Ericksonian Hypnosis: A Dialogue with Charles Citrenbaum,Mark King,and William Cohen

The three subjects of this article, Charles Citrenbaum, Mark King, and William Cohen, are authors, hypnotherapists, and educators par excellence. In this interview they discuss a variety of topics, including Milton H. Erickson (the “Father of Clinical Hypnosis”), hypnosis, hypnotherapy, and effective clinical practice.     

Turtle Soup: Establishing Innovation-Friendly Conditions' for School Reform

Pressure groups in today's complex society present our school systems with diverse, conflicting demands for school reform. Educators can retain eroding public support only through pervasive innovations in our school systems. In order for our schools to survive and thrive in changing times, educators must overcome serious organizational and contextual barriers that inhibit innovation in the schools. Educational leaders must address these barriers by attending to the essential nature of creative thought, and to some basic tenets of organizational change. These concepts are portrayed in the form of a visual metaphor, which captures the essence of creative organizational development and recommends some specific Jeadership initiatives.     

THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF JOB SELECTION METHODS ON SIZE, PRODUCTIVITY, AND PAYROLL COSTS OF THE FEDERAL WORK FORCE: AN EMPIRICALLY BASED DEMONSTRATION

In this study, job performance increases resulting from improved selection validity were measured empirically rather than estimated from the standard linear regression utility equations. Selection utility analyses based on these empirical measurements were carried out for most white-collar jobs in the federal government. Results indicate that selection of a one-year cohort based on valid measures of cognitive ability, rather than on non-test procedures (mostly evaluations of education and experience), produces increases in output worth up to $600 million for each year that the new employees remain employed by the government. Newly hired federal employees remain with the government an average of approximately 13 years, resulting in a total gain in output of almost $8 billion over this period. This gain represents a 9.7% increase in output among new hires. If total output is held constant rather than increased, new hiring can be reduced by up to 20,044 per year (a 9% decrease), resulting in payroll savings of $272 million for every year the new cohort of employees remains on the job. The percentage of new hires in the bottom decile of the non-test-selected job performance distribution     

Creatively Intelligent: Post-Industrial Organizations and Intellectually Impaired Bureaucracies

Today's successful organizations function much like creatively intelligent, individual brain-mind systems. Unfortunately, many of the bureaucratic organizations we inherited from the industrial era function like individual minds of lesser intelligence. A metaphorical comparison of our organizations with the human brain-mind system illuminates organizational configurations and behaviors that promote success in today's turbulent economic and sociopolitical conditions. Both the creatively intelligent post-industrial organization and the highly developed human brain-mind are integrated clusters of dynamically evolving subsystems. Their functional dynamism enables them to perceive patterns in chaos, and to create effective long-term plans derived from those patterns. Imagine the organization in which you work as a giant brain. The human brain-mind system consists of a number of subsystems that work together to produce our thoughts, feelings, and actions. In a similar way, most of our institutions and businesses consist of departments that work together to create and distribute products or services. A wide variety of thought processes and behaviors are common to both the human brain-mind and the typical organization. Some of these include planning, analysis, abstract thought, emotional responses, ritualistic behaviors, and creative idea generation. A creatively intelligent person produces and integrates a blend of these thought processes and actions that is best suited to success in his or her environment. In a similar manner, today's successful organizations generate optimal blends of thought processes and actions that enable them to flourish in the midst of uncertain conditions. We can identify opportunities for greater organizational creativity and efficiency by using a brain metaphor to analyze the nature of today's most effective organizations. This paper compares the human brain-mind system to the organizations that are surviving and thriving in today's turbulent socioeconomic climate. There are some remarkable parallels. In many ways, today's most effective organizations closely mirror the functioning of the optimally developed human brain-mind. Similarly, our least effective organizations operate much like individual minds of lesser creative intelligence. The brain metaphor suggests that, in today's post-industrial organizational climate, some institutions and businesses are suffering from brain damage while others are on their way to becoming creatively intelligent geniuses.     

Community-Based Guidance: A ‘Tupperware Party’ Approach to Mid-Life Decision Making

This article examines a community-based approach to assisting women in their mid-life decisions through networking, peer-counseling, and professional support.     

Creative Organizational Vision Building Through Collaborative,Visual-Metaphorical Thought

An organization needs a strong, compelling vision of its future in today's complex, unpredictable socioeconomic environment. A college faculty recently used collaborative metaphorical discussions, mind mapping, and imaginative visual thinking to produce an unusual, idealistic vision of the college's future. This vision took the form of a fanciful metaphorical drawing, which was surrounded by an elaborate mind map and accompanied by a story that connects the symbolism in the drawing with the processes and products of the college. This unique initiative clarified connections between the everyday work of college personnel and their vision of an attainable, optimistic future.     

HOW AFRICAN AMERICAN MOTHERS ASSIST THEIR EARLY ADOLESCENT DAUGHTERS WITH READING TASKS

Three African American mothers and their daughters participated in three, 30-minute reading sessions. During each session, daughters read narrative text for 15 minutes and expository text for the other 15 minutes. Categories of interaction emerged from those reading sessions. Results revealed nine mother interaction reading categories and seven daughter interaction categories. Irrespective of the type of reading, the categories were linked to the transmission, maturational, and transactional points of view. Implications provide suggestions for helping parents develop reading experiences that foster positive reading behaviors for their children.