You can make sure your phone is in airplane mode when you drive, never snack when youre behind the wheel, always have both hands on the wheel, and yet still be a distracted driver.

Keeping your head in the game is the greatest challenge professional drivers face when it comes to keeping ourselves and everyone around us safe from harm. Its a delusion to believe we can focus solely on the task of driving when behind the wheel, or that the solution to this challenge is mandated rest.

I firmly believe that road safety starts with the right attitude in your head. For example, you shouldnt be driving if youre filled with any destructive emotion such as anxiety, anger, or depression. The same applies if you are experiencing fatigue, burn-out, or exhaustion.

But is that even possible in the world that commercial drivers move in? How many of you professional drivers reading this have made it through a week without experiencing at least one of the physical or emotional factors I alluded to? And what do you do, if anything, about it?

Im pretty sure that every dispatch office as well as every shipping and receiving office has experienced the angry, irate, or emotionally-charged truck driver. Very often, we drivers are a pressure cooker filled with nuggets of emotion stewing in a broth of fatigue. Woe betide the dispatcher or shipping clerk that pops open the lid without backing off the pressure first.

Having a fellow driver you can call and just shoot the breeze with when anxiety and fatigue start to take hold is important. Im no psychologist, but I know that talking to someone who shares your same experience and background in the industry is a fantastic way to change the channel in your head.

Often, that is all that you need to dissipate the anger or frustration you are feeling. Its a simple way of releasing that pressure youre experiencing. In the two decades that Ive been trucking, I have never sat in a safety meeting that has discussed the everyday emotional challenges that drivers especially longhaul drivers face with any great depth.

The closest to this topic we ever seem to get is when employee benefits are discussed and employee assistance programs are on the agenda.

But what about fatigue, weariness, exhaustion, and burn-out? Well, to be honest, those are things we only talk about in terms of hours-of-service regulations and drivers know those rules are not a magic elixir to eliminate fatigue.

So, in my opinion, distracted driving results from the debilitating emotional and physical responses we experience as a result of the work we do. You get emotionally charged, or fatigued, or both, and your mind wanders off to deal with those issues. Your head is no longer in the game. You are now experiencing a much higher level of risk and you probably arent aware of it.

Eighty per cent of ongoing driver training (if you get any training, that is) should be learning about how to keep your head in the game and how to recognize the emotional and physical factors within yourself that put you at an increased level of risk. I think this is the most important step towards improving the dismal safety record within our industry.

Im raising this topic because for the last several months, I have been feeling a heightened level of anxiety and burn-out. As a result, I have become hypersensitive to requests from the folks in operations that place any additional demand on my time, even if those requests are reasonable and not at all unusual, which is the majority of the time.

I have a high degree of respect for the people I work with. Ive worked with many of them for more than 16 years now, so the last thing I want to do is act like a jerk and be disrespectful or unreasonable.

How our mental well-being affects our personal safety and the safety of others on the job, is a huge topic. I think workplace safety in the trucking industry deserves a drivers point of view from the front lines.

Hopefully I can bring you some of that perspective over the next several months with a break here and there for any hot topics that grab my attention. Be aware and be safe out there drivers.

Al Goodhall has been a professional longhaul driver since 1998. He shares his experiences via his blog at http://www.truckingacross canada.blogspot.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @Al_Goodhall

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The Last Word: Keeping our head in the game - Truck News

The belief that we live in a meritocracy is one of our oldest and most persistent illusions.

It justifies the gaping inequalities in our society by attributing them to the skill and hard work of successful people and the incompetence and shortcomings of unsuccessful people. But this has always been a fantasy, a way of glossing over how the world actually works.

A new book by Yale Law professor Daniel Markovits, The Meritocracy Trap, is a fascinating attempt to poke holes in our conventional understanding of meritocracy and, in the process, make the case for something better.

We typically think of meritocracy as a system that rewards the best and brightest. For Markovits, it is merely a pretense, constructed to rationalize an unjust distribution of advantage.

Heres a clarifying stat: At two Ivy League schools that Markovits surveyed, the share of students from households in the top quintile of the income distribution exceeds the share from the bottom two quintiles combined by a ratio of about three and a half to one. The point: Meritocracy is a mechanism for transferring wealth from one generation to the next. Call that what you want, but you cant call it fair or impartial.

What makes Markovitss book so interesting is that he doesnt just condemn meritocracy as unfair for non-elites; he argues that its actually bad for the people benefiting from it. The trap of meritocracy ensnares all of us, he says, in ways that make life less satisfying for everyone.

I spoke to Markovits about how meritocracy works, what its doing to us, and what a post-meritocratic society might look like. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

What is a meritocracy, and do we actually live in one?

Meritocracy is the idea that people get ahead based on their own accomplishments rather than, for example, on their parents social class. And the moral intuition behind meritocracy is that it creates an elite that is capable and effective and that it gives everybody a fair chance at success.

