The Leadership Context

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The attributes which make for effective leadership depend on the situation and which the leader is functioning. There are no traits that guarantee successful leadership in all situations. the leader of the University faculty may have quite different attributes from the commander of a military attack team. the qualities required of a legislative leader are not those required of a religious leader. This is not to say that the setting or context is everything and the attributes of the individual nothing. What produces a good result is the combination of a particular context and an individual with the appropriate qualities to lead in that context.

John W. Gardner, On Leadership

Why are some people compelled to cheat?

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The fear of losing something appears to be a greater motivator to cheat than the lure of a gain.

Kerry Ritchie, who researches how to improve teaching at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, says the majority of academic cheating is conducted by high-achieving students, (60% of offenders earned grades 80% or more). While cheating in education is not the same as cheating during play, if there are similarities it's that those at the top feel a pressure to maintain their status. Players are more likely to behave dishonestly if they can say that it benefits other people as well as themselves.

William Park writing in BBC Future

Estranged

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Whoever protects himself against what is new and strange and thereby regresses to the past, falls into the same neurotic condition as the man who identifies himself with the new and runs away from the past. The only difference is that the one has estranged himself from the past, and the other from the future. 

CG Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

How your Attitude about Age affects your health

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Recent findings suggest that age beliefs may play a key role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Tracking 4,765 participants over four years, the researchers found that positive expectations of ageing halved the risk of developing the disease, compared to those who saw old age as an inevitable period of decline. Astonishingly, this was even true of people who carried a harmful variant of the APOE gene, which is known to render people more susceptible to the disease. The positive mindset can counteract an inherited misfortune, protecting against the build-up of the toxic plaques and neuronal loss that characterise the disease. 

David Robson, The Expectation Effect: How your Mindset Can Transform Your Life

 

Four kinds of self-stories

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Ontology is the study of being. Therefore, an ontology of the self is a person's account of how he or she came to be. Hankiss finds that young adults 10 to use four different kinds of “strategies” in constructing their ontologies of self: the dynastic (a good past gives birth to a good present), the antithetical (a bad past gives birth to a good present),the compensatory ( a good past gives birth to a bad present), and the self-absolutory (a bad past gives birth to a bad present).

Dan McAdams, The Stories We Live By

Earned success

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Earned success gives you a sense of accomplishment. Employers who give clear guidance and feedback, reward merit, and encourage their employees to develop new skills are the most likely to give you those feelings. Look for a boss who acts that way—and if you have the opportunity, be that kind of boss. 

Arthur C. Brooks writing in The Atlantic

Setting realistic goals to change habits and create new ones

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I became a more frequent flosser by taking the package of floss out of my medicine cabinet and sitting it next to my toothbrush, where I could always see it. I used to procrastinate on washing dishes, but now I do them every day like clockwork, thanks to a Bluetooth speaker that I use to listen to podcasts while I stand at the sink. Having a clean kitchen, in turn, means I cook more—an activity I really enjoy—and resort to expensive takeout orders less frequently. I figured out what was stopping me from doing some of the things I knew I could do, and I tried to eliminate the obstacles I could control, to reasonable success. Figuring out how to do something a little less or a little more is likely to yield the best results for most people, even if it’s not going to turn you into a different human.  

Amanda Mull writing in The Atlantic

And the prison door will swing open

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In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu wrote, “Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.” He no doubt intended it as a dire warning. But as the years have passed, I have come to interpret it as more of a promise and an opportunity. 

I have learned that the prison of others’ approval is actually one built by me, maintained by me, and guarded by me. This has led me to my own complementary verse to Lao Tzu’s original: “Disregard what others think and the prison door will swing open.” If you are stuck in the prison of shame and judgment, remember that you hold the key to your own freedom.

Arthur C. Brooks writing in The Atlantic

The algorithmic feedback loop

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Users keep encountering similar content because the algorithms keep recommending it to us. As this feedback loop continues, no new information is added; the algorithm is designed to recommend content that affirms what it construes as your taste.

Reduced to component parts, culture can now be recombined and optimized to drive user engagement. This threatens to starve culture of the resources to generate new ideas, new possibilities. 

If you want to freeze culture, the first step is to reduce it to data. And if you want to maintain the frozen status quo, algorithms trained on people’s past behaviors and tastes would be the best tools.

The goal of a recommendation algorithm isn’t to surprise or shock but to affirm. The process looks a lot like prediction, but it’s merely repetition. The result is more of the same: a present that looks like the past and a future that isn’t one. 

Grafton Tanner, writing in Real Life Magazine