Power

What do men with power want?

Answer: More power

From the Oracle, The Matrix Movie

What is the value of a teacher?

As a teacher, I often wonder if what we do in classroom matters to student lives years after graduation. Recently, I read a touching story in the New York Times from a writer who praises a few teachers from her high school days. These teachers went out of their ways to shape her life. Here is the link to the story.

Here are an inspiration thought from the story:

"If we want to understand how much teachers are worth, we should remember how much we were formed by our own schooldays. Good teaching helps make productive and fully realized adults — a result that won’t show up in each semester’s test scores and statistics."

Here and Now

Breathing in ... Breathing out
Breathing in ... Breathing out
I am blooming as a flower
I am fresh as the dew
I am solid as a mountain
I am firm as the earth
I am free

Plum Village, France

Measure of human character

"The difference between how a person treats the powerless versus the powerful is as good a measure of human character as I know.", said Robert I. Sutton in his book "The No Asshole Rule"

Organizational development and quality of work life

What are important elements needed for organizational development and high quality of work life for employees?

• Strong leadership. Here is a link to a thought provoking article in the American Scholar on solitude and leadership.
  
• Shared collective purpose and goals
• Good management of "assholes" ( a term used by Dr. Sutton from Stanford)
  
• Prevention of "organizational silence"
  

Conditions

Freedom is a basic condition of happiness.

The Buddha

Power

"In school you learn lots of things. You learn how to read and write. You learn about the world. You learn how to care for yourself and others. When you care for others, there is peace."

From 7-year-old Cassie Eng who collected 34,002 pennies in the Pennies for Peace project at her birthday party.

The paradox of power

I recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "The Power Trip". Here what it has to say about people in power:

1. According to the article, people give authority to people whom they genuinely like. In other words, people who climb up to a powerful position are those nice people.
   
   
2. However, once they rise to the top, they change. "When you give people power, they basically start acting like fools. They flirt inappropriately, tease in a hostile fashion, and become totally impulsive." said Professor Keltner.
   
   
3. Why does power lead people engage in unethical behaviors (think Bill Clinton with Monica Lewinsky or Blogojevich's bribe case or Mark Hurd's expense account fudging here)? Psychologists argued that one of the main problems with authority is that "it makes us less sympathetic to the concerns and emotion of others."