Do we live in a meritocracy? Well, maybe the best we can hope for is to live in an imperfect meritocracy. The problem, of course, is that elites cheat and they game the system and they engage in all kinds of self-dealing in order to get ahead.

On a purely descriptive level, though, I think we do live in something like a meritocracy. That is to say, the bulk of the reason why certain people have gotten ahead is that they have genuinely accomplished things. On the other hand, the moral intuition behind meritocracy is not at all realized. This system does not give everybody a fair chance at success and it hasnt been particularly good for society as a whole. And it hasnt even been good for the elite.

Well get to that last point, but first I want to be very precise about the claim youre making here. Theres a simple critique of meritocracy that says the so-called elites arent really elite; instead, theyre beneficiaries of a rigged system.

I dont think you dispute this, but you make a deeper claim, which is that the problem is the kind of society weve built, a society that favors the sort of skills meritocrats are uniquely equipped to have. Can you say a bit about that?

Lets just separate those two things out. And maybe the recent college admission scandal is a good way to illustrate this concretely. In that scandal, some rich and famous people paid bribes to get their kids into college.

Now, Im not saying the scandal wasnt wrong it absolutely was scandalous. But the bulk of the reason why our colleges, particularly our elite colleges, are filled with kids of rich parents isnt that. Instead, its that rich parents spend enormous sums of money not on bribing anybody but on educating their children, on getting their children into prestigious kindergartens and high schools, on coaches and tutors and music teachers, and this means the children of rich people simply do better on the merits.

And so the big problem that we face isnt merely that the rich cheat, its that the meritocracy favors the rich even when everybody plays by the rules.

So youre saying that a world in which meritocracy works is, by definition, a bad world, a world that engineers and reproduces inequalities.

Yes, it exacerbates and reproduces inequalities, so that one thing thats happened is that because the rich can afford to educate their children in a way nobody else can, when it comes time to evaluate people on the merits, rich kids just do better.

Is the meritocratic system itself the greatest impediment to a fair society, which is to say a society in which equality of opportunity is a real thing?

I wouldnt want to argue about whether meritocracy or racism, for example, is the greatest impediment to equality of opportunity.

But Ill say this: the SAT and the College Board reported data in 2016 from which you can figure out how many kids there were that year in the US who took SAT who scored 750 or above, which is roughly the Ivy League median, and whose parents had a graduate degree. And the answer is about 15,000.

You can also figure out how many kids there were who scored 750 or above whose parents had not graduated high school, much less earned graduate degrees. And the numbers are so small, the tail is so thin, that the statistical techniques become unreliable. But if you just grind out the math, the answer, I think, was 32.

So thats a case in which effectively what degrees your parents have determines whether youre going to get a high-enough SAT score to get into the Ivy League. And thats meritocratic in a way but its an incredible block to equality of opportunity.

Is there any way to organize a competitive society that doesnt inevitably tend toward these sorts of excesses?

I think its possible, yes. So one distinction I draw is between excellent education and superior education. Excellent education is education that makes a person good at something thats worth doing, and superior education is education that makes somebody better than other people at something, regardless of whether its worth doing or not.

You can imagine a society which has widespread, excellent education and invests in training people to be good at all the tasks that the society needs and fills up its jobs with people who are excellent at them. And that would be a kind of a meritocratic society that structures its education and work so that once youre excellent, being a little bit better doesnt make that much of a difference.

Germany, I think, is a pretty good model for that kind of society. But our society focuses on superior education: It gives huge advantages to people who are better than somebody else or than everybody else in all sorts of things that probably arent worth doing, like being great at high-tech finance, which most economists think has almost no social value.

But if youre really good at it you can make millions and millions of dollars a year, and to get really good at it you have to master all sorts of difficult skills and you have to get degrees at the top of your class in the very best universities in the country. And thats the kind of system that we have now.

I want to circle back to something you alluded to earlier, which is that meritocracy is toxic even for those who profit from it. That will strike many readers as counterintuitive. Can you explain what you mean?

It takes enormous effort to win and keep winning in this competition, so elite schooling has become enormously more intensive than it was 20 or 50 years ago. And elite jobs have become enormously more intensive. The toll that this takes is quite heavy and I think its destructive of human well-being.

Meritocrats are constantly struggling and being evaluated and tested, and they constantly have to shape and manipulate themselves in order to pass the test. And in a way, its like theyre portfolio managers whose assets include just themselves, and they have kind of an instrumental and alienated attitude toward their own lives because they have to treat their life that way.

You teach at Yale Law. Youre surrounded by elites. Do you find that most or any of them feel like theyre suffering on account of their privilege? Because my sense is that the people with the most to lose from reordering society are usually the most committed to keeping the world the world the way it is. The idea that weary meritocrats will suddenly wake up and find solidarity with the besieged middle class seems a little quixotic to me.

