Author Archives: James - Page 50
E.Q. Librium by Yvette Bethel [Book Review]
Librium Unleash the Power of Your Emotional Intelligence: A Proven Path to Career Success by Yvette Bethel My rating: 4 of 5 stars Librium Librium is a very useful reference work aimed at helping people understand their emotions and interactions with others better. Primarily aimed at people working in office environments, especially managers and those hoping to become managers. The book is laid out in two parts. The first part of Librium explains emotional intelligence in easy to read language yet without being dumbed down. As well as explaining the concepts there are case studies and it's also referenced to an academic standard, so if anything piques your interest then you can follow the references to as much detail as you can handle. Librium also draws the links between good emotional intelligence and business success. English: Robert Plutchik's Wheel of…
A Wilderness of Sin by M J Logue [Book Review]
A Wilderness of Sin by Logue My rating: 5 of 5 stars A Wilderness of Sin Two years have passed since Command the Raven. Hollie Babbitt is now a Colonel of Horse in the New Model Army and a father. A Wilderness of Sin picks up in the aftermath of the Battle of Naseby. Thankful Russell has been blinded by a shot to the head and Luce Pettitt is in love. English: Battle of Naseby, by an unknown artist. The victory of the Parliamentarian New Model Army, under Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, over the Royalist army, commanded by Prince Rupert, at the Battle of Naseby (June 14, 1645) marked the decisive turning point in the English Civil War. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) As with the previous two in the series these are social histories. A Wilderness of Sin features birth,…
Lessons in Leadership from Andrew Strauss
Andrew Strauss being interviewed 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) I was lucky enough to hear Andrew Strauss speak about the lessons in leadership he has learnt as a cricket captain and then as Director of Cricket England. Andrew Strauss has led the England cricket team to win the ashes three times. Twice as Captain and once as the Director. Andrew Strauss's lessons in leadership chimed enough with me to make notes. I think everyone could benefit from them. Here is my summary of those lessons in leadership, minus the cricketing examples. Lessons in Leadership People are the most important thing, and you need to focus on them don't let other people do the dirty work, if you are giving bad news then you need to look people in the eye when you do. Everyone has their own perspective, and they all take…
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T317 Design and Innovation starts
My second to last open university course officially started on Friday. The course is about Design and Innovation, which I thought would be a very good thing to go into my business studies BA along with the Creative Writing I did two years ago. At the time I booked onto it I was working as a digital architect, designing digital services for the bit of the civil service I was working in. Since then I have been promoted and changed ; I'm still likely to find it useful though, just in a different way. The upshot of this course, 60 credit points at final year undergraduate level, is that I'm likely to stop reading things for pleasure for a while. So there will be fewer blog posts, and what there is may be about design or innovation. I'm expecting my…
Car crash
Yesterday morning I had a bit of an altercation with a volvo. Having just dropped Alexander off at his school, I was taking Lucy to her swimming lesson in Oxted. The weather was clear, bright sun and dry when the car crash happened. Car Crash As I went down Pendell Road towards Hawthorns school the black volvo pulled out of the school entrance in front of me. I just had time to start braking before impact. Fortunately I'd not being going that fast because I'd just come round a bend. It was probably slower than 20mph car crash into the side of the volvo. Both my front airbags went off, and my glasses disappeared. The air was full of an acrid used fireworks smell. I could see some residual dust settling in the morning sunlight. The whole front of the car…