Is Kindness a Strategy? - Jeffrey F. Rayport - Harvard Business Review

Is Kindness a Strategy? - Jeffrey F. Rayport - Harvard Business Review

JEFFREY F. RAYPORT

Jeffrey F. Rayport is an Operating Partner at Castanea Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm focused on retail, information, and marketing services, and was formerly a faculty member at Harvard Business School.

Is Kindness a Strategy?

11:17 AM Thursday March 22, 2012

A friend recently described a remarkable travel experience. Strange to say, the story was about an airline, and it wasn't a travel nightmare. Instead, it involved the recently bankrupt American Airlines doing something extraordinary — by putting kindness to work.

The story came from a colleague of his I'll call Frank. Frank lives in Dallas and was on his way to a board meeting in Boston. Frank was happily driving to Dallas-Fort Worth to make the non-stop when he got caught in glutinous morning traffic. He arrived at DFW late for his flight. The woman behind the counter looked at him, looked at his travel record, looked at the hundred people lined up at security, and informed him that he would never make it to the gate on time.

Most airline personnel would have stopped there and offered to book the next available flight — for a fee. If Frank was late, it was Frank's fault. If he missed his board meeting, that was his problem. Under such circumstances, pristine logic normally rules and mercy has no role.

In this case, this logic was proven wrong. The woman asked if Frank had bags to check. He did not. Hearing that, she suggested firmly that he remove his left shoe and sit on it. She summoned a bellman to rush over with a wheel chair, she put Frank in it with his bags, and she went careening off through security, using an express lane for her "invalid" guest. She took Frank all the way to the gate, and Frank made his flight. He also made the meeting on time — and told the entire board about the "miracle" he'd experienced at DFW.

Crisis averted.

I'm sure many supervisors at American would have issues with their colleague's innovative, if mildly deceptive, solution. But, no matter how you look at it, it was an act of genuine kindness. It's conventional wisdom in business that customers spread bad news five times as far and fast as good news. This, however, was a tale of generosity so dramatic that Frank is surely still telling people all about it.

How did an act of kindness become so compelling? A young woman with a generous and ingenious soul had gone the extra mile to solve Frank's problem. She proved herself a hero. As a result, she exalted American Airlines, too.

In today's socially wired world, positive word of mouth is an ever more prized commodity. Most companies solve problems when the fault lies with the company. For example, Ritz-Carlton Hotels are famous for making every problem into what the organization calls an "opportunity." It's based on the concept, introduced in HBR some two decades ago, that "service recovery" — a company's ability to respond quickly, decisively, and effectively to a service problem of its own making — is a powerful way to increase loyalty among existing customers.

Here's how it works. When a problem occurs, swift and effective resolution can elevate repurchase intent to a level that's actually greater than if the problem had never occurred at all. Every problem, if managed well, is thus an "opportunity" to boost overall loyalty among a company's already loyal customers. Spill soup on a guest in the hotel dining room? Solution: offer on the spot to dry clean the suit or, if the damage is severe, offer to replace it entirely. The customer is delighted; the employee has done the right thing; the hotel raises that customer's lifetime value.

The distinction between American Airlines' solution here and Ritz-Carlton's approach is, however, significant. American resolved a problem where the customer was at fault. In theory, Frank deserved to miss his flight.

It's hard to cite many businesses that make kindness the bedrock of their operating strategies. Frank's story is striking because it's so wildly off the spectrum of expected outcomes.

Now, I'm sure there were extenuating circumstances. Frank flies a lot, so he likely enjoys status in American's frequent flyer program. He's a prosperous senior executive, so he likely looked like an influencer among customers American would like to attract. He was able to make his flight with a relatively modest intervention, making the good deed viable. And the woman surely took pity on him because of his predicament. But, still. Who would expect this from an employee of a bankrupt airline?

Like all case studies, this is but a single data point. But it leaves me wondering what any business might stand to gain if it oriented its associates to look out aggressively for opportunities to perform true acts of kindness for their customers.

Consider the fact that kind acts don't generally add costs — unless you have employees giving away the store. As my colleague James L. Heskett of Harvard Business School observes, it's important to endow workers on the front line with "latitude within limits." Otherwise, a plethora of otherwise innocent acts of kindness could get costly.

But, assuming you've got such guidelines in place, kindness has a strategic role to play, especially when it comes to winning over customers in an intensely competitive and slowly recovering economy.

Just ask Frank. He has a new hands-down favorite airline. It's American. All things considered, that's a powerful outcome.

