Observations-Engagements

Canright Communications is moving downtown! We’re sharing office space in River North with Lyons Consulting Group, a firm that started in our Ravenswood office. And we’re selling a lot of well loved and vintage office furniture.

If you’re interested in anything and want to see it (or pick it up), email me at collin@collincanright.com or call 773 248-8935 ext. 9404 and leave a message.

Bookcase, Wall-Sized – $575

Large, custom-built oak bookcase for a wall-of-books look. Approx. 8ft wide by 7ft tall. Disassembles into base, top piece, and two shelf units for transport. Currently used as a wall divider in a loft office, with ceiling guy wires. Back side is painted white and has three short shelves installed. That’s optional–the unit can stand against the wall as well.

File Cabinet-Lateral (4 available) – $45

Beige-colored two-drawer lateral file cabinets. We have four available.

File Cabinet-Lateral-Four Drawer – $75

Beige four-drawer lateral filing cabinet.

Antique Desk with Typewriter Return – $125

Antique office desk (painted red) with a spring-loaded typing table. A lot of great articles, marketing materials, and a few books were written here.

Glass Desk and Shelf – $525

Desks–Wooden (three available) – $50 Each

Three wooden desks: Two are maple veneer. One is maple laminate. One has separate rolling drawers. See images. One is 64 in x 32 in; one is 70 in x 34 in; and one is 60 x 27 in.

Conference Table and 8 Knoll Chairs – $400

Wooden Conference table with eight rolling chairs. Table is 10×3.5 ft.: $150. Chairs are black cloth: $30 each.

And while we’re at it, we’re also selling some personal items we no longer want:

Lyon & Healy Troubadour II Lever Harp – $925

This is an older (late 1970s) version of the current model, the Troubadour VI. Harp is in good condition with no broken strings but will need maintenance and tuning. Specifications on a model III are:

Round Dining Room Table/Chairs – $350

Unique round wood veneer table and 4 chairs for dining room or game room. Came from Bavaria, according to the dealer I bought it from, who shops in Prague. Good condition but nicks to the veneer on both table and chairs and some mars on the legs. All chairs are tight, and the table is sturdy. Table is 50.5 inches in diameter and 31 inches tall

Couch-Cabinet-Treadmill-Microwave – $150

Corner of Lincoln and Byron, Chicago, March 3, 2010:

Human potential implies the need to change and grow, for potential is something not yet there that could be there. For people, change is largely a matter of examining and then changing beliefs.

In a leadership meeting at the Wright Leadership Institute this morning, Dr. Robert Wright of the Wright Leadership Institute suggested that beliefs fall into an intersection of beliefs and expectations between the individual and the world, as suggested by these questions:

What’s my belief about nature of the world?

What I can expect of the world?

What’s the world’s belief about nature of me?

What can the world expect of me?

Beliefs are often mistaken, and those are the four categories of where mistaken beliefs fall.

Human change and development as an intentional act considers to additional questions, Dr. Wright suggests:

What are the beliefs you are challenging?

What are the new beliefs you are building?

The institute’s MORE Life training is one of the best overall training experiences you can do to find answers to those questions. To read why I recommend for business, read the blog post at:

http://bit.ly/aqSQd0

Better yet, use this code to register for free: LinkedIn

I’ll be there challenging my own beliefs about myself and building new leadership skills and beliefs by leading the production team. Hope to see you there, too.

What beliefs are you challenging?

Tags: Transformation, Wright Leadership Institute

During the late 1960s and through the early 1970s, intensive group experiences captured the attention of journalists from major media, articles in national magazines like, Look, Newsweek, Playboy, and The New Yorker; best-selling books; and appearances on major television shows by authors and practitioners. Accounts in smaller newspapers followed, with articles by the Associated Press wire service spawning local reporting by local papers like the Milwaukee Sentinel.

Books, both popular and academic, as well as academic articles from the era, opened with wide-eyed wonder and almost surprised prediction at the prevalence and importance of growth group training, viz: The book Carl Rogers on Encounter Groups, opens with a chapter called “The Origin and Scope of the Trend Toward “Groups.”” Psychologist Dr. Carl Rogers wrote that “the planned, intensive group experience” was “the most rapidly spreading social invention of the century, and probably the most potent” (Rogers, 1970, p. 1).

In a textbook Group Procedures: Purposes, Processes and Outcomes, published a couple of years later, the authors wrote, “The use of groups to increase self-understanding and to improve the quality of interpersonal relationships is a sweeping social movement affecting psychology, medicine, education, social work, even business and industrial leadership,” (Diedrich and Dye, 1972, p. v).

Those books and the articles in the popular media followed the publication, in 1967, of the book Joy: Expanding Human Awareness, by William C. Schutz. The cover line of the paper back copy gives the reason: Joy was the book that “made encounter groups famous.” The goal of encounter groups (groups of six to 12 participants who meet for the purpose of personal growth) was to help participants experience joy through self awareness, created as the members disclosed themselves to one another through honest and open self expression.

Groups went under various names like encounter groups (perhaps the most famous), T-Groups (for training groups, the earliest historically), sensitivity training (one of the corporate terms for group training, and process groups (a more generic and descriptive term). Those groups share a key characteristic that the are leaderless—the leader generally facilitates a process rather than sets and guides an agenda. This description of sensitivity training, from the journal article “Training Groups, Encounter Groups, Sensitivity Groups and Group Psychotherapy,” provides a good description of growth groups and their workings:

Sensitivity training is any of a set of experiences, including but not restricted to the training group, attempting to help each participant to recognize and to face in himself and in others many levels of functioning (including emotions, attitudes, and values), to evaluate his behavior in light of the responses it elicits from himself and others at these various levels, and to integrate these levels into a more effective and perceptive self. . . . The trainer is the experienced leader or facilitator within a sensitivity training group who serves as a resource to the group. . . . He does this by calling the attention of the group from time to time to the behavior which is being exhibited and the relationships which are emerging in the group, and by helping the group to clarify its own goals and procedures (Gottschalk, L.A. MD, et. al, 1972, pp. 88-89).

