Tiffany is a business and life coach, writer, and speaker with a professional and educational background in counseling and psychology. Phone or In Person Coaching
OPEN CALL FOR COACHING PRACTITIONERS: Every 1st Friday of the Month
Check your calendar for the next First Friday and JOIN US. A time to share and obtain support for the coaching professional. Email us for dial-in details. Or, call us at anytime, 617.874.6923. via phone
FIRST FRIDAY ARCHIVE: w/ RIANE EISLER hosted by Coaching Circles
Listen to our audio archive of Coaching Circles' First Friday Call-In Workshop with RIANE EISLER, international speaker and author of the new book "The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics".
Online Resource of the Month, Dec. 2006 Accompli
ONLINE RESOURCES: PowerPoint Presentations, Articles and more on Change, Leadership Development and Teams, at no cost at Accompligroup.com.
Creative Tension By Charles Fishman - Fast Company
Corning Inc.'s Sullivan Park research facility is one of the most creative places in the world -- a place where brilliant (and unruly) scientists literally invent the future.
The hair is hard to overlook. It's short, stylish, and artfully done, but distinctly purple. Except among skateboarders and in dance clubs, purple hair is pretty uncommon. In a respectable corporate setting where people spend time talking about benchmarks, annual-performance objectives, and 360-degree feedback, purple hair is truly scarce. When you cross that corporate setting with an advanced scientific-research institution -- where people wear lab coats, talk about quantum dots, and browse chemical catalogs looking for interesting molecules -- people with purple hair are as hard to find as neutrinos.
Throw in the fact that Lina Echeverr?a, 50, is guardian of one of the great scientific traditions of America -- she is director of glass and glass ceramics at the storied glass-research lab at Corning Inc. -- and the purple hair is truly striking. How does a woman who is a scientist, a colleague, and a pivotal corporate manager maintain credibility with purple hair -- no matter how stylishly it's done?
"Usually it's more eggplant," says Echeverr?a. "Aubergine. A.J., my hairdresser, I give him all the freedom. It's fun, no?"
Echeverr?a is an unlikely occupant of her office -- an energetic, elfin, Colombian woman who started her career tramping through the jungles of South America studying ancient lavas. And she brings an unlikely management style to Corning, a company (1999 revenues: $4.7 billion) whose history spans three centuries and whose early customers included Thomas Edison. Echeverr?a heads an unruly group of 45 researchers -- 25 PhD scientists and another 20 technicians and support personnel -- who make up the glass and glass-ceramics research group. The group works to understand existing glass, invent new kinds of glass, and improve the performance of pulled glass -- Corning's modern signature product, optical fiber. To say that Echeverr?a is those people's boss, which is how the company would explain it, is laughable.
One of her group's top scientists, Nick Borrelli, 63, is also one of Corning's most senior researchers. "I don't really report to anybody," he says. "I don't care who my boss is. I can't be managed. I can just be suppressed and frustrated."
The Nature of Creative Development by Jonathan Feinstein via Stanford Univ. Press The "Nature of Creative Development" presents a new understanding of the basis of creativity, describing patterns of development of individuals engaged in creative endeavors. I show how creativity grows out of distinctive, unique creative interests individuals form, often years before they make their main contributions, which grow out of their interests. I describe paths individuals follow exploring their creative interests, building up unique knowledge bases that are generative of creativity; describe how individuals’ interests spark creative responses they make, and ways in which individuals are guided by their interests and values in managing their development. Later chapters describe richer patterns of development that unfold over decades.
“Are Distractible People More Creative?” By Jonah Lehrer via Wired
Our culture worships attention. We assume that, when we’re faced with a really hard problem, the best response is to stay focused, to lavish the dilemma with deliberate thought. And so we order a triple espresso, or chug some Red Bull, or snort some Ritalin. The point of these chemicals is to sharpen the spotlight, to keep us fixated on the task at hand. free
“An Easy Way to Increase Creativity” By Oren Shapira & Nira Liberman
Creativity is commonly thought of as a personality trait that resides within the individual. We count on creative people to produce the songs, movies, and books we love; to invent the new gadgets that can change our lives; and to discover the new scientific theories and philosophies that can change the way we view the world. free
Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School
BOOK: A unique look at how the brain works, with advice, tips, and suggestions on how to apply what we know about it.
Career Warfare: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Personal Brand and Fighting to Keep It
BOOK: ""A refreshing message ... from someone who has fought many corporate wars." <~ The New York Times
Your Brain on Food: How Chemicals Control Your Thoughts and Feelings
BOOK: Gary Wenk demonstrates how, as a result of their effects on certain brain chemicals concerned with behavior, everything we put into our bodies has very direct consequences for how we think, feel, and act.