Einstein on Kindness, Our Shared Existence, and Life's Highest Ideals | Brain Pickings

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/03/19/einstein-on-kindness/

Einstein on Kindness, Our Shared Existence, and Life's Highest Ideals

19 MARCH, 2012 by Maria Popova

"Without the sense of fellowship with men of like mind… life would have seemed to me empty."

In times of turmoil, I often turn to one of my existential pillars of comfort: Albert Einstein's Ideas and Opinions — the definitive collection of the great thinker's essays on everything from science and religion to government to human nature, gathered under the supervision of Einstein himself. It's been a challenging week, one that's reminded me with merciless acuity the value of kindness and compassion, so I've once again turned to Einstein's timeless "ideas and opinions" on this spectrum of subjects.

On the ties of sympathy:

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people — first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving."

On public opinion, or what Paul Graham might call prestige:

One becomes sharply aware, but without regret, of the limits of mutual understanding and consonance with other people. No doubt, such a person loses some of his innocence and unconcern; on the other hand, he is largely independent of the opinions, habits, and judgments of his fellows and avoids the temptation to build his inner equilibrium upon such insecure foundations."

On our interconnectedness, interdependency, and shared existence:

When we survey our lives and endeavors we soon observe that almost the whole of our actions and desires are bound up with the existence of other human beings. We see that our whole nature resembles that of the social animals. We eat food that others have grown, wear clothes that others have made, live in houses that others have built. The greater part of our knowledge and beliefs has been communicated to us by other people through the medium of a language which others have created. Without language our mental capacities would be poor indeed, comparable to those of the higher animals; we have, therefore, to admit that we owe our principal advantage over the beasts to the fact of living in human society. The individual, if left alone from birth would remain primitive and beast-like in his thoughts and feelings to a degree that we can hardly conceive. The individual is what he is and has the significance that he has not so much in virtue of his individuality, but rather as a member of a great human society, which directs his material and spiritual existence from the cradle to the grave."

On good and evil, creative bravery, and human value:

A man's value to the community depends primarily on how far his feelings, thoughts, and actions are directed towards promoting the good of his fellows. We call him good or bad according to how he stands in this matter. It looks at first sight as if our estimate of a man depended entirely on his social qualities.

And yet such an attitude would be wrong. It is clear that all the valuable things, material, spiritual, and moral, which we receive from society can be traced back through countless generations to certain creative individuals. The use of fire, the cultivation of edible plants, the steam engine — each was discovered by one man.

Only the individual can think, and thereby create new values for society — nay, even set up new moral standards to which the life of the community conforms. Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community.

The health of society thus depends quite as much on the independence of the individuals composing it as on their close social cohesion."

On life's highest ideals:

[E]verybody has certain ideals which determine the direction of his endeavors and his judgments. In this sense I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves — such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Without the sense of fellowship with men of like mind, of preoccupation with the objective, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific research, life would have seemed to me empty."

Over the past week, I've been completely fascinated by the spectrum of responses to the Curator's Code — a project at whose heart is not the urge to reward ego, as some warped interpretations have suggested, but the desire to invite a generosity of spirit and a recognition that we each build upon one another's work and poetic vision. There have been some thoughtfully supportive responses, some balanced takes, and some heartbreakingly unkind, ungracious, and downright sinister reactions.

I had a conversation about this with my studiomate and collaborator Tina, better-known as Swiss Miss, and we both lamented about how profoundly disappointed we were in a portion of the design community, who chose not only to misinterpret both the practical implications and, far more importantly and tragically, the spirit of the project, but also to respond to their own misconceptions with venom and mean-spirited derision rather than constructive feedback.

When did we, as a community, make this kind of behavior acceptable? I've gotten dozens of personal emails bemoaning these responses, their tone and their intention, but, publicly, we've been tacitly taking it in full stride. This — this bullying, these personal attacks, this sad case of ganged-up mob mentality — is not okay.

Let's say this again. This is not okay.

At least not in my world — I refuse to live my life believing that the capacity for cruelty exceeds the kindness of the human heart. Allowing such hateful behavior, either as passive bystanders or by responding in kind, which I've taken great care not to do, is as heartbreaking as it is detrimental to the spirit of what I still consider, by and large, a talented, thoughtful, and considerate community.

Austin Kleon said it best: "Be nice. (The world is a small town.)"

There is a way to critique intelligently and respectfully, without eroding the validity of your disagreement. It boils down to manners.

