Great Circle

According to the mighty Wikipedia, “Dependency theory is the body of social science theories by various intellectuals, both from the Third World and the First World, that create a worldview which suggests that the wealthy nations of the world need a peripheral group of poorer states in order to remain wealthy.” Fascinating? Mmm. Probably not… [...]

“What happened to this month? I’ve been busy but I don’t seem to have accomplished anything!” Ever felt like that? It can be the same feeling about a year, a week, a day or even a morning. Sometimes when you look back at that period of time, does it feel like someone stole the time [...]

When supervising others (be they paid staff or the unpaid volunteers who help in the school office), there comes a time for confronting and challenging their behaviour. I found a terrific article online which gets inside the situation and gives some nice short sharp “how-to’s”, such as specific behaviours (and missing behaviours) to focus on. [...]

My wife Janine was making a great point the other day. In management herself, she was describing how – as a manager – it’s easy to make the demand that other workers comply with your own pet hates. In other words, those pet hates of the manager begin to take the form of regulations in the workplace. [...]

In answer to the above question, I guess the answer is “It depends on our motives.” My favourite 2 writers on the topic of setting boundaries (psychologists Cloud and Townsend) make a helpful distinction between selfishness and stewardship. In general stewardship is responsibility for taking good care of resources entrusted to us. For example, protecting [...]

Your brother lost the last thing you loaned him. Now he’s on the phone asking to borrow your car for a few days. A lady you know wants to come over to talk. You know from past experience that she will not be interested in hearing about your recent experiences but will spend literally hours [...]