Its nuts, right? I can just give you some of my own anecdotes. There was a survey of the mental health climate at Yale Law School done last year or the year before, and something like 70 percent of respondents said that they felt the need to use and consult mental health services. And there are similar data from other elite institutions that show elite students are not happy, are not doing well.

Twenty years ago when I started teaching here, my students were feeling very good about themselves. They felt like they won the golden ticket. Today, thats just not the case. They feel as though theyve run a gauntlet to get here, and they recognize that when they get out to the workforce, theyre just going to have to run another gauntlet thats just like the one they ran. And they dont want that.

And they also increasingly recognize that their advantages are very closely intertwined with the exclusion of others, and they object to that morally. So I dont think that at the moment this is a student body that is thriving. Its got great career prospects, but the rest of its life as a whole is not going well and I think my students recognize that.

And what is the price that non-elites are paying for the system? How are those marginalized by meritocracy suffering?

I think there are at least three kinds of prices. First, they cant compete and their children cant compete. What a poor or middle-class family is able to spend on education is absolutely dwarfed by what a wealthy family is able to spend.

A second harm is what elites have done to the labor market. Theyve remade jobs in a way that destroys the middle class by eliminating the high-paying positions for people who lack technocratic expertise. Think of a company like Kodak, which, at its peak, employed 140,000 people with good, secure jobs. Now that part of the economy is occupied by a company like Instagram, which had 13 employees when it was bought for a $1 billion by Facebook and those were all super-skilled elite workers.

And then finally meritocracy adds a kind of a moral insult to this economic exclusion because it frames what is in fact structural inequality and structural exclusion as an individual failure to measure up, and then tells you if youre in the middle class, the reason you cant get the great high-paying job is because youre not good enough and the reason that your kids cant get into Harvard is that theyre not good enough, which is complete nonsense. But thats what the ideology tells you.

I take all your points and dont disagree, I just wonder what it would take to move beyond the meritocratic model. Are we not, after all, talking about a complete shift in how we think about political economy and morality?

I think thats probably right. Look, one way to think about this is that if you take a longer historical view, meritocracy in its deeper origins came to the English-speaking world around 1833, which is the date in which the administrative division of the British East India Company entrance and promotion based on social class was replaced with entrance and promotion based on competitive examinations.

And so it took from 1833 to 1980 or so, 150 years, for the whole society and economy to be remade on this model. And that involved changes in institutions, in technology, in government, in policy. And it will take generations and imaginative changes to undo this thing or to get into the next phase of our collective existence.

So I know it sounds like Im asking for something unobtainable, but the reality is that the current setup is increasingly unsustainable. There are going to be fundamental shifts in how we think about our ambitions, our lives, our institutions, and our production and consumption. And the trick in the face of that is to come up with a compelling critique of where we are and charismatic ideas of where we might go.

The sort of change youre after will, for lack of a better word, demand a revolution of individual consciousness. Ultimately, people are going to have to want different things, fear different things, aspire to different things.

People have to realize that the things that they want right now are not making them well. They have to recognize the sources of their dissatisfaction and the sources of their childrens dissatisfaction and then they have to start finding alternatives.

And the job of policymakers is to try to create alternatives that will serve the needs of those who grab onto them. Thats why, for example, one of the policy recommendations in the book is to massively expand enrollments in elite education. The trick is to get many, many more kids from non-rich families into not just the Ivy League, but elite private universities, elite private high schools, and elite private elementary schools, and to do it in a way that does not require excluding any currently rich kids, so that the schools themselves become genuine avenues of opportunity again.

Ill close with a somewhat ominous question: If we dont unravel the meritocracy, if society continues to hum along as it is, if the inequalities persist, what will happen?

I dont have a confident view about the particulars, but we know that societies that succumb to this level of concentrated wealth and privilege generally dont unwind it except through losing a foreign war or an internal revolution. And something like that is in the offing for us. I dont know when or how or what the details are, but thats the kind of fear that one should take very, very seriously.

More:
Meritocracy harms everyone even the winners - Vox.com

There's a moment in the new musical Only Human in which God, played by Gary Busey (yes, that's right, more on that in a moment), sees his reflection in a mirror for the first time. The look of pure delight on God's face is indelible, and he does a sort of shimmy by way of celebrating himself. It's the most believable moment in the show.

Anyway, back to Busey. To be accurate, his character is referred to only as "The Boss." Although to be sure you understand who he really is, the program helpfully clues us in that he's God, and that the characters named Jay (Evan Maltby), Lou (Mike Squillante) and Maggie (Kim Steele) are supposed to be Jesus, Lucifer and Mary Magdalene, respectively. Apparently, the show's creators felt we otherwise wouldn't quite get it.

The first act of the world-premiere musical is set in "Heaven's front office, before time was time," which probably explains why time seems to stand still while you watch it. Considering the workplace's heavenly status, it's pretty bare-bones, containing little more than some office chairs, a wheeled metal staircase and some large cubes. In addition, God sorry, "The Boss" has a small private office upstairs, where he sits behind a desk at a boxy, vintage computer. Because after all, Steve Jobs, or any human being for that matter, hasn't been born yet except, for some reason, Mary Magdalene.