As my dear friend Sharon wisely reminded me last week, and subsequently tweeted:

There are people who build things and people who tear things down. Just remember which side you're on."

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Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City | OnEarth Magazine

http://www.onearth.org/article/bird-on-fire-lessons-from-the-worlds-least-sustainable-city

Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City

Desert cities are notorious water-guzzlers, but could Phoenix break free from its brown reputation?

Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City

Andrew Ross

Oxford, 297 pp., $27.95

Phoenix has a terrible reputation in environmental circles. It uses a huge amount of water for a desert community -- more than twice the per capita rate of Seattle, which gets nearly 39 inches of rainfall a year -- and pumps most of it more than 300 miles uphill from the overtaxed Colorado River. Its air is brown with smog; its shadeless concrete landscape absorbs heat. And its black and Latino neighborhoods are cesspools of toxic waste. The recipe that created Phoenix seems fairly straightforward, says Andrew Ross, a cultural critic at New York University: "low taxes, light regulation, antiunion labor laws, cheap land and cheaper water, and big federal funding for defense industries and suburban infrastructure." The city's economy is largely dependent on construction and other industries tied to population growth -- a strategy that is obviously not sustainable.

One reaction is to turn away in horror from this sprawling, overheated monster. Instead, Ross made repeated visits over two years, interviewing more than 200 people to try to understand how Phoenix came to be what it is and determine whether there's any way it can be turned around.

"If Phoenix could become sustainable, then it could be done anywhere," he reasons. There's no point basking in the good news about places like Portland, Oregon, that are becoming yearly more sustainable and eco-aware without also gazing, as it were, into the eyes of the enemy. Cities like Phoenix, he writes, cannot be "written off as hopeless cases. They are simply the weakest links in a chain that has to be strengthened tenfold" if the planet is to remain livable in the face of climate change.

So can Phoenix ever become sustainable? Ross skeptically recounts the 2009 initiative from Mayor Phil Gordon to make it "the greenest city in America," which mostly seems to mean centrally planned technological fixes, from mass transit to an aggressive expansion of solar power achieved by wooing foreign solar energy concerns to the area -- even though many state politicians don't believe in climate change. None of these strategies is bad in itself, but they all presume and rely upon more growth. Likewise, Ross interviews the developers pushing growth in the shape of large, eco-friendly communities in what currently remains desert, finding them more excited about designing green on a blank slate than doing the complex and less glamorous work of increasing density in the central city. Perhaps the economic crisis, which has caused development to grind to a near halt, may determine whether the city can go beyond these superficial green measures and move toward genuine sustainability.

Bird on Fire feels in large part like an academic treatise, a trifle dry and carefully exhaustive. But Ross's own opinions do surface. He does not believe in the notion of sustainable growth. True sustainability, he argues, consists of rejecting growth and -- crucially -- achieving social equality. Over and over he returns to the notion that you can't buy your way out of an environmental hole with cool gadgets marketed to middle-class people. In a future Phoenix based on that approach, the wealthy will live in walled "eco-enclaves" while the hoi polloi are abandoned to deal with the ravages of climate change, pollution, and other legacies of environmental mismanagement. He fears that that way lies "eco-apartheid" -- a coinage of former Obama administration green czar Van Jones. Ross hopes instead for "healthy pathways out of poverty," such as community gardens and farms and green weatherization jobs.

Although Ross does not pose it explicitly, a question hovers over the whole book: Is a huge city in the middle of the desert that has to import nearly everything just a terrible idea? Should Phoenix simply be allowed to crash and burn? If that happened, people would leave and resource use would shrink, perhaps even down to sustainable levels. But what would rise from the ashes? An empty ring of exclusive eco-suburbs? Or a smaller city where justice for all, local food, and a dense urban core are surrounded by the bleaching remains of sprawling tract homes, their taps dry and their swimming pools slowly filling with sand? After reading Ross, either future sounds more plausible than the city's current vision of growth without end.

50 Quotes from Jim Rohn for a Better Life by Janet Callaway |

http://www.janetcallaway.com/50-quotes-from-jim-rohn-for-a-better-life/

The Neuroscience of Your Brain On Fiction - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-brain-on-fiction.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Your Brain on Fiction

AMID the squawks and pings of our digital devices, the old-fashioned virtues of reading novels can seem faded, even futile. But new support for the value of fiction is arriving from an unexpected quarter: neuroscience.

Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.