This post on group dynamics is the second in a series of posts on social intelligence and group dynamics, written as part of my studies at the Wright Graduate Institute for the Realization of Human Potential. The first is “Social Intelligence.” Future posts will expand on those ideas and provide the broader historical context in psychology.

Tags: Wright Graduate Institute

Research and articles that have caught my attention this past week.

Atari Computer Concepts

Very cool photos of product concepts c. 1981.

Differentiating Your Company’s IT Services Menu

Thoughtful discussion of  ”trusted relationships” as the differentiating factor in IT services (and other professional) firms, from Ben Bradley of MaconRaine.

SMB Marketers Segment Emails by Preference, Behavior

Email marketing research on trends for small and medium businesses.

Does social media generate leads?

Reasonable and realistic assessments of Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook for business lead generation.

Social media strategies that work

Report on research from MarketingProfs.

Tags: computers, marketing, social networking

I saw the first red shoots of spring plants in my front-year flower bed, and the first green shoots of crocus in a neighbor’s. There’s a dense fog in Chicago as the snow on the ground and the ice in the earth condense into the warmer but still chilly air. Tomorrow the air will smell earthy. The season is transitioning, and it’s hard not to get excited by the signs, even though we know better in Chicago than to think about spring so soon.

The term “social intelligence” refers to an emerging science, rooted in current research in neuroscience, on the social underpinnings of the human brain. Beginning in the late 20^th and with a dramatic increase in speed and precision resulting from technological improvements in the 21^st century, neuroscience researchers have been validating the intuitive insights and theories of earlier writers and researchers.

In particular, neuroscience has started to describe how the brain is wired for emotion and connection between people. This post is the first in a series of posts on social intelligence and group dynamics, written as part of my studies at the Wright Graduate Institute for the Realization of Human Potential.

Daniel Goleman published the groundbreaking book Emotional Intelligence in 1995. Since then, neuroscience research has progressed to show that not only does the human brain have an innate capacity to manage emotions in order to realize the potential of relationships, but it also has an innate capacity—required for survival—to connect.

His latest book, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships (Goleman, 2006), describes “social neuroscience,” the field originated in the early 1990s with initial studies one person influences the neurochemistry of another. Aided by the tools of 21^st century neuroscience, scientists can now reliably study how “the brain drives social behavior and in turn how our social world influences our brain and biology” (Goleman, 2006, p. 10). Goleman calls it “the sociable brain.” The very design of the human brain makes it sociable, “inexorably drawn into an intimate brain-to-brain linkup whever we engage with another person.” In short, he wrote, “we are wired to connect” (Goleman 2006, p. 4).

Social intelligence and its basis in social neuroscience has wide ranging influences on group dynamics, given it shows how people are essentially designed to connect with one another. One of the initial influences that Goleman explores is “emotional contagion.” It’s really common sense that strong emotions in one person influence the emotions of the people around them. If someone is in a “bad mood” in an office, that “mood” will affect everyone else, especially if the person in a “bad mood” happens to be the boss or other influential person in the group.

Key to the neurodynamics of groups is what Goleman terms the “low road” and the “high road.” The “low road” refers to the part of the brain that responds quickly and largely unconsciously. This part of the brain is scanning the environment—including the emotional environment—for threats to the person.

Driven by the more primitive brain structure called the “amygdala,” the brain’s radar, the low road is “contagion central,” as Goleman puts it. Low road circuitry operates quickly, automatically, and below awareness. An emotion from one person in a group can quickly spread—or infect, depending on the point of view—throughout an entire group.

It takes “high road” awareness to counteract an initial “low road” response. The “high road” is the brain’s rational, executive center, the “prefrontal cortex,” the part of the brain that “contains our capacity for intentionality” and the give us the ability to “thin about what’s happening to us” (Goleman, 2006, p. 17). The high road works more methodically and step by step and “gives us at least some control over our inner life” (Goleman, 2006, p. 16).

This ability of people to influence one another affects how people in a group work together and the decisions they make. It can lead to greater closeness and cooperation, on the one hand, or the “madness of crowds,” on the other.  As Goleman writes:

Crowd contagion goes on even in the most minimal of groups, three people sitting face to face with each other in silence for a few minutes. In the absence of a power hierarchy, the person with the most emotionally expressive face will set the shared tone (Goleman, 2006, p. 48).

More to come. . .

Tags: Wright Graduate Institute

From the 66th floor of the Willis Tower on January 21, 2010:

From the 66th Floor of the Willis Tower March 5, 2010:

Tags: Photography

Sitting in a coffee shop today in a college bookstore, I realized once again, as I eavesdropping on a couple of conversations, how life is marketing and sales.

Read about marketing and sales for PhD students and university administrators in “It All Starts with Marketing and Sales” in the Canright Communications Onlines blog.

My firm, Canright Communications, uses a monthly email newsletter and a weekly email to stay in contact with our network of clients and prospects. The monthly newsletter is topical, and the weekly email covers the Canright Calendar, a listing of  Chicago networking events.

Read about how it works and get details on our network contact program in “A Comprehensive Network Contact Program,” in the Canright Communications blog.

As you may know from the email newsletters and bulletins you receive from us, we’ve been working on creative ways to keep in touch with our network of customers, prospects, and suppliers through email newsletters and email marketing.

It’s the best way we know to keep a name in front of people, so they remember you when they need your services, know the full range of services you offer, and understand the value you provide.

Tags: Canright Communications, marketing, networking