The story begins with Lou proudly unveiling his idea for the creation of the human race, followed by Maggie arguing that it needs more women and Jay making a case that the essential ingredient for people should be niceness. As anyone who's ever worked in an office can guess, tensions arise, until The Boss eventually fires Lou. In any case, mankind does get rolling, as signified by a fig leaf-wearing Adam and Eve (ensemble members Ben Bogen and Lili Thomas) who engage in a pas de deux.

To say that the book by Jess Carson (based on a story by Jesse Murphy and Squillante) is far from divine is an understatement. At one point, God announces he's short on time, saying, "I've got walking on water lessons at 3:00." Later, when Jay staggers into the office wearing only a loincloth and looking decidedly worse for wear, a concerned Maggie asks him, "What happened?" His reply, "They nailed me to a cross," is apparently intended to be a laugh line.

The nonsensical, unfunny proceedings also include a generic, forgettable pop/rock score composed by Squillante, who, as his bio informs us, is the singer/guitarist of a band named Running Lights. In true would-be rock star fashion, Squillante gives the lion's share of the musical numbers to himself, and even indulges in an electric guitar solo. He also certainly looks the part of both rock band frontman and Lucifer, sporting scruffy facial hair, a black leather jacket and appropriately ripped tight pants.

Of course, it's Busey whom audiences are coming to see whether for nostalgia over films such as The Buddy Holly Story (for which he received a best actor Oscar nomination), Lethal Weapon, Under Siegeand the cult classic Point Break or a perverse desire to gawk at the notably eccentric star of Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew, Celebrity Apprentice and Dancing With the Stars.

The actor's mental issues, stemming from his devastating 1988 motorcycle accident and his substance abuse problem, are well documented. He's certainly a sight to see onstage, looking quite healthy and spry at age 75. Wearing a sharp, light blue suit, he doesn't so much give a performance as project an above-it-all attitude, which admittedly feels appropriate for his role. You can see him visibly struggling at times, even as he gives the impression that he's typecast as God.

Occasionally, the actor throws in one of his trademark "Buseyisms," such as, "FunFUN stands for Finally Understanding Nothing." Some of his lines are prerecorded, and despite his singing experience (he impressively did his own vocals playing Holly), he barely manages to get through his sole showcase number, the title song performed as a duet with Maltby. Much of his performance consists of intently looking through the contents of file folders, of which there seems to be an inordinately large amount in heaven.

Still, Busey is the most compelling element in a show that otherwise probably wouldn't (or at least, shouldn't) have seen the light of day in an off-Broadway production. There's also no faulting Steele, whose powerhouse vocals make the songs sound better than they are.

In the program title page, Only Human is labeled "A Blessed New Musical." That may or may not be true, but there's no doubt that audiences are going to feel cursed.

Venue: Theatre at St. Clement's, New YorkCast: Gary Busey, Evan Maltby, Mike Squillante, Kim Steele, Ben Bogen, Lili Thomas, Charles WestBook: Jess CarsonMusic and lyrics: Mike SquillanteStory: Jesse Murphy, Mike SquillanteDirector: NJ AgwunaChoreographer: Josue JasminSet designer: Andrew MoerdykCostume designer: Avery ReedLighting designer: Eric NorburySound designer: Ben ScheffPresented by Jesse Murphy, James Sears Bryant, Joseph Wolnick, Gylden Entertainment, James Raby, Dick & Mary Meisterling, Steven Becker, Whitney Wood, Amy Hassinger, Jela Okpara

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'Only Human' Theater Review - Hollywood Reporter

Research at all levels of education highlights the fact that flourishing relationships are at the core of effective teaching and learning, and thriving communities.

They are also fundamental to mental and emotional wellbeing. How relationships are addressed in the early years is going to greatly influence children at each stage of their development.

The relational dimension needs to be conceptualised not only at the level of the teacher and student but also with all those who play a part in a childs development directors of education and care services, parents, grandparents, and the wider community.

I argue that we cannot have flourishing relationships without gratitude, which I define briefly here as giving back out of acknowledgement for what we receive, in ways that are not necessarily reciprocal.

In our research, gratitude is therefore conceptualised not only as what we are grateful for, but how we can express this gratitude in action.

In the midst of our busy lives we often forget to recognise the gifts we receive from each other. Our relationships suffer if we approach them with an intention of what we need to get from another rather than first acknowledging what we are grateful for from them.

Rather than focusing on teaching children to be more grateful, I take the approach that it is the modelling and the inner attitude of the adults in the childs life that has the greatest impact. This is particularly the case when the child is in their early years, as the formative influence of the adult is stronger at this point than any other.

