Andrea Grobocopatel, presidente de Fundación FLOR: "Este es el siglo de la inclusión"

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TENDENCIAS

Andrea Grobocopatel, presidente de Fundación FLOR: "Este es el siglo de la inclusión"

La líder de la Fundación Liderazgos y Organizaciones Responsables explicó en diálogo con Infobae cómo trabaja su organización a diario para cambiar los paradigmas y así lograr la diversidad en todos los ámbitos. Su mirada sobre la sociedad actual

Por Maria Agustina D´Ambra

29 de Octubre de 2018


Link video de la entrevista en Infobae: https://www.infobae.com/e62ac1b3-d850-4f02-915b-e48f0a974c4a


La cantidad de mujeres en puestos de decisión era muy bajo en el año 2012. Por eso, la licenciada en economía Andrea Grobocopatel decidió tomar cartas en el asunto y fundó una organización que pudiera alentar a las personas a descubrir el valor que aporta la diversidad, a través de actividades que promuevan la inserción de mujeres en posiciones de liderazgo, fomenten la inclusión laboral de personas con discapacidad y busquen el surgimiento de líderes responsables. Así nació FLOR, la Fundación Liderazgos y Organizaciones Responsables.

"En la fundación queremos colaborar en el cambio de los líderes y de las organizaciones. Sentimos que debemos trabajar ese aspecto cultural. De esta manera, procuramos que haya muchas más instituciones que se den cuentan de que gestionar la diversidad es parte de nuestro desafío, del rol y de la estrategia, FLOR nació como eso", explicó Andrea Grobocopatel a Infobae.

Y es que la Fundación Liderazgos y Organizaciones Responsables, cuyo objetivo es potenciar a personas con buenas ideas y promover instituciones sólidas y fuertes con buenas prácticas de gobierno, gestiona la diversidad para que sean sustentables. La misma, a través de sus actividades, también promueve que valores como la inclusión, la responsabilidad, generosidad y la solidaridad sean fuente de crecimiento, sustentabilidad, respeto y paz.

Andrea Grobocopatel creó en el año 2012 la Fundación FLOR que alienta a las personas y a las organizaciones a descubrir el valor que aporta la diversidad.

-¿Cómo hacen para colaborar con el cambio de líderes y en las organizaciones?

-Empezamos trabajando algunos aspectos, como por ejemplo preparar más mujeres para que lleguen a lugares de decisión. Sentimos que si hay más mujeres, definitivamente la organización va a funcionar de otra manera. Hay estadísticas internacionales que demuestran que las organizaciones que tienen más mujeres en espacios de decisión son más rentables, más sustentables y más éticos. En definitiva, lo que tratamos es que, primero, las mujeres se den cuenta de que pueden hacerlo, que no están condicionadas que no hay estereotipos y así romper paradigmas. Después trabajamos mucho para que las mujeres se empoderen económicamente, sentimos que hay que tener libertad para elegir y esto implica que cada una pueda hacer lo que quiera pero si hay libertad económica o autonomía económica podés tomar mejores decisiones o tener más libertad. FLOR quiere que empecemos a trabajar en nosotros mismos, ser más responsables y eso llevarlo a las instituciones, organizaciones y empresas en donde participan para que funcionen de una manera más responsable.

-¿El cambio de paradigma está sucediendo?

-Veo que hay mucho movimiento y eso es fantástico. En algunos casos que es por moda, otros que lo sienten. Es algo que se está trabajando mucho y eso es lo mejor que nos puede pasar. Cuantos más seamos más rápido va a ser el cambio y más rápido será el impacto. El desafío es cambiar las estadísticas internacionales que dicen que si no hacemos nada la inclusión, sobre todo de mujeres en espacios de decisión, va a tardar más de cien años. FLOR quiere desafiar esto y en ese camino estamos. Las empresas y las instituciones ya están también hablando y cambiando esto. No es lo mismo que en el 2013 o cuando empezamos a trabajarlo, tengo mucho entusiasmo y esto puede cambiar más rápido de lo que imaginamos.

FLOR, a través de sus actividades, promueve valores como la inclusión, la responsabilidad, generosidad y la solidaridad sean fuente de crecimiento, sustentabilidad, respeto y paz

-¿Qué son los premios FLOR por la diversidad?

-Lo que hace es iluminar o tener faros que iluminen para otras organizaciones. Tenemos el premio a la gran empresa, a la pyme, a la ONG e incorporamos por primer año al sector público. Les hacemos preguntas básicas, todo a través de la web. Algo simple que no le lleve mