Choice and Monopoly Essay

Grab a cuppa at

Six Degrees of Good, Good Vibrations

If you believe every person on on the planet is connected by a mere six degrees of separation, then maybe like me, you also believe good books can connect every important idea in at least six different ways? This week I’m reading yet another book that connects education and leadership issues, both for individuals and institutions. A management site here explains how the author views leadership as six styles of effective resonance with other people’s feelings:

In the view of Goleman, good leaders are effective because they create resonance.

Resonance comes from the Latin word resonare, to resound.
Effective leaders are attuned to other people’s feelings and move them in a positive emotional direction. They speak authentically about their own values, direction and priorities and resonate with the emotions of surrounding people. Under the guidance of an effective leader, people feel a mutual comfort level.

Resonance comes naturally to people with a high degree of emotional intelligence (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management) but involves also intellectual aspects.

Creation of resonance can be done in six ways, leading to Six Leadership Styles. Typically, the most effective leaders can act according to and skillfully switch between the various styles depending on the situation.

My mentor and favorite professional colleague ever (hi Doug, are your ears burning?) lived and breathed intelligent leadership by emotional resonance, and wisely used his leadership to inspire and cultivate leadership in others. In everyone, not just those with titles and authority and followers. He connected with everybody, and he wanted everybody connected.

This isn’t what he called it, but it’s what he modeled, what he meant and how he did it — he used to remind us that resonance was what it took to make the world habitable for humans and that it was everybody’s job, something we all do for each other every time we interact, even just saying hello in the hallway.

Mindless Eating Hits the Stands

Snook said it was coming and now it’s here, get it while it’s hot and fresh. .

and leave room for dessert, a hearty dollop of social neuroscience from another new Bantam book to snack on, about why we’d mindlessly eat that stale movie popcorn — its author Daniel Goleman sets out to demonstrate scientifically that our brains are too busy feasting on the biologically dictated emotion of human relationships, to notice or care what we’re stuffing into our digestive systems .

(So I’m suspecting this could explain why unhealthy snacks and food are such a problem at school, that kids notice and care too much about the food. Maybe if emotions, relationships and power of story were as gripping and neuroscientifically satisfying as a movie date, School could feed kids vegetables all day and they’d wolf it right down? More later as I read and ramble on down my neural pathways . . .hey, you got anything I could snack on?)