Saturday, May 17, 2014
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Friday, May 9, 2014
The mind's 23 building blocks
These are the brain systems the NIMH has identified. They are
grouped into five categories:
· Acute threat – also known as our fear circuitry.
Active when we sense danger
· Potential threat – active, not in presence of a threat, but when we know the
risk of danger is higher than normal. Associated with a sense of unease or
anxiety
· Sustained threat – negative emotional state caused by
prolonged exposure to unpleasant conditions. Can cause loss of enjoyment in
usually pleasurable activities
· Loss – circuits active during permanent or sustained loss
of a loved one, or emotionally significant objects or situation, such as
shelter or status.
· Frustration non-reward – reactions to lack of reward after sustained
efforts. Can involve aggressive behaviour
Positive systems
· Approach motivation – circuits that control our efforts to obtain a reward, such
as sex or food
· Initial responsiveness to reward – feelings of pleasure on obtaining a reward. Involves opioid and endocannabinoid receptors, those activated by morphine and cannabis
· Sustained responsiveness to reward – mechanisms that terminate
reward-seeking behaviour, such as satiety, the feeling that enough food has
been eaten
· Reward learning – processes by which we acquire information to predict
rewards and learn to repeat the positive experience
· Habit – repetitive behaviours that, once
started, can be done unconsciously. Habits can free up cognitive resources
Cognitive systems
· Attention – a range of processes that regulate
access to awareness and higher cognitive systems
· Perception – the processes that take sensory
data and transform it into representations of the environment
· Working memory –
the system that can hold and manipulate many items of information on a
temporary basis
· Declarative memory – the encoding, storage and
retrieval of representations of facts and events on a long-term basis
· Language behaviour – systems that allow production and comprehension of words, sentences, and coherent communication
· Cognitive control – systems that modulate the operation of other cognitive and emotional circuits. Can involve inhibition of behaviour or selection of best
response from competing alternatives
Social systems
· Attachment – systems for bonding with friends
and family. Involves hormones such as oxytocin and vasopressin
· Social communication – processes involved in exchange of socially relevant information, such as speech and body language
· Perception of self – circuits involved in understanding ownership of one's own body or actions
· Perception of others – processes involved in being aware of and reasoning about other animate entities, such as our "theory of mind" networks, which
allow us to understand that other people can have different beliefs to our own
Modulatory Systems
· Arousal – a spectrum of sensitivity to stimuli, from coma and
unconsciousness, through anesthesia and sleep to full consciousness
· Circadian rhythms – self-sustaining oscillations that organise the timing of
biological systems
· Sleep-wake cycle – recurring behavioural states that reflect coordinated
changes in the brain. Regulated by physiological and circadian processes
Thursday, May 8, 2014
The Device that Runs the World’s Biggest Election
http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/the-device-that-runs-the-worlds-biggest-election/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
NEW DELHI — Thanks to a device that is the size and shape of a mini piano keyboard, India can boast that the country’s voters, all 814.5 million of them in 543 constituencies, can cast their ballot electronically, even in areas that have just one person.
The 1.8 million electronic voting machines being used in this year’s elections, manufactured by Bharat Electronics and Electronic Corporation of India, both government companies, have been designed to adapt to the logistical challenges in India, where roads can be nonexistent and the electricity supply erratic. The machines are small enough to carry by hand and require only a six-volt alkaline battery. With one-third of India’s adult population illiterate, the voting machines feature both a list of candidates’ names and their party symbol.
INDIA VOTES
News and analysis on the world’s largest election.
“The introduction of electronic voting machine was India’s biggest electoral reform,” said Manohar Singh Gill, India’s former chief election commissioner who supervised the 1999 election, the last one that used paper ballots. “The biggest disputes in paper ballots used to be on which vote is invalid and which is not. Recounting used to take days, and more disputes would emerge.”
In eliminating the need for paper ballots, India not only reduced the number of invalidated ballots to 0.05 percent from 1.91 percent in 1999, but it also saved hundreds of thousands of trees.
