April 27, 2011 By Luz Santana Many years ago, when I was a welfare recipient, I was assigned to a caseworker who thought I could help myself. Even that if I could hardly speak English he carved out time from our meetings to teach me things I could do on my own –for example, how…
April 22, 2011 By Pia Infante An executive leadership coach I know often initiates a new client relationship with the question: “How do you like to receive disconfirming data?” The irony being that most people don’t like to receive disconfirming data at all. Our brains process unexpected data by a) sounding an amygdala alarm bell…
April 13, 2011Sue Ellen McCann I was recently introduced to the concept of “evaluation” – in my case, a process in which I would receive feedback from an outside organization on my work process and product. At first, I thought, “Oh, great, another report card!” Memories of exchanges echoing the words “you should have done…
April 8, 2011 By John Esterle On March 4th, I attended California Council for Humanities‘ “Forum on Democracy and the Culture of Civic Conversation.” The Forum was the kick-off event for CCH’s promising new two-year statewide initiative, Searching for Democracy. The day featured a thoughtful and informative mix of speakers and panels, but it was…
March 30, 2011 By Pia Infante Recently, I ran across an engaging article by the media messaging firm M + R entitled Storytelling and the Art of Email Writing. While the article is more geared toward folks who are designing communications within a fundraising context than email composition more generally, the article struck a jangling…