A Tour of My Garden

The Braindeading of America

Curating

A Word With Marty: "CURATE"

A Word with Marty: MERIT

Subjectivity in Performance Evaluations

Often, workplace advice is too pat. For example, "Have measurable goals."
Fact is, quality is difficult to quantify. Can we quantify a psychotherapist’s performance? A musician’s? A writer’s?

In fact, if we attempt to quantify quality, we likely reduce our judgments' validity.  To reduce an employee’s performance to a number is, well, reductionistic. 

That’s true even of the ostensibly quantifiable jobs such as sales. Whether or not a salesperson meets the quota tells only part of the story. To what extent did the salesperson omit details about the product that might have appropriately led the customer to choose a competitor’s product? To what extent did the salesperson spend time helping the customer even though it didn't directly result in more sales? Don't those things count?

My PsychologyToday.com article today presents a dialogue that dramatically addresses the issue of subjectivity in the workplace. Its goal is not to provide a pat answer because none is possible but hopefully to add nuance to your dealing with subjective decisions and to increase empathy for the person on the other side of the table.

Becoming a Better Judge

University of Chicago Assistant Professor Ed O’Brien studies how accurately we appraise ourselves. For example, are we, overall, better people than we used to be? And how accurate are our specific predictions, for example, how likely we are to lose weight? O’Brien also looks at what affects our recommendations’ accuracy, for example, what movie to see? Finally, he goes beyond description and opines on how we might actually improve rather than just think we’re improving.

Pacific Standard named Ed O’Brien one of the Top 30 Thinkers Under 30.  His research has been profiled on NPR, The Atlantic, TIME, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal.  He is my PsychologyToday.com Up-and-Comer interview today.

Getting and Giving More Feedback

Scarier than any Halloween frights is the fear of getting and giving feedback. 

In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer ways to make getting and giving feedback easier and more valid.

In Praise of Judgmentalness

 In our egalitarian ethos, we're far safer saying an idea is a "different perspective" than that it's a worse one.

In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I make the case that we should be more judgmental.