Workplace Buzz: Today’s Headlines

Workplace Buzz on November 1, 2007 7:14 AM

Hapless Assistants
No doubt, Miranda Priestly was an impossible boss. The hyper-demanding executive played by Meryl Streep in last year's The Devil Wears Prada threw clothes at her cowering assistants, phoned at all hours, and consistently demonstrated a manage-ment style best described in the film as sadistic, "but not in a good way." Sure, there are real-life Mirandas (and plenty of Michaels, too), who can turn freshly minted Yale summas and magnas into all-thumbs incompetents. But there's a flip side to the boss-underling dynamic--the hapless assistant who could even slow down Martha Stewart (obviously, not for long). Forbes.com

Looking at Diversity in the Workplace
The history of this country is marked by blacks who have achieved success because they are focused, disciplined, prepared, dedicated, and uniquely themselves. To suggest that black men should shrink from visibility or not advance new and bold ideas, simply to appease colleagues who may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable with our presence and personas, is disabling to a black person in a mostly white workplace. Boston.com

Workplace Psychology
American workers, hardened by more than 20 years of mass layoffs, are more likely today to be victims of a "psychological recession," according to Judith Bardwick, an expert on workplace psychology. Many workers today feel they are living in a chaotic world of job insecurity, she says in her book, "One Foot Out the Door." Relying on questionnaire data, primarily from 1998 to 2005, she claims those workers are no longer committed to their companies or their work responsibilities. Associated Press

Post a comment

(ADVISORY: Your name (not your email address) will appear live online the way you enter it. If you do not want your name to appear next to your comment, use your initials or a nickname. If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)