Researchers have long known that the "classical" language regions, like Broca's area and Wernicke's area, are involved in how the brain interprets written words. What scientists have come to realize in the last few years is that narratives activate many other parts of our brains as well, suggesting why the experience of reading can feel so alive. Words like "lavender," "cinnamon" and "soap," for example, elicit a response not only from the language-processing areas of our brains, but also those devoted to dealing with smells.

In a 2006 study published in the journal NeuroImage, researchers in Spain asked participants to read words with strong odor associations, along with neutral words, while their brains were being scanned by a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. When subjects looked at the Spanish words for "perfume" and "coffee," their primary olfactory cortex lit up; when they saw the words that mean "chair" and "key," this region remained dark. The way the brain handles metaphors has also received extensive study; some scientists have contended that figures of speech like "a rough day" are so familiar that they are treated simply as words and no more. Last month, however, a team of researchers from Emory University reported in Brain & Language that when subjects in their laboratory read a metaphor involving texture, the sensory cortex, responsible for perceiving texture through touch, became active. Metaphors like "The singer had a velvet voice" and "He had leathery hands" roused the sensory cortex, while phrases matched for meaning, like "The singer had a pleasing voice" and "He had strong hands," did not.

Researchers have discovered that words describing motion also stimulate regions of the brain distinct from language-processing areas. In a study led by the cognitive scientist Véronique Boulenger, of the Laboratory of Language Dynamics in France, the brains of participants were scanned as they read sentences like "John grasped the object" and "Pablo kicked the ball." The scans revealed activity in the motor cortex, which coordinates the body's movements. What's more, this activity was concentrated in one part of the motor cortex when the movement described was arm-related and in another part when the movement concerned the leg.

The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated. Keith Oatley, an emeritus professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto (and a published novelist), has proposed that reading produces a vivid simulation of reality, one that "runs on minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers." Fiction — with its redolent details, imaginative metaphors and attentive descriptions of people and their actions — offers an especially rich replica. Indeed, in one respect novels go beyond simulating reality to give readers an experience unavailable off the page: the opportunity to enter fully into other people's thoughts and feelings.

The novel, of course, is an unequaled medium for the exploration of human social and emotional life. And there is evidence that just as the brain responds to depictions of smells and textures and movements as if they were the real thing, so it treats the interactions among fictional characters as something like real-life social encounters.

Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, performed an analysis of 86 fMRI studies, published last year in the Annual Review of Psychology, and concluded that there was substantial overlap in the brain networks used to understand stories and the networks used to navigate interactions with other individuals — in particular, interactions in which we're trying to figure out the thoughts and feelings of others. Scientists call this capacity of the brain to construct a map of other people's intentions "theory of mind." Narratives offer a unique opportunity to engage this capacity, as we identify with characters' longings and frustrations, guess at their hidden motives and track their encounters with friends and enemies, neighbors and lovers.

It is an exercise that hones our real-life social skills, another body of research suggests. Dr. Oatley and Dr. Mar, in collaboration with several other scientists, reported in two studies, published in 2006 and 2009, that individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective. This relationship persisted even after the researchers accounted for the possibility that more empathetic individuals might prefer reading novels. A 2010 study by Dr. Mar found a similar result in preschool-age children: the more stories they had read to them, the keener their theory of mind — an effect that was also produced by watching movies but, curiously, not by watching television. (Dr. Mar has conjectured that because children often watch TV alone, but go to the movies with their parents, they may experience more "parent-children conversations about mental states" when it comes to films.)

Fiction, Dr. Oatley notes, "is a particularly useful simulation because negotiating the social world effectively is extremely tricky, requiring us to weigh up myriad interacting instances of cause and effect. Just as computer simulations can help us get to grips with complex problems such as flying a plane or forecasting the weather, so novels, stories and dramas can help us understand the complexities of social life."

These findings will affirm the experience of readers who have felt illuminated and instructed by a novel, who have found themselves comparing a plucky young woman to Elizabeth Bennet or a tiresome pedant to Edward Casaubon. Reading great literature, it has long been averred, enlarges and improves us as human beings. Brain science shows this claim is truer than we imagined.

Annie Murphy Paul is the author, most recently, of "Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives."

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/10-questions-that-will-improve-results-in-any-area.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LifeHack+%28lifehack.org%29

10 Questions That Will Improve Results in Any Area

The only foolish question is the one that was never asked!

