The Rise of the New Groupthink by Susan Cain

March 13th, 2012

Creative Commons licensed on Flickr by: khrawlings

I’m a training & development expert. I frequently get up in front of people, from 5 to 500, & facilitate learning opportunities in creative, engaging, sticky ways. It’s my passion, it’s my calling.

I’m also an introvert.

My fuel tank gets refilled in small groups, 1:1 or by being on my own.

The juxtaposition of the two – being energetic on stage & enjoying solitude – is where things get interesting. My yearning for quiet time isn’t necessarily popular or encouraged which is why I responded to the call of the following article.

Susan Cain, New York Times author & TED speaker, in an article called ‘The Rise of the new Groupthink’ says ‘Solitude is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.’

I love the title of her book which is QUIET: The Power of Introverts In a World That Can’t Stop Talking. Note to self – get book, find quiet place & read.

It’s yet another continuum, with introversion on one end, extroversion on the other & lots of stops in between.

Where’s yours?

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On a scale of 1 to ‘too serious for numbers’ what’s your pain? (Hyperbole & a Half)

March 8th, 2012

On a scale of 1 to 10, what’s your pain?

This is a standard question asked by doctors when assessing patients. Most patients. But not when it came to Allie Brosh, of Hyperbole & a Half fame, whose boyfriend was asked this question after she took him to the hospital.

Allie created a new interpretation for the standard pain scale (the one above), one where 4 on the above scale represents “Huh. I never knew that about giraffes” and 8 means “The ice cream I bought barely has any cookie dough chunks in it. This is not what I expected and I am disappointed.”

The laughs don’t stop there however as she went on to create an entirely new scale, complete with new drawings & new interpretations. That’s it below.

On this scale 1 means “I am completely unsure whether I am experiencing pain or itching or maybe I just have a bad taste in my mouth” & 7 means “I see Jesus coming for me and I’m scared.”
It’s a fabulous example of trying to put yourself in another’s shoe. Of trying to relate. Of attempting to communicate a difficult concept. Of sharing a unique perspective.

It’s a great lens.

What’s your pain scale?

My #1 would be something like “there’s an annoying little feather tickling my inner ear” & 6 would be “now I understand that screaming sound from behind closed doors in the waxing department of the spa.”

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Insatiable – the good, the bad, the ugly (a la Seth Godin)

March 6th, 2012

Creative Commons licensed on Flickr by: kevin dooley

Seth Godin recently wrote an interesting post called insatiable (see below). As his posts often do, it got me thinking. I think he got it wrong

Yes, insatiability can lead to all things nasty if it means a never ending dissatisfaction &/or an unquenchable greed.

But what if we’re talking about qualities like curiousity & a thirst for learning.

I hope your curiousity & thirst for learning is never satisfied. If it is we’re doomed.

Insatiable (the following is a post of Seth Godin’s)

Long-lasting systems can’t survive if they remain insatiable.

An insatiable thirst for food, power, energy, reassurance, clicks, funding or other raw material will eventually lead to failure. That’s because there’s never enough to satisfy someone or something that’s insatiable. The organization amps up because its need is unmet. It gets out of balance, changing what had previously worked to get more of what it craves. Sooner or later, a crash.

More fame! More money! More investment! Push too hard and you lose what you came with and don’t get what you came for.

An insatiable appetite is a symptom: There’s a hole in the bucket. Something’s leaking out. When a system (or a person) continues to demand more and more but doesn’t produce in response, that’s because the resources aren’t being used properly, something is leaking.

If your organization demands ever more attention or effort or cash to produce the same output, it makes more sense to focus on the leak than it does to work ever harder to feed the beast.

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How you define things (including calories) affects your perspective (& your reality distortion field)

March 1st, 2012

My good friend Roman Rollnick sent this (even though he’s in the communications field he’s conspicuously not on the web, hence no hyperlink).

I laughed. Then I thought about the effects definitions have on us.

How we define things sets the parameters of our thinking. From whose fault it is that those extra pounds continue to cling to magical thinking to our reality distortion field (a term coined by Steve Jobs) we’re barraged by the effects of our worldview.

Language is powerful.

So is how we define the words we use to weave our world perspective.

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