like "driving down the road, hitting a small animal" allowed an assessment of participants' "guilt proneness." The participants then completed group tasks in which they had an opportunity, but no real incentive, to take charge - somewhat like organising the Christmas party for the office. In this innovative experiment, the research team found that the higher one's level of guilt proneness, the more likely he or she was to step up as a leader in the activity. But the real surprise comes with their observation that the guilt-prone participants performed better than those who were extroverted (a trait often associated with leadership skill, mind you) but not prone to guilty feelings.
By further evaluating the performance feedback for people in real management positions, the team confirmed that those who were more prone to feelings of guilt were more often rated by their clients, colleagues, and former managers to be effective leaders.
Now I see. The willingness of my mentor to organise the Christmas party turns out to be the hallmark of effective leadership.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Cracker
If you find that you start a busy day that you lose your energy before the fag end of the day, that you don't ever bother remembering it, that you feel lost along the way, it may be that there is nothing at the end to cheer you up.
That end-of-the-day event probably feels like desserts, like ice-cream that we buy ourselves after hard work. You don't need a seven-course dessert. It may simply be a flickering moment of good bite at a candy. And then, you get your sense of humor back.
It was a busy Tuesday packed with activity and clinic sessions today. I was tired, but I kept awake long enough to finish the clinic and sign all the letters. Then I wrote to invite reviewers for a newly submitted journal manuscript. The rest - student assignments - I was forced to leave unchecked till tomorrow.
On my journey back home, I found that I had lost my voice. Still, one thing put me in the spirit to laugh. I went to the public library and borrowed Alison Jay's storybook The Nutcracker for my dear daughter. That is a great read for her after our recent watching of The Nutcracker ice skating performance. Jasmine was truly enchanted by the new book. Sitting on her mum's lap, Jamsine listened to the story, drew in her breath, as amazed as the story character Clara in the Sugar Plum Fairy. Before long, I forgot the day's hustle and bustle.
That end-of-the-day event probably feels like desserts, like ice-cream that we buy ourselves after hard work. You don't need a seven-course dessert. It may simply be a flickering moment of good bite at a candy. And then, you get your sense of humor back.
It was a busy Tuesday packed with activity and clinic sessions today. I was tired, but I kept awake long enough to finish the clinic and sign all the letters. Then I wrote to invite reviewers for a newly submitted journal manuscript. The rest - student assignments - I was forced to leave unchecked till tomorrow.
On my journey back home, I found that I had lost my voice. Still, one thing put me in the spirit to laugh. I went to the public library and borrowed Alison Jay's storybook The Nutcracker for my dear daughter. That is a great read for her after our recent watching of The Nutcracker ice skating performance. Jasmine was truly enchanted by the new book. Sitting on her mum's lap, Jamsine listened to the story, drew in her breath, as amazed as the story character Clara in the Sugar Plum Fairy. Before long, I forgot the day's hustle and bustle.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Priming
One day, a professor asked his student to his office. The student walked down a long corridor, came through the doorway, and met his professor.
"Look, this is a scrambled-sentence test. You can find a list of five-word sets in front of you. Your task is to resemble a grammatical four-word sentence as quickly as you can out of each set."
"Yes sir," the student's face lit up at the examination paper. "This is easy."
01 him was worried she always
02 from are Florida oranges temperature
03 ball the throw toss silently
04 shoes give replace old the
05 he observes occasionally people watches
06 be will sweat lonely they
07 sky the seamless gray is
08 should now withdraw forgetful we
09 us bingo sing play let
10 sunlight makes temperature wrinkle raisins
After a while the student finished the test like a piece of cake. He said goodbye to the professor, satisfied. It had never dawned on him that he walked out of the office and down the hall much more slowly than the way he walked in few minutes ago.
How so? That was hardly a difficult test, it seems, that could have made the student tired or frustrated to walk at such a slow pace. So it is perhaps surprising to find the same aftermath - slow pace - when the test was repeated in other students. Nobody could get the energy to walk fast. Ever. It was like falling down Alice's rabbit hole. One simply got weird and slow after the scrambled-sentence test.
Yes, it is possible, and the odds can be calculated quite precisely, according to the psychologist John Bargh, when you take a closer look at the words. See? Words like "worried," "old," "lonely," "gray," and "wrinkle" are scattered all around to prime our brains about being old. The exercise, as it turns out, is never meant to be a language test. The unconscious exposure to the priming words simply make one act old and become slow. Easy enough.
"Look, this is a scrambled-sentence test. You can find a list of five-word sets in front of you. Your task is to resemble a grammatical four-word sentence as quickly as you can out of each set."
"Yes sir," the student's face lit up at the examination paper. "This is easy."
01 him was worried she always
02 from are Florida oranges temperature
03 ball the throw toss silently
04 shoes give replace old the
05 he observes occasionally people watches
06 be will sweat lonely they
07 sky the seamless gray is
08 should now withdraw forgetful we
09 us bingo sing play let
10 sunlight makes temperature wrinkle raisins
After a while the student finished the test like a piece of cake. He said goodbye to the professor, satisfied. It had never dawned on him that he walked out of the office and down the hall much more slowly than the way he walked in few minutes ago.
How so? That was hardly a difficult test, it seems, that could have made the student tired or frustrated to walk at such a slow pace. So it is perhaps surprising to find the same aftermath - slow pace - when the test was repeated in other students. Nobody could get the energy to walk fast. Ever. It was like falling down Alice's rabbit hole. One simply got weird and slow after the scrambled-sentence test.
Yes, it is possible, and the odds can be calculated quite precisely, according to the psychologist John Bargh, when you take a closer look at the words. See? Words like "worried," "old," "lonely," "gray," and "wrinkle" are scattered all around to prime our brains about being old. The exercise, as it turns out, is never meant to be a language test. The unconscious exposure to the priming words simply make one act old and become slow. Easy enough.
Friday, November 2, 2012
Healing
I went home last evening after giving a talk on open disclosure. That was a big term - open disclosure - close to naked; disclosure is in there, and appearing like a naked display. I wondered what my audience could have thought of my talk, what they could have said. But I was turning my attention to my daughter too soon to wonder long.
After dinner my wife told me a story at home.
Jasmine was crying at the top of her lungs all of a sudden in the afternoon. "What's the matter, Jasmine?" my maid asked, walking hurriedly out of the kitchen.
"I dooooon't want mom to come home," my daughter screamed, tears rolling down her cheeks. It was as unbelievable as the moon catching fire. My maid paused, looking at Jasmine's face and wondered. She then looked around the room, holding my daughter in her lap. Her eyes landed on one of our Charles Brown collection - with a broken neck. In a thoughtful voice my maid said: "I see. There we're. You must have worried to tell mom that you broke Charles Brown."
They talked over it for a while, and ended up putting Charles Brown under Jasmine's pillow. She herself would not have thought of this as casually metaphorical - almost like sweeping Charles Brown under the carpet. She didn't talk about Charles Brown when my wife went home. It just so happened that my wife saw Charles Brown, injured, at my daughter's bedroom. How did my wife talk to Jasmine? Hard to say, of course, but of all the things you might do at that moment, it's a pretty safe bet that we should help a little kid heal the wound.
This is the happiest story ending I've ever heard. It's about a mother and a daughter sitting together and putting glue to Charles Brown's broken neck. After the bedtime story, my wife asked Jasmine if she would tell mom when she breaks something again.
"Yes," said Jasmine affectionately, "and good night, mom."
After dinner my wife told me a story at home.
Jasmine was crying at the top of her lungs all of a sudden in the afternoon. "What's the matter, Jasmine?" my maid asked, walking hurriedly out of the kitchen.
"I dooooon't want mom to come home," my daughter screamed, tears rolling down her cheeks. It was as unbelievable as the moon catching fire. My maid paused, looking at Jasmine's face and wondered. She then looked around the room, holding my daughter in her lap. Her eyes landed on one of our Charles Brown collection - with a broken neck. In a thoughtful voice my maid said: "I see. There we're. You must have worried to tell mom that you broke Charles Brown."
They talked over it for a while, and ended up putting Charles Brown under Jasmine's pillow. She herself would not have thought of this as casually metaphorical - almost like sweeping Charles Brown under the carpet. She didn't talk about Charles Brown when my wife went home. It just so happened that my wife saw Charles Brown, injured, at my daughter's bedroom. How did my wife talk to Jasmine? Hard to say, of course, but of all the things you might do at that moment, it's a pretty safe bet that we should help a little kid heal the wound.
This is the happiest story ending I've ever heard. It's about a mother and a daughter sitting together and putting glue to Charles Brown's broken neck. After the bedtime story, my wife asked Jasmine if she would tell mom when she breaks something again.
"Yes," said Jasmine affectionately, "and good night, mom."
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