When you begin any project, are trying to make a change in your life, or are faced with a difficult undertaking, the best way to improve your result is to ask the important questions first. If you are working as part of a team, some questions may need to be asked of others. When working towards an individual goal, you will be the one giving the answers.

Ask, ask, ask — until you're confident that you have a firm understanding. Don't wait until you're stuck and spinning your wheels. Ask the questions and find the answers first!

Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers. – Anthony Robbins

Questions

Why am I doing this?

It's important to understand the reason behind anything you undertake. Whether it's a goal, task, habit, or project, "why am I doing this?" should be the first question you ask yourself. Understanding the reason behind the actions can be a tremendous motivator.

What is the desired outcome?

Without being clear about the desired result, you can't plan how to get there. Identify what you're trying to accomplish and exactly what that will look like. Clarity is key. Vague targets are rarely attained. Defined and tangible objectives have much greater success.

When is the deadline and are there periodic checkpoints?

Know when the action or project needs to be complete. Be aware of any phases or interim deadlines along the way. If you know how much time you have to work with, you can better plan backwards and set aside the necessary amount of time.

What is my role?

Understanding your role is crucial. Are you the leader or a worker bee? Are you a researcher or a communicator? Are you a team coordinator or planner? It's important to know which role you play so you can align your actions. If it is an individual undertaking, then you are most likely all of the above.

Who is responsible or accountable for which tasks or projects?

This is related your role, but in a more specific and tangible way. Determine which specific tasks you are personally responsible for. Know who maintains accountability. Perhaps you are the one whom others are accountable. Define your responsibilities.

Do I have metrics or some form of measurement?

Establish a measurement of success, so that progress can be determined. If metrics are set by someone else, know what they are and if there is any flexibility.

What are the possible roadblocks or obstacles?

We almost always encounter snags along the way to completion. However, difficulties can more easily be overcome if we can prepare for them. It's not always possible to prepare, complications by their very nature, are frequently unforeseen, but if you at least try to anticipate potential setbacks, they can often be resolved quickly.

What are the available resources?

Be aware of what resources are available. Be cognizant of the number of people involved or accessible to you and their skills. Be honest about the amount of time that can be committed. Also, understand if there are financial constraints.

How important is this project or task?

The importance of any goal or project determines how much attention and effort it deserves. Higher priority items get moved to the top of the list, while less crucial tasks can often be pushed back. If a project affects the profitability of a business or the health and well-being of an individual, it usually gets top priority.

What can I do to be more effective?

Develop strategies to help you be more efficient and productive. Improve the quality of your work by utilizing useful and  effective tools. Better organizational skills greatly enhance effectiveness. Learn to be resourceful.

Better Results

Asking questions is a valuable tool in every area of business and life. This often-overlooked strategy can make the difference between success and failure. When we get clear about what we are trying to accomplish and why, we have a much better chance of attaining the desired result. Likewise, when we align our actions with what is expected of us, we can better meet our responsibilities. Finally, if we plan and prepare we can best utilize the skills and resources available to us to achieve the most success.

(Photo credit: …Inerrogation Symbol… via Shutterstock)

Next Article: How to Be More Persuasive »

Why We Love: 5 Must-Read Books on the Psychology of Love | Brain Pickings

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/04/18/5-must-read-books-on-love/

Why We Love: 5 Books on the Psychology of Love

18 APRIL, 2011 by Maria Popova

What Oscar Wilde has to do with Hippocrates and the neurochemistry of romance.

It's often said that every song, every poem, every novel, every painting ever created is in some way "about" love. What this really means is that love is a central theme, an underlying preoccupation, in humanity's greatest works. But what exactly is love? How does its mechanism spur such poeticism, and how does it lodge itself in our minds, hearts and souls so completely, so stubbornly, as to permeate every aspect of the human imagination? Today, we turn to 5 essential books that are "about" love in a different way — they turn an inquisitive lens towards this grand phenomenon and try to understand where it comes from, how it works, and what it means for the human condition.

ESSAYS IN LOVE

No superlative is an exaggeration of Alain de Botton's humble brilliance spanning everything from philosophy to architecture. Essays in Love is precisely the kind of thoughtful, poetic, highly intelligent tome De Botton has grown famous for. Part novel, part philosophical inquiry into the origin and machinery of romantic love, the book follows the story of a love affair, tracing each stage — from the initial dopamine-driven lovesickness to the despair of love's demise — through a beautiful blend of intellectual analysis and deeply human felt emotion. In De Botton's classic style of networked knowledge, the narrative is sprinkled with references to and quotes from the major Western philosophers, yet equally reflective of his signature style of absorbing, highly readable narrative.

