Welcome to the September 17th edition of the Carnival of Human Resources, the virtual gathering, every other week, of bloggers focused on Human Resources and Leadership topics.

Let’s imagine all participants in a conference room, conducting a lively Q&A brown-bag lunch discussion.

Q: Can you teach Leadership in a classroom?
- Wally: Not really. Neither the person who aspires to become a leader nor HR departments should see leadership development as an activity to be outsourced to a classroom setting. Leadership is a lifelong apprentice trade, led by the learner himself/ herself. The most HR departments can do is to architect the right set of experiences to enable/ accelerate that development.

Q: Can you teach Social Intelligence in a classroom?
- Jon: According to a recent Harvard Business Review article, not really. Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis say that “our brains engage in an emotional tango, a dance of feelings”. And you learn Tango by, well, dancing Tango. Goleman and Boyatzis add that “Leading effectively is about developing a genuine interest in and talent for fostering positive feelings in the people whose cooperation and support you need.”

Q: Can you provide an example of applying social intelligence in the workplace, and training on-the-job?
- Suzanne: Sure. Learn to appreciate your front line employees. They are the ones who interact with customers every day – which some companies seem to ignore at their peril.
- Denise: another one – What can you do when your team falls apart while you’re gone?.

Q: How can you generate positive feelings, when sometimes we get stuck in bad news and constant quarter-by-quarter pressures?
- Anna: Adding much needed perspective. Please note: Read the rest of this entry »

Here you have the twice-a-month newsletter with our most popular blog posts. Please remember that you can subscribe to receive this Newsletter by email, simply by submitting your email at the top of this page.

There is one type of “brain fitness program” which is not only free but also pays you back. You guessed it, that program is your “job”. Our occupations can provide beneficial mental exercise if they incorporate the key ingredients of novelty, variety, and challenge, and are not a source of chronic stress.

We start today’s newsletter with two articles related to the brain value of having mentally stimulating jobs.

Your Brain At Work

ABC Reporter Bob Woodruff’s Recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury: Former US presidential contender and Senator John Edwards recently granted an interview to reporter Bob Woodruff. The most remarkable aspect of the interview? Bob Woodruff’s spectacular recovery from the traumatic brain injury he suffered in Iraq 2 years ago. You can’t miss this interview with his wife Lee, where we discuss Bob’s recovery process (including making a documentary, co-writing a book and other projects at ABC), the Bob Woodruff Foundation, and the overall challenge of cognitive rehabilitation following traumatic brain injuries.

Research

Santiago Ramon y Cajal’s “Recollections of My Life”: Remarkable and candid views on neuroplasticity, learning, aging and life, straight from the autobiography of one of the founders of modern neuroscience, who once said “Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculptor of his own brain.”

Can food improve brain health?: Dr. Pascale Michelon provides an overview of the effects of food on the brain, building on Fernando Gomez-Pinilla’s recent study in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Candidates for “brainy” foods contain: Omega-3 fatty acid, folic acid, flavonoids, anti-oxidant foods. Please note her warning, though: most of the studies showing positive effects have been conducted in mice.

The biology of aging: A monthly virtual gathering of bloggers to discuss Biology of Aging topics including research, policy, lifestyle guidance, and open questions. We are aware that “aging” may not be the sexiest  of words in our vocabulary… unless you consider the most common alternative.

Technology

The Future of Computer-assisted Cognitive Therapy: Cognitive therapy is one of the most researched types of brain training, especially in dealing with depression and anxiety. Why don’t more people benefit today from it? The lack of a scalable distribution model may perhaps explain that. We predict that technology will help complement the role of therapists, helping more people better cope with change, life, anxiety, and a range of cognitive and emotional challenges. Without any stigma. Just as naturally as one trains abdominal muscles today.

We are hosting here the next edition of the Carnival of Human Resources, on September 17th. To participate, you can submit your blog post using this Contact Form or email your submission to: information at sharpbrains dot com. Thank you!

We are hosting here at SharpBrains the next editions of several great blog carnivals. If you blog about these topics, please submit your best recent posts using our Contact Us form:

- August 27th: Carnival of Education.

- September 9th: Carnival of Biogerontology.

- September 17th: Carnival of HR.

Enjoy the  weekend!

Some great new editions of our favorite blog carnivals:

- Encephalon, Forthy-Third Edition: the best of recent neuroscience and psychology blog posts.

- Grand Rounds Volume 4, Number 30: superb overview of the health & medicine blogosphere.

- Carnival of HR #31: great resources for Human Resources professionals.

The movement to have US presidential candidates discuss Science and Technology in a devoted debate has been picking up steam. Date and place are scheduled: April 18th at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

- cosponsored by the AAAS, the Council on Competitiveness, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, and signed by over 100 leading American universities and other organizations

- Friday Business Week ran this story.

-  Intel Chairman Craig Barrett and former HHS Secretary Donna Shalala have Read the rest of this entry »

Here you have a few recent great blog carnivals (collections of selected blog posts focused on specific topics):

- Grand Rounds: health and medicine

- Encephalon: neuroscience and psychology

- COTC: business and entrepreneurship

- Human Resources: articles for HR professionals

- Education: articles for K12 teachers and staff

- Tangled Bank: general science 

- Books: good book reviews

 

We also just found a great overview of the brain fitness market in French, summarizing many of the topics we have written about:

Des logiciels qui boostent le cerveau… et son marché

Some weeks ago we explained how useful Concept Maps can be to quickly visualize the key ideas in a field, and their relationships.

Let me show you this fantastic example. A few weeks ago I was interviewed by David Pescovitz of the Institute for the Future (blog) to discuss The Future of Work and Cognitive Fitness trends. They had an artist who drew the graph below IN REAL TIME, AS WE SPOKE. Very impressive.

Please open the full image by clicking on it, and spend a few minutes reading around, top-down, left-to right.

You will learn much about what the future may bring (will Human Resources staff become “Cognitive Resources Managers”?), and also how to display complex information in beautiful visual form.

 

”

 

Kudos to the Institute for the Future, an independent nonprofit research group,  for a fascinating event on The Future of Work.

Credit for the Map: Anthony Weeks, from Grove Consultants.

(Dear RSS readers: I’d really appreciate if you could Digg this post. You can find the Digg button if you visit this post in our blog. Thanks!)

What an event yesterday night. My wife and I were fortunate to visit the Google Campus and attend the Sixth Annual North American Fellowship Induction Program of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, a social venture fund where we have been involved for a number of years, and thanks to which (thanks Michele!) my wife and I met in the first place.

18 new Ashoka Fellows/ social entrepreneurs were elected, and after a fun cocktail reception the ceremony began. Sergei Brin (Google Co-founder), Sheryl Sandberg (who helped launch Google Foundation and google.org), Salar Kamangar (the mind behind AdWords) gave introductory remarks. Salar explained how he first heard of Ashoka (through the book How to Change the World, by David Bornstein) and how he saw tremendous similarities between Ashoka and Google: both Read the rest of this entry »