Although the most important place to start, gratitude research has barely touched the early childhood education context. To bridge this gap, a book club has been initiated with some of the Gowrie Training Tasmania Team. Our process was for the group of eight participants to read chapters of Gratitude in Education: A Radical View (Howells, 2012), and to come together at regular intervals to discuss the relevance of gratitude to early childhood education. We also explored the challenges.

Many wonderful stories of gratitude arose from our group. Participants shared experiences of deepening their joy and commitment to their work through gratitude practices such as recognising children and their parents more fully by thanking them often; and modelling gratitude in the way they teach early childhood educators.

One particular story speaks loudly about the place of gratitude, and was shared by a member of our book club, whom we will call David.

David encountered a family who were struggling with a range of financial and social stresses. Their child had many developmental and behavioural issues, and staff identified that as a child they found difficult to like. This was also mentioned in relation to the childs parents, who seemed downhearted when they arrived at the centre where they would predictably hear complaints about the difficulties caused by their childs behaviour that day. They seemed resigned to only hearing bad news.

One day David decided to take a different approach with this family. He looked for what he could be grateful for about this child. When the parents arrived, David made a special effort to go and thank them for what he noticed, for the wonderful attributes he could now see in this child since he consciously changed his perspective. He also decided that he was going to be the first one to approach the parents before others got to them with their complaints.

When David did this over time, he found there was a noticeable difference in the relationship, not only with the family and the centre but also with the way the family interacted with their son. For the first time, gratitude also flowed from these parents to the early childhood service and the other educators.

It is important to note here the distinction between praise and gratitude. David was not just offering positive words to make the other person feel better or to motivate them to behave differently. Inherent to gratitude is the cyclical flow of giving and receiving. It is important that we find this gratitude for before we express gratitude to in order for it to be experienced as authentic. It is also important that we express gratitude in ways that are meaningful to the other person, not just the way in which we would like to receive it.

Davids expression of gratitude to these parents exemplifies this beautifully. His actions also rotated the giving and receiving cycle from the parents to the early childhood service, which in turn was likely to be returned from the educators back to the parents and from the parents back to the child.

This is the power of gratitude from just one educators powerful action. If we turn such actions into gratitude practices, they have more impact particularly whentrying to express gratitude towards those who have hurt us, or whom we find negative. The notion of a practice means that we are not yet proficient in our gratitude, that we are reflecting on ways in which we can improve. They are actions that we repeat over again until they become part of our character.

Davids gratitude to these parents wasnt just a simple action. Nor was it a one-off expression of gratitude. He first needed to reflect on what he could be gratefulfor, what he appreciated in these people and their child. He then started to greet them with an inner attitude of gratitude. After doing this for a while, he then thanked them for what he appreciated in their child and did this often over time.

Without gratitude, relationships suffer. We know what it feels like not to be thanked in meaningful and authentic ways. We also know how life-giving and motivating it can be when people thank us, and particularly if those people are in a leadership position where we work. Let us not forget simple acts of gratitude in the midst of our busyness and weightiness of high performance objectives.

This article was first shared in Gowrie AustraliasReflections magazine and has been reshared with publisher permissions. To access the original copy of this article, please see here.

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Enhancing relationships through gratitude in the early childhood context - The Sector

In Silicon Valley, sometimes the satire writes itself.

And no, that's not a pithy reference to an artificially intelligent joke bot, although that wouldn't be out of place in HBO's satire comedy "Silicon Valley." The show's creators, Alec Berg and Mike Judge, have had ample inspiration to pull from as the real life Silicon Valley continues to outdo itself in sheer over-the-top antics.

"God, it's all so outrageous," Judge told Business Insider.

Read More: The flopping of the IPOs: Tech's biggest investors came to San Francisco for a major startup conference, and one topic stole the show

The sixth and final season of "Silicon Valley" premieres on October 27. We attended a screening in San Francisco on Wednesday with the show's creators and several cast members on Wednesday ahead of the premiere and it's right back to ripping storylines from the headlines: The new season tackles tech execs testifying in front of Congress, the scooter craze, and the backlash to invasive social media data collection.

Berg says that despite the rapid pace of change in the real-life Silicon Valley, the show has always prided itself on poking fun at the tech industry which has, in some ways, only gotten easier since it premiered in 2014.

"I think it went from season 1, the tech industry felt like it was a bunch of very wealthy, very smug people who were walking around congratulating themselves for having solved the world's issues, so I don't know that our relationship with them has changed, but their relationship to reality has changed," Berg said.

Indeed, the showrunners say, it's that lack of self-awareness that provides them with the ammunition they need to write the most biting satire. Judge specifically cited the time that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's went on a silent meditation retreat in Myanmar, where social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook may have helped fuel a mass genocide.

The whole incident was almost identical to a long-running subplot in the "Silicon Valley" show, centered on Gavin Belson, the CEO of fictional tech giant Hooli and the series antagonist. Belson relies on a grifter, his "spiritual healer," for business advice, and spends much of the most recent season in exile from the company, meditating at a monastery.