Every fall into love involves [to adapt Oscar Wilde] the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping that we will not find in the other what we know is in ourselves – all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise and brute stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one, and decide that everything that lies within it will somehow be free of our faults and hence lovable. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through union with the beloved, hope somehow to maintain [against evidence of all self-knowledge] a precarious faith in the species."

WHY WE LOVE

You might recall biological anthropologist Helen Fisher's work from this fascinating discussion of how antidepressants impact the experience of romantic love. That's just one of a myriad equally fascinating facets of love Fisher dissects in Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love — a journey into the mind's blend of neurochemistry and storytelling, the hormones and neurotransmitters that make us feel certain emotions, and the stories we choose to tell ourselves about those emotions. Fisher outlines the three key components of love, each involving different but connected brain systems — lust, driven by androgens and estrogens, the craving for sexual gratification; attraction, characterized by high dopamine and norepinephrine levels and low serotonin, euphoria when things are going well and terrible mood swings when they're not, focused attention, obsessive thinking, and intense craving for the individual; and attachment, commandeered by the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin and associated with the sense of calm, peace, and stability one feels with a long-term partner — and brings a researcher's lens to fundamental questions about passion and obsession, joy and jealousy, monogamy and divorce.

Sample her work with this fantastic TED talk on the brain in love:

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE

Originally written in 1988, The Psychology of Love is an anthology of 16 academic, though highly readable, papers dissecting various aspects of love. The collection is divided into five parts, each focusing on a specific facet of understanding love, from global theories that explain the phenomenon, to the psychology of relationship maintenance, to a critical overview of the field of love research.

For many people, love is the most important thing in their lives. Without it, they feel as though their lives are incomplete. But what is "it"? This question has been addressed by poets, novelists, philosophers, theologians, and, of course, psychologists, among others. This book presents the attempts of contemporary psychologists whose field of expertise is the study of love and close relationships to figure out just what love is."

The book is best-read in tandem with The New Psychology of Love, the 2008 follow-up to the original title — a priceless parallel that captures how scientific and technological innovation has improved and, in some cases, shifted our understanding of love's psychological underbelly, and perhaps more importantly, the curious fact that nearly 25 years later, we still have no succinct and singular definition of "love."

FALLING IN LOVE

Have you ever encountered a couple with disproportionately unequal attraction levels, only to find yourself thinking that the less-attractive person "must be really funny" or "is probably some sort of genius" or some other rational explanation of the seemingly mismatched pairing? In Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose, social psychologist and researcher Ayala Malach Pines tackles this and many other mysteries of the psychology of mate selection through a masterfully woven mesh of social and clinical approaches to understanding romance. The book extracts its key insights from three case studies: An interview-based study of 100 romantic relationships, a cross-cultural, data-driven juxtaposition of American and Israeli accounts of falling in love, and another interview series of 100 couples examining their reasons for falling in love in the context of turmoil later in the relationship.

Is love really blind? A large body of theory and research, as well as my own research and many years of clinical work, have convinced me that the answer to this question is a firm no!"

From whether proximity is the hidden matchmaker of true romance to how conscious choices increase the likelihood of finding "true love," Falling in Love is deeply fascinating yet warmly written, devoid of the hollow ring of academic pontification without compromising the rigor of the research or the depth of its conclusions.

A GENERAL THEORY OF LOVE

Besides having a cover the epitome of design's capacity for communicating powerful concepts with brilliant visual simplicity, A General Theory of Love by psychologists Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon is also a first-of-its-kind synthesis of research and poeticism, bringing a social science eye to the natural history of the grandest emotion.

Since the dawn of our species, human beings in every time and place have contended with an unruly emotional core that behaves in unpredicted and confusing ways. Science has been unable to help them. The Western world's first physician, Hippocrates, proposed in 450 B.C. that emotions emanate from the brain. He was right — but for the next twenty-five hundred years, medicine could offer nothing further about the details of emotional life. Matters of the heart were matters only for the arts — literature, song, poetry, painting, sculpture, dance. Until now."

Eloquent and eye-opening, A General Theory of Love illuminates "hard science" findings across brain function and neurochemistry though a humanistic prism that offers a richer, deeper understanding of the heart's will.

