There’s been an explosion of reality TV contests – the Next Big Whatever Star. While the chance to become a celebrity lures contestants, I think it’s the grueling rite of passage that lures viewers. Last month we had exams at the Process Work Institute, which were fairly intense 3 day affairs, with 5 different exams [...]

What’s the solution for solving the health care mess? Global warming? The economy? OK, these are bad examples, obviously if we knew, and if it were that easy, they’d be solved. But the question I want to ask is, why do we wait to tackle our problems until they are so complicated, so messy, so [...]

Just finished a weekend training seminar on bullying in Auckland, New Zealand. It was terrific to have so many participants there involved in workplace bullying and harassment work. What’s increasingly evident as I tackle this topic around the globe is the role of cultural attitudes. To adequately fight bullying, we have to reduce our cultural [...]

Randy Cohen, the New York Times’ ethicist, recently opined on the court ruling that ordered Google to release the name of the anonymous blogger whose site “Skanks in NYC” was devoted to slandering a fashion model:
Has anonymous posting, though generally protected by law, become so toxic that it should be discouraged?
This issue has gotten my [...]

I just saw Frost/Nixon. It’s a brilliant, chilling insight into power and ambition. What struck me was the degree of self-awareness Nixon had. Albeit, this is a fictionalized account;  who knows exactly what went on in Nixon’s mind. But in the film, he’s portrayed as a worthy opponent, a crafty guy who is keenly aware [...]

There’s a problem in learning theory called “transfer.’ How does a student learn something and then transfer that knowledge or set of skills to the appropriate context? In common sense terms, how does book learning become a real world skill? I’m still waiting for algebra transfer to happen. My 9th grade algebra teacher, Mr Eastman, [...]

When I started this blog, I didn’t want it to focus on current events or politics. But it’s hard, in these recent days, not to focus on the issues dominating the headlines. Is anyone else like me? I dread election years. I watch the news and debates out of sense of duty, cringing through them, [...]

As promised, I’ve been looking at abuse of power, including bullying, ethical violations, exploitation, and conflict of interest. These past few weeks, I’ve been researching workplace and school bullying. I find the topic to be really disturbing. If the literature is accurate, it’s a far bigger problem than I realized. There’s even a newly coined [...]

I’ve got the task of developing a performance evaluation process with and for faculty at the Process Work Institute. We’re a small training institute, and while we have had many different forums for feedback and evaluation, we’ve not created a standardized process that is tied to accountability.
It’s a tricky process. As a colleague pointed out, [...]

I hesitated a long time before starting this blog because I knew it would be a challenge to keep at it, even when my schedule got busy as it has these past few weeks. I knew I would just have to bear down, set my alarm for 5 am on some days, and just push [...]