"Everyone was like, 'How did you get Jack Dorsey to become Gavin Belson?'" Judge said.

Berg added that the lack of self-awareness that Dorsey showed in not only taking the retreat, but promoting tourism to Myanmar afterwards, is exactly what makes the tech industry so ripe for comedy in the first place.

"He was in a country where they are in desperate need of a non-censored social media platform that could somehow allow them to communicate beyond the prying eyes of the government. If only someone could invent something like that," Berg said. "Yeah, stuff like that, that's been our bread and butter from the beginning, is like: there's a lack of self awareness, a lack of humility that has always been red meat for satire."

One might think that the WeWork saga would be similarly meaty enough for "Silicon Valley" to skewer. Unfortunately for those keen on schadenfreude, WeWork cofounder Adam Neumann and his entourage will be absent from the show's final season.

They had just wrapped the last episode, Judge said, when the drama around its IPO began much to the chagrin of everybody working on the show. If there were to be a seventh season, it could easily include a character based on Neumann, known for his distinctive long hair and predilection for walking around barefoot, Berg said.

"The CEO just looks like he could walk right into our show," Judge said.

Even with endless rewrites, sometimes right up until shooting, both creators said there was no way they could get every piece of real-life news into the final season of "Silicon Valley."

At the same time, after six seasons of tearing apart the tech industry, they said it was about time the tech industry tore itself apart.

"I don't know if they've quite owned the reality of everything that's happened yet but it does feel like there's starting to be this reckoning, and I've heard stories of people who would brag about what company they worked at now being afraid to tell their friends that they work in the tech business, because of the repercussions," Berg said. "And that is the polar opposite of what it was when we started."

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'Silicon Valley' creators on Jack Dorsey, WeWork and the tech industry - Business Insider

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Business Report started the academy three years ago with the goal of helping entrepreneurs, managers and executives broaden their leadership skills. See a complete list of graduateshere.

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Get to the 'next level' in business with Business Report Leadership Academy - Greater Baton Rouge Business Report

In the aftermath of the Yankees devastating walk-off elimination Saturday night, Joel Sherman wrote a story in the New York Post outlining a couple of high-profile moves they can make to avoid a similar fate next year.

One of the suggestions was to sign impending free agent Gerrit Cole; the other was to acquire Francisco Lindor in a trade with the Cleveland Indians. Considering the team in question is the Yankees, both moves are well within the realm of possibility on the surface.

The Yankees possess the self-awareness to understand the Astros are a step ahead of them across the board, along with the resources to close that gap by going into overkill mode this winter.

In regard to a Lindor trade, Sherman admittedly prefaces his suggestion with the phrase, pipe dream. It is Shermans construction of the hypothetical trade that renders it so. He eliminates Gleyber Torres, Aaron Judge, and Luis Severino from the equation as potential pieces coming back to Cleveland in such a deal.

Considering the Indians pitching depth, Severino already figures not to be part of the discussion. Why would the Indians trade away their franchise player, significantly weakening their offense, in return for a starting pitcher?

Judge is another reasonable stopping point for similar reasons. Its unfair to lump a player of his caliber into the category of right-handed outfielder, but thats what he is, and the Indians already have a towering right-handed power bat (who is also a strikeout machine) in Franmil Reyes.

The insinuation that the Yankees would be able to acquire Lindor without giving up Torres, however, is where this proposed blockbuster loses me. The Indians missed the playoffs in 2019, but not by much. There is no evidence to suggest they cant be at least as good in 2020, and its not far-fetched to pick them to win the AL Central for the fourth time in five years.

With the Indians still inside their proverbial championship window, giving up a generational talent like Lindor does them no good if theyre only getting back prospects. Forget about the construction of the roster and farm system for a moment, and simply consider the reaction of an already irritable fan base.

Right or wrong, there is a large contingent of Indians fans who dont believe winning a championship is the top priority of the franchises owners. Trading the teams best position player since Jim Thome without getting a proven, top-tier MLB player in return while the team still has the roster to compete for said championship would be, in a word, unwise.

The Indians have the right to ask for Torres if such trade talks should ever commence, and the Yankees have the right to declare him a deal-breaker. But at no point should the Indians settle for a trade package that doesnt include a player of Torres caliber if their own best player is on the table.

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Cleveland Indians: Response to NY Post story on Lindor, Yankees - Believeland Ball

This year marks the 10thanniversary of Bulgaris partnership with Save the Children. It also marks the 100thanniversary of this foundation, which was established to create programs that provide support to the worlds most vulnerable youths.To celebrate these two occasions, Bulgari North America, in cooperation with the Save the Children organization, has launched Arte di Bulgari an afterschool arts program for children.

