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So Much Training, So Little to Show for It
The Wall Street Journal: Companies devote a lot of time, effort and money to corporate training—with little to show for it. U.S. firms spent about $156 billion on employee learning in 2011, the most recent data available, according to the American Society for Training and Development. But with little practical follow-up or meaningful assessments, some 90% of new skills are lost within a year, some research suggests. Eduardo Salas, a professor of organizational psychology at the University of Central Florida and a program director at its Institute for Simulation and Training, has studied corporate training programs for more than two decades.
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Hot Hands and Hoops: Irrational Belief in the NBA
The Huffington Post: Professional basketball begins again next week, and dedicated fans will be happy to put last year's labor disputes and lockout behind them. But many will also remember 2011-2012 as a magical season. It was the season of Jeremy Lin, a New York Knicks point guard who, for a few weeks last winter, captured the country's imagination. Lin was an unheralded and undrafted bench player from Harvard, one of the few Asian Americans in the NBA, whose unlikely hot streak landed him on the cover of Sports Illustrated -- twice, back to back. He made headlines beyond the sporting press as well, from Time to the Associated Press, and was the subject of seven instant books.
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If you’re beautiful, you may be very average, study finds
The Globe and Mail: Call it the Beauty Pageant Paradox. A new article titled “Calling Miss Congeniality – Do Attractive People Have Attractive Traits and Values?” published in Psychological Science suggests that beauty and character are more mutually exclusive than we make them out to be. Researchers Lihi Segal-Caspi and Sonia Roccas of the Open University in Britain and Lilach Sagiv of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem set out to explore how the notion that “what is beautiful is good” plays out in reality.
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Millions on Pet Halloween Costumes? Why We Spend More and More on Pets
TIME: American consumers are expected to collectively spend $370 million on pet costumes this Halloween. That’s $70 million more than last year, and a whopping 40% increase compared to 2010. And how’s this for perspective: Americans will spend barely three times more on costumes for children than they will for pets. The estimated 15% of Americans who will buy pet costumes aren’t likely to just throw a bandana on their dog and be done with it. Not only are more people purchasing Halloween costumes for their dogs—there’s been a 24% increase since 2010—but they’re spending much, much more per costume, with a rise of 40% in overall spending in two years.
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Is it actually less stressful to be in charge?
The Washington Post: Think your job is more stressful than your employees’? Think again. A new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and featured on the news service HealthDay Monday found that people in leadership positions suffer from less stress, surprisingly, than those in less powerful positions. The researchers, in what they say is the largest of such studies, asked 148 leaders and 65 non-leaders attending a leadership program at Harvard University about their stress (many of whom worked in government jobs).
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Good Versus Effective Leadership
The New York Times: The Lance Armstrong case is like many other instances involving the evaluation of leaders. The key problem is that we equate leader effectiveness with being a good leader. It isn’t enough for someone in a leadership position (and by virtue of his position as a role model and a “leader” in his sport, Lance Armstrong qualifies) to simply get things done. A successful leader is one who accomplishes goals, but who also has good character. Here’s what distinguishes a “good” leader from merely an effective one: Doing the Right Things vs.