Navin Chawla, a former chief election commissioner who supervised the 2009 general elections, said that according to one estimate, if the current election were to use paper ballots, India would have needed to cut down 282,240 trees. In 1999, he said, the general election used 7,700 metric tons of paper.
This year is the third national election in which all voting is conducted electronically, but the use of the machines in India dates to 1982 in the southern state of Kerala. However, an Indian court ruled then that the machines were illegal because the law at the time allowed only paper ballots. Parliament changed the law in 1989.
From 1982 until 2004, the Election Commission made efforts among political parties to come to a consensus about electronic voting, but the parties raised concerns that the machines could be compromised.
In 1989-90, the Election Commission spent 750 million rupees, or $12.5 million at current rates, buying more than 100,000 electronic voting machines, but they remained unused for several years. In the late 1990s, India’s comptroller and auditor general asked the commission why the money was spent on voting machines if they weren’t being used, which spurred the commission to put them to use.
In 1998, electronic voting machines were used in state elections successfully, but their use was again challenged in court, this time by Jayalalithaa Jayaram, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, but the court set aside the objections.
“Political parties wanted to maintain status quo with paper ballot. The use of EVMs eliminated possibilities of rigging the poll,” said Mr. Gill, referring to electronic voting machines.
In 1999, the national elections saw electronic voting machines in 46 constituencies, spread over 17 states and involving 60 million voters. After that, all state elections were conducted electronically, and the 2004 vote became the first national election to eliminate the use of paper ballots.
The device comes with two components, a ballot unit and a control unit, connected to each other through a cable. (The Election Commission’s detailed training manual for the machines is here.) Each ballot unit can record 3,840 votes for each of the 16 candidates. If there are more than 16 candidates in a constituency, then up to four ballot units can be connected to accommodate up to 64 candidates.
The control unit remains with the presiding officer of the polling station at all times. The ballot machine can be used only after the presiding officer presses the control button. After the voter presses the button next to the symbol or name of the preferred candidate, it emits a long beep.
Only five voters can cast their vote in one minute. After the polling station is closed, all voting machines are stored at a secure place.
On the day the votes are counted, which is May 16 for this year’s elections, all the electronic voting machines in a constituency are opened in an auditorium, with the parties’ agents acting as witnesses. With the push of a button inside the unit, each unit can instantly list the number of votes each candidate received. The vote tally for each unit is recorded on paper in front of the parties’ agents, then added up at the end.
The electronic voting machines allow all of the votes in India to be counted in one day instead of the several days that were needed when paper ballots were used.
“To be able to count 450 million votes accurately in a few hours’ time is amazing by any standard,” said Mr. Chawla, the former chief election commissioner, recalling his experience in the 2009 elections..
Now that the vote count is electronic, ballot-box stuffing is no longer possible — in which hired henchmen from a particular party would take control of a ballot box and literally stuff ballots into it.
But voting fraud still occurs in other ways, with party workers either surrounding a polling booth to intimidate voters or the party workers themselves taking control of a booth and repeatedly pressing the button for a candidate. However, S.Y. Quraishi, a former chief election commissioner of India, said the clock built into the voting machines can note when a vote is being entered repeatedly too rapidly.
In 2010, Hari Prasad, who led a team of security researchers, put out a report on the vulnerabilities of the electronic voting machines that could be exploited to commit voter fraud. The Election Commission ran a number of tests but found no evidence of vulnerabilities, but it agreed to have an expert committee look into the possibility of adding a paper receipt for the machines.
Last year, after a petition was filed by a politician, Subramanian Swamy, India’s Supreme Court directed the Election Commission to gradually introduce a paper record with the electronic vote, starting in 2014. This will be an extra machine attached to the electronic voter machines that provides a paper receipt after the vote is cast. This receipt can be kept as a record of any particular vote.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
What Makes a Leader?