Students participate in Save the Childrens new Bvlgari-supported afterschool arts curriculum, Arte ... [+] di Bvlgari, in Channelview, Texas. October 16, 2019 Photo Credit: Chris Olfers for Save the Children

The first Bulgari Arts program took place last week at De Zavala Elementary School in Channelview, Texas. In fact, Daniel Paltridge, President of Bulgari North America, was there to witness the program in action and to meet with the children reaping the benefits.The Arte di Bulgari program will be administered in two school districts in the greater Houston area and is in conjunction with the existing literacy, math and enrichment programs operated by Save the Children via itsEarly Steps to School Success program.

Bvlgari North America CEO Daniel Paltridge and Save the Children President & COO Janti Soeripto ... [+] stand in front of gallery with art made by students participating in Save the Childrens afterschool arts curriculum, Arte di Bvlgari, in Channelview, Texas.October 17, 2019 Photo Credit: Chris Olfers for Save the Children

The Greater Houston area was selected for the program because the area is still struggling to recover from the impact of Hurricane Harvey last year. The Arte de Bulgari program, designed to help children develop self-confidence and self-awareness, will enable social-emotional learning though the arts. Everything from dance to theater, sculpture, painting, photography, visual arts and more will be offered to the children. Additionally, for this program, Bulgari and Save the Children have tapped local artist and experts from the community.

Bulgari North America is proud to announce the next chapter in our incredible 10 year partnership with Save the Children with the introduction of Arte di Bulgari, says Daniel Paltridge, President of Bulgari North America. The arts are fundamental to the Bulgari brand identity, so supporting the arts through childhood education is a natural mission for us.

Bulgari custom-designed pendant to support Save the Children. As with all of Bulgari's Save the ... [+] Children jewelry pieces, a portion of the proceeds of the $770 necklace is donated to the organization.

Also to honor the 10th anniversary of the partnership, Bulgari recently unveiled a new custom-designed pendant dedicated to Save the Children, with a portion of the proceeds benefitting theSave the Children organization. The pendant, which retails for $770, is inspired by the brands iconic Bulgari Bulgari jewelry and is crafted in sterling silver with an onyx insert and a ruby and has the charitys logo on the back.

A student participates in an art activity that is part of Save the Childrens new ... [+] Bvlgari-supported afterschool arts curriculum, Arte di Bvlgari, in Channelview, Texas. October 16, 2019 Photo Credit: Chris Olfers for Save the Children

Throughout its 10-year partnership with Save the Children, Bulgari has raised approximately $100 million for programs that have reached more than 1.5 million children globally.Much of those funds have been raised through the sales of Bulgaris Save the Children jewelry collection. Just last year,Bulgari embarked on a youth empowerment program with Save the Children that brought theChef Niko Romitoto Bolivia to work with the children.

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Bulgari Launches After School Arts Program With Save The Children - Forbes

Organizations spend a lot of time discussing the return on investment for every effort they undertake, and rightfully so. Being a good steward of your resources is important. The difficult truth, however, is that some initiatives like leadership, development and growth don't have a measurable return on investment.

Measuring leadership investment is like attempting to catch the wind in a jar you can't. However, you can see, feel and measure the impact the wind has on the surrounding area. When you consider what it means to be a leader, you shouldn't be looking at the return on investment but, rather, the return on impact.

Understanding Your Impact

What would those who work with you really say about their experience? Would they describe you as a good leader or a great one? Would they spend more time and energy talking about you, or talking about the impact and influence you've had on others?

Good or bad, leaders always leave something behind, but it's my experience as an executive coach that most leaders struggle to answer even the most basic questions about the impact they have. Often, this is because they're unsure about the legacy they hope to leave or they misjudge the scope of their impact. Published in the journal Organizational Dynamics, a review of multiple studies"consistently found that women leaders under-estimated (i.e., predicted lower) how others viewed their leadership behaviors."

Without knowing what you hope to leave behind, you fail to give yourself a target. So how do you define your target? It requires self-reflection, self-awareness and an understanding of the type of impact you want to have on others.

Type 1: You impact people on an individual level.

One leader I worked with described her passion for helping others to grow. She strives to add value to the careers of those around her by identifying skill gaps and then invests time in influencing, coaching and growing others. If you asked those around her, they would each tell you exactly how they are better at their jobs and on their teams because of her influence. The key to this type of impact is that it's individual. She isn't simply hoping people share her vision. She looks at an individual and determines exactly how she can help them.

Now, you might be thinking that this type of impact requires quite the time commitment. Here's where I'll challenge you: Leadership isn't about you. If you're leading others, it's all about them. If you can't find time to connect, you should examine what's getting in your way.

Type 2: You impact your team by sharing your unique skill set.

A lot of leaders fall in this category. They focus on growing others in very specific areas, usually defined by what they themselves are skilled at. Examples include effective communication, client or project management, sales, meeting or presentation skills and ethics and integrity.

These leaders are known for their own expertise in these areas and they are always watching for ways to influence and impact others in the same areas. When I talk with the colleagues and employees of these leaders, they each describe how the specific skill they gained by working with their leader has impacted their career.

