Each month I’m reaching into the archives to highlight a piece from that month for each of the past five years. Especially for those of you who missed them the first time around, I hope they provide interesting and useful reading. For each post I’m including a short excerpt; you may click on the title for the full article.
April 2014: FX’s “The Americans”: Putting on masks at work — “On the surface, Elizabeth and Philip Jennings are your basic well-scrubbed American couple, living with their two kids, Paige and Henry, in Falls Church, Virginia, a suburb right outside of Washington D.C. . . . In reality, however, they are KGB sleeper agents who blend the facade of their everyday lives with serious, often deadly intelligence work. The other day, it hit me that ‘The Americans,’ however unintentionally, is all about putting on masks at work. Elizabeth and Philip must wear these masks almost all the time, even with their kids.”
April 2013: Ethical failure at Rutgers: Abusive coach, bad management, questionable lawyering — “Last week, Rutgers University men’s head basketball coach Mike Rice was fired after videotape of his ongoing verbal and physical abuse toward his players went viral. . . . (I)t’s clear that Rutgers mishandled the situation at every level.”
April 2012: Workplace bullying 2.0: Psychology and mental health — “Of all the major disciplines relevant to studying, preventing, responding to workplace bullying, the fields of industrial/organizational psychology and its emerging sibling, occupational health psychology, rank first in terms of research and practice. . . . Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for those seeking information on counseling and therapy for bullying targets.”
April 2011: Getting back at a bad boss — “Let’s say your boss sexually harassed a co-worker to the point where she quit her job to avoid further advances. Is it acceptable for you to retaliate against the boss?”
April 2010: Adversity, resilience, and trust — “Folks who demonstrate the ability to recover from serious challenges and setbacks often gain a special wisdom. It’s as if an authenticity switch was turned on. You can talk to them about real stuff and they get it. This quality, by the way, cuts across demographic, social, and political diversities. By comparison, too many of the overly sheltered are prone to superficial thinking, act in an entitled way, and have a seeming inability to empathize. They are great cheerleaders but can make for bad leaders.”
Minding the Workplace 