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http://sidedish.dmagazine.com/2012/03/02/michael-pollan-speaks-at-smu-and-warns-against-nutritionism/

Michael Pollan Speaks at SMU and Warns Against Nutritionism | SideDish

image from gourmet.com

We sent editorial intern James Williford to attend the Tate Lecture Series with Michael Pollan, the best-selling author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. Here's what he learned from the Pollanator:

Last night, after toting bagfuls of Tom Thumb groceries onstage at SMU's McFarlin Auditorium, Michael Pollan opened this year's Oncor Lecture with a familiar pronouncement: Americans have a disastrous relationship with food. Aside from an apple, the locally-bought foodstuffs—which, one after another, he pulled out of the bags and joked wryly about—were over-processed junk with appallingly misleading label copy. Holding up an almost neon-yellow tube, he said: "No one has ever confused Pringles with health food, right? But now you can get Pringles Multigrain. 'Cheesy Cheddar,' artificially flavored, but multigrain. So that's a real winner. You put 'multigrain' on everything, because we've read that it's good for you." The audience laughed.

Pollan has his shtick down, but his message is serious and not quite as uncontroversial as it might at first seem. It's not just the quality of the food that we eat, he says, but the way that we think about food in general that, over the last 30 years or so, has swelled our guts, impoverished our culinary culture, and left us increasingly susceptible to coronary disease, diabetes, and certain types of cancer. And how do we think about food? As nutrition.

According to Pollan, we don't see whole, simple, recognizable items to be placed on the table and consumed anymore—we see a collection of nutrients, each either "good" or "bad," depending on the prevailing and highly variable trends in dietary research and marketing. "You don't eat a steak," he said, "you eat a quantity of protein and fat and salt and iron."

He calls this attitude "nutritionism," and identifies it as an ideology, not a science. Consider: Have you ever seen a nutrient? Most of us don't spend our time peering through microscopes at our dinner plates. And even if we did, without at least a modicum of scientific training, we wouldn't be able to distinguish the carbohydrates from the proteins, much less decide which of the two we should be putting into our bodies and in what amounts. Nutrients are effectively invisible. And the upshot of basing our understanding of food on its invisible qualities is that we have to rely on experts to tell us what to eat. "It's sort of like a religion," Pollan said, "a religion in which the gods no longer talk to us. You then need a priesthood to mediate your relationship to those gods. Well, we've come to that point. We need a priesthood of experts."

The problem with that, of course, is that the experts don't quite seem to know what they're talking about—not yet. Their science is young, given to errors, and too easily co-opted by crafty big food marketers (recall those "healthful" Pringles). We don't know, Pollan pointed out, exactly what happens to our bodies when we drink a soda, or why we have as many neurons in our stomachs as we have in our spinal columns ("What are they thinking?"), or why some people get sick from beta carotene extracted from carrots. Our blind faith is an unproven science, he argues, at the heart of our dietary dysfunction. "As I see it, nutrition science is today approximately where surgery was in the year 1650—really promising, really interesting to watch, but I think I'll wait to get up on the table."

In the meantime, Pollan insists, the situation isn't hopeless. His advice poses the wisdom of culture—which he says is just another word for "mom"—against the bizarre logic of nutritionism. "Don't eat meat in an airport," he remarked, reading one of the 83 rules detailed in his latest book, Food Rules. "Avoid products containing ingredients that a third grader can't pronounce." And one of his favorites, "The Great-Grandma Rule": "Pretend that your great-grandmother is there with you, rolling down the aisles of the supermarket. If she would not recognize something as food, then it's not food."

Leaders: 4 Steps to Dissolving Conflict in Your Life « Linked 2 Leadership

http://linked2leadership.com/2012/03/12/leaders-dissolving-conflict/

Leaders: 4 Steps to Dissolving Conflict in Your Life

When we have conflict in our lives, do we let it fester until it explodes, or do we take a more positive and proactive approach?

We all have conflict in many areas of our lives. The question then becomes how do we handle it most effectively.

Answer Me This

• Are you agitated with someone today?
• Do you have a boss or a colleague you believe is not championing your initiatives or ideas?
• Do you have a colleague who is an idiot?
• Do you feel irritation when your expectations go unmet?

Two Ways to Handle It

Human beings typically address these conflicts in one of two ways.

1) Some people brashly address conflict through intimidation that leaves others feeling interrogated and bullied.

This approach leaves us with a no-win situation. Trust is broken, and relationships get damaged.

2) Other people simply avoid confrontation.

This approach comes with a high cost of mounting frustration. Avoidance tears down trust too. Trust isn't damaged all at once, but after a series of disappointments trust is chipped away. Frustration builds until we deteriorate into a demanding, angry, and unreasonable person that we do not want to be.

