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conflict management

Judging a book by its cover and conflict management

Last night I watched Toy Story 3 with my teenage kids – just don’t tell any of their friends!

We all loved it.  Goodies, baddies, baddies that look like goodies and goodies that look like baddies. What’s not to love?

It’s a bit like that in life too. So how can you tell who are the goodies and who are the baddies? Of course it all depends on your perspective.  Someone I see as a saint, you might think of as a demon.

Though there are some things I think we can all agree on, for instance that looks alone aren’t going to do it.  Nor can we necessarily judge people by what they say.

Most of us would probably agree that behaviour is a better indicator. After all actions speak louder than words, don’t they?

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The Secret of Willpower – Self-Motivation

Did you make any New Year’s resolutions this year?

You know the ones I mean, to lose weight, give up alcohol, get fit…..

The list goes on and on.  And great resolutions they are too. If we stuck to them the world would no doubt be a much better, healthier and fitter place.

Usually it’s about now that willpower starts to fail and all those really great resolutions fall by the wayside.  That cold glass of Chardonnay seems to call to us and the gym just doesn’t seem to have the same power of attraction. In fact, with such cold weather around no-one is going to notice the extra layers of fat under the extra layers of jumpers so why bother?

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Miliband of Brothers and more on the theme of reciprocity in motivation, management and leadership training

To continue on the theme of reciprocity in management and leadership training:

A colleague, Michael Bertenshaw, recently sent me a very scary photo on my phone of him with dyed hair and the worst glasses in the world. He was on a film set playing Ralph Miliband – as in real life his two sons vied for the Labour leadership.

The programme “Miliband of Brothers” went out on 24th September. I, for one, was watching, for two reasons.

1. To find out if Ralph Miliband really did look like that and if so why didn’t a kindly person say something.

2. To find out more about this Marxist theorist who put his finger on the button at the heart of matter when it comes to the subject of motivation in management and leadership training.

This is what he said:

Human labour cannot be dispensed with, and this also counts for the growth within advanced capitalism of a vast ‘industrial relations’ enterprise, whose purpose is to elicit from wage-earners the ‘positive’ attitudes, the ‘loyalty’ and co-operative spirit which the collective, ’socialised’ process of production requires, but which the dynamic of capitalism serves to undermine. Read more