Type 3: You impact the overall company culture.

In this case, the leader demonstrates the power that comes with remembering there is a heartbeat behind every name tag and a person behind every employee ID number. These are the leaders that influence and impact organizational culture. These leaders show kindness and are considered great listeners. They lead with a coaching style of leadership and carve out time with others. These leaders are beloved by their colleagues and employees. Even after they've retired or moved on from the position, employees will describe how they carry the behaviors forward. As one employee I encountered put it: "I stop and listen to my people now and avoid jumping to conclusions because my former boss was a great listener and always had time for me." Another said, "I learned to ask great questions and allow my employees to think through problems and solutions because I worked for someone who allowed me the space to problem-solve and think out loud without judgment."

Leaders always leave something behind, good or bad. So, if you haven't spent time thinking about your legacy as a leader, please do. Sit down in a quiet place, consider the type of impact you want to have and write out your goals. In other words, define your target, so you can achieve a positive return on impact.

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The Real ROI On Leadership Is Impact - Forbes

If you have ever wondered what makes some leaders in tune with their environments and sensitive to the needs of their employees while others are not, you are not alone. As a university professor who is certified to teach graduate-level management and organizational behaviors MBA courses, I can tell you that emotionally stupid leaders occupy the seat of power of many of our organizations, houses of worship, educational institutions and seats of government, just to name few.

These leaders' decision-making abilities and the protocol guiding their behaviors most often are swayed by their own emotions without regard to the well-being of their followers. But have you ever asked why? Why are some leaders in tune with their working environments while others are not?

First, allow me to define the term "emotional stupidity" so we understand when and how it applies. I define it as the lack of self- and environmental awareness manifested through negative acts resulting from emotional behaviors. So, the definition of an emotionally stupid leader is an individual who lacks self- and environmental awareness and, through their behaviors, negatively affects their environment, whether personal, professional or academic.

These are the six primary characteristics of an emotionally stupid leader:

They're Easily Angered

The slightest mistake made by their employees will make emotionally stupid leaders easily irritable and upset. Have you ever had a leader scream at you and your team for the slightest mistake? This is a sign of an emotionally stupid leader.

Solution: If this describes you, I recommend anger management courses.

As an employee dealing with an irate leader, stay calm. Do not get angry and answer back. Immediately excuse yourself from the presence of this emotionally stupid leader and find ways to calm yourself down. For the future, prepare techniques ahead of time on how to calm yourself down when faced with situations like this. Easily angered leaders are unpredictable and may complain and snap at their followers at a moment's notice, sometimes for no reason. Your lack of response may diffuse the situation and may calm the leader down.

They're Impulsive

Emotionally stupid leaders are impulsive. They act without thinking. Most decisions they make during the impulsiveness stage are made without forethought, and they usually regret these decisions later.

Solution: Make it a practice (until you reach an acceptable level of emotional intelligence) that other leaders in your company agree with important decisions before you make them.

They Lack Self-Control

Emotionally stupid leaders lack self-control, which may result in the failure of the use of willpower, i.e., to achieve or conform. Leaders who cannot control themselves are easy prey for lawsuits and great candidates for legal trouble.

Solution: You likely don't recognize your lack of self-control. You may consider their emotional outbursts, aggressive behaviors and the resulting hostile environment as business as usual. To enhance your self-control, you can practice mindfulness, as explained below.

They Lack Self-Awareness

Emotionally stupid leaders lack self-awareness. They are reactionary and do not differentiate themselves from the environment in which they live and work. The leaders inability to distinguish the difference between the two could cause confusion that may result in a lack of self-awareness.

Solution: If you're not self-aware, it will be hard to convince you that you lack self-awareness. Enroll in self-development training sessions and take personality assessments tests. When you recognize yourself as separate from your environment, you can see yourself more clearly. Be aware of your internal and external selves and how each relates to your environment.

They Lack Empathy

Emotionally stupid leaders lack empathy with their employees. Here, I define empathy as the leader's ability to feel what their followers feel. Stereotyping, prejudice and ignorance could be considered three of the primary reasons leaders lack empathy.

Solution: Put yourself in the shoes of your employees and genuinely attempt to feel what they feel. Stay curious about their feelings.

They Lack Mindfulness

Mindfulness means different things to different people, but at its core, it means paying attention and being aware of your own abilities and environment. Emotionally stupid leaders lack mindfulness because they are not self-aware. They unintentionally remove themselves from their environment and disconnect with their employees.

Solution: Work on being present in the moment and in your environment. Practice daily reflection, be an active listener, take time for yourself, be mindful of others and their well-being, and understand the power of emotional intelligence.

Emotionally stupid leaders are the main reason toxic work environments exist. I hope shining a light on the components of emotional stupidity and the characteristics of emotionally stupid leaders has made you aware of how you can grow and become more emotionally intelligent.

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How To Identify And Overcome Emotional Stupidity - Forbes