The High Personal Cost

These two approaches to conflict exact a very high personal cost.

• We suffer from stress and negative attitudes.
• We become unable to bring our best selves to any situation, even those not directly related to the stressful situation
• We begin to disengage
• We start to feel discouraged and dis-empowered
• We severely limit our effectiveness
• We no longer control our own destiny

Disengaged at Work

This disengaged attitude take a tremendous toll on our workplace and our economy.

Gallup reports that a full 70% of people at work are disengaged.

When people become disengaged, productivity plummets – taking revenue and profits with it. The annual cost of conflict in the work place amounts to billions of lost dollars that are never recaptured.

What can we do? Is there another approach we could use to dissolve conflict in a positive and proactive way? The good news is: Yes! In fact, you can easily employ a more strategic approach to get immediate results.

4 Steps to Dissolving Conflict

Here are the four easy steps to help you dissolve conflict. This works at home, at work, and most places in between.

Gratitude

First, think about the other person. Where do they add value? Where do they contribute to your products or services? Are they sometimes top performers but are simply inconsistent? Reflect on these positive things until you can identify at least one small way they add value to you and your team. Think about the long-term benefits to keeping them in your company.

Assume Innocence

Next, assume they are not manipulative or malicious. Assume they simply do not know what is expected of them. Maybe they do not even know how to articulate where they need help to successfully meet your expectations. Either way, focus on their being a great person and being a solid contributor.

Personal Responsibility

This next step will be the most difficult but is the most critical. Look for the role you played in allowing this conflict to fester.

• Were you absolutely clear on your objectives and expectations from the beginning?
• How did you ensure that these expectations were fully communicated, negotiated and finalized?
• Did you put in enough checkpoints to guarantee success at each milestone?

Honest self assessment will always reveal a number of opportunities to take personal responsibility for any conflict.

Once you see your role in the conflict, you must shoulder the responsibility for not being clear. Take full responsibility for the breakdown and say to the other person, "I take full responsibility for this disappointing situation. I give you my word I will do whatever it takes to clean this up and get us both in a place where we can be successful."

Ask Questions

The last step in moving the situation forward is asking questions.

• "What resources do you need?"
• "How can I help remove this obstacle?"
• "Do you feel confident that you understand what we are trying to achieve?"
• "Do you feel you are the right person for this job?"

This four-step approach requires putting our ego in check. We also need to step back and reflect on our original vision, our expectations, and our plan. Once we are clear on our plan, we can build in more checkpoints – daily, weekly, or quarterly depending on your goals – to guarantee our colleagues will be successful.

Conflict will dissolve and your business will grow in quantum leaps. Guaranteed!

So what type of person have you become because of how you handle conflict? Does it bring out the worst in you? Or have you managed to allow it to bring out the best in you? What steps can you take today to begin to help dissolve, diffuse, and disintegrate unhealthy conflict at work? I would love to hear your thoughts!

**********

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Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders™

———————–
Katharine Halpin is President at The Halpin Companies, Inc.
She is an expert in Authenticity, Alignment & Accountability
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Image Sources: dididado.org

Filed under: Conflict Management, Emotionally Intelligent Leadership Tagged: | communication, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, leadership, teamwork

Six Tips on Writing from John Steinbeck | Brain Pickings

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/03/12/john-steinbeck-six-tips-on-writing/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+brainpickings%2Frss+%28Brain+Pickings%29

Six Tips on Writing from John Steinbeck

12 MARCH, 2012 by Maria Popova

On the value of unconscious association, or why the best advice is no advice.

If this is indeed the year of reading more and writing better, we've been right on course with David Ogilvy's 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller's 11 commandments, and various invaluable advice from other great writers. Now comes John Steinbeck — Pulitzer Prize winner, Nobel laureate, love guru — with six tips on writing, culled from his altogether excellent interview it the Fall 1975 issue of The Paris Review.

1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.




2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.




3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn't exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.




4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn't belong there.




5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.




6. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

But perhaps most paradoxically yet poetically, twelve years prior — in 1963, immediately after receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception" — Steinbeck issued a thoughtful disclaimer to all such advice:

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that makes a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story."

If you feel bold enough to discount Steinbeck's anti-advice advice, you can do so with these 9 essential books on more and writing. Find more such gems in this collection of priceless interviews with literary icons from half a century of The Paris Review archives.

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