Recently I gave a seminar for the top 100 or so leaders of a global manufacturing company, at the invitation of the head of HR. It was their annual leadership development meeting, and HR wanted me to make both business and scientific cases for emotional intelligence as the active ingredient in strong leadership.
Most of the leaders in that firm have backgrounds in engineering, and were by nature skeptical about something so “soft” as emotional intelligence mattering much for their own performance. So I gathered the most convincing data.
Beforehand I asked the head of HR to send me the company’s competence model, their own analysis of what made a leader successful at their company. I’ve seen many such models, and noticed a strong pattern, which I first wrote about more than a decade ago: when it comes to the top echelon leaders, companies find that 80-90% of the competencies that distinguish star leaders are built on emotional intelligence (or EI).
For instance, confidence in one form or another often shows up in these models. And a sense of certainty in one’s own abilities, based on a realistic understanding of your own strengths and limitations, requires self-awareness – the first tenet of emotional intelligence.
Then there’s staying calm under pressure, another common ingredient of leadership success. That requires self-management, the second trait of emotional intelligence – and one that builds on self-awareness. Other commonly seen self-management competencies include adaptability, initiative, and the drive to achieve goals.
I’ve never seen a list of a great leader’s abilities that did not include impactful communication. And that requires empathy – the third domain of emotional intelligence. There are two specific kinds of empathy; one is cognitive empathy, understanding how others think about the world. Once you know their mental models you can put what you have to say in terms that will make most sense to them.
The second kind, emotional empathy, means you can sense immediately how another person feels. This means you can fine-tune what you say so it has a positive impact. These two kinds of empathy are essential for rapport and chemistry with another person. We use them in all our relationships.
And yet in our high-pressure world, with back-to-back meetings and a constant stream of incoming messages, too many leaders pay too little attention to the person in front of them. When leaders are assessed (by others who know them well) on the EI competencies needed for high-performance, poor listening very often shows up as a weakness. Luckily all these EI competencies can be improved with practice – that’s the point of assessing them: so a leader can track how he or she improves.
Then there are the relationship skills, the fourth domain of EI. Here common competencies for outstanding performance include teamwork and collaboration, influence, and helping others build their leadership abilities.
So when I looked at the competence model of that manufacturing company what did I find?About 80-90 percent of the abilities they had independently determined make leaders high-performing were based on EI. A handful were purely cognitive, like analytic abilities. But because the brain’s design makes our emotional state determine our cognitive efficiency, even those indirectly depend on emotional intelligence.
Learn more about the traits of an emotionally intelligent leader from my new compilation What Makes a Leader: Why Emotional Intelligence Matters. The book contains my collection of Harvard Business Review articles and other business journal writings in one volume.
Additional resources:
Leadership: A Master Class: The eight-part video collection includes more than eight hours of research findings, case studies and valuable industry expertise through in-depth interviews with respected leaders in executive management, organizational research, workplace psychology, negotiation and senior hiring. Corporate and educational licensing available.
The HR and EI Collection:The combination of books and audio tools offers actionable findings on how leaders can foster group flow to maximize innovation, drive, and motivation to deliver bottom-line results.
Resonant Leadership: Inspiring Others Through Emotional Intelligence: This master class by Richard Boyatzis (co-author of Primal Leadership and Chair of Organizational Development at the Weatherhead School of Management) offers you the tools to become the leader you want to be—including exercises to reassess valuable and effective techniques.
Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence: Focus uncovers the science of attention in all its varieties – presenting a groundbreaking look at this overlooked and underrated asset, and why it matters enormously for how we feel, and succeed, in life.
Supplemental reading:
Photo: Olivier Le Moal / shutterstock
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140501190944-117825785-what-makes-a-leader?trk=eml-ced-b-art-M-6-8290497314064713527&midToken=AQErd_RC4jhVYw&fromEmail=fromEmail&ut=1vj1nYOO7ISmc1&_mSplash=1May 01, 2014
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
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