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Monthly Archives: January 2010
The ABC of thinking better
Possibly, one of the clubs with the largest membership lists in the world is the club of people who’ve been sacked. Even so, we often find it difficult to tell even those close to us that we’ve been fired, and losing one’s job is usually a deeply painful experience. Albert Ellis, one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, explains why this is so. He says that our way of thinking follows an ABC pattern: A is the initial fact which sets our thoughts in motion; B is our mental maps; and C is our subsequent behaviour. Continue reading
Posted in Personal Development
Tagged Abc, Albert Ellis, been sacked, initial fact, mental maps
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In search of justification lost
well-founded, are not welcome. As a result, we amass all the reasons we can think of in order to plough ahead regardless. Festinger coined the phrase “cognitive dissonance” to describe this phenomenon. Cognitive dissonance is the avoidance of keeping in our heads two concepts which are contradictory, such as “smoking is bad for me” and “I like smoking”, or “I never vote for left-leaning political parties” and “I think the centre-left party has a more coherent programme”. This mental duality creates an inner conflict and, as we tend to avoid uncertainty or pain, we strive to eliminate contradictory thoughts with arguments of all stripes. Moreover, we are very good at finding a whole kaleidoscope of pseudo-arguments to choose from. To take the examples above, we might say to ourselves: “it’s not scientifically proven that smoking causes lung cancer” or “political parties never carry out their programmes”. Continue reading
Posted in Personal Development
Tagged Cognitive dissonance, Festinger, justification, self-deception
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The 10 trends in human resources for 2010
What lies in store for people management in the coming year? In this post, I’d like to share those ideas which I think will have the greatest impact on human resources management this year. Of course, some of these ideas will be more appropriate for some sectors than for others; and only time will tell if these predictions turn out to be prescient…
1. Leadership 2.0: A new style of people management, more open and less distant, is gradually making headway. The creation of this new culture is being helped by Web 2.0 applications that focus on cooperation, new ways of perceiving value in companies, and the presence of a digitally literate workforce. However, this culture change will not be achieved primarily because of technology, but because of a different conception of managing people; in particular, a more cooperative, transparent and less distant type of leadership. As happened with Internet at the beginning, some companies will be quick to embrace new styles of management facilitated by technological advances, while others will be mere passive observers. When we talk about a 2.0. approach, we do not just mean having a blog (!), but far more profound changes in management style. Continue reading
The self and others: mirror neurons
In the sixties, Albert Bandura carried out an experiment that was a revelation at the time. He showed a group of children a recording of someone beating a doll. When the recording finished, the children, without any prompting, picked up dolls that were lying around the room and started to beat them, just as they had seen in the video. This exercise demonstrated that we learn through observing, and, consequently, that it is far better for us if we have positive role models. The reason behind this imitative behaviour can be found in the malleability of our brain. Continue reading
Posted in Emotions
Tagged Albert Bandura, Giacomo Rizzolatti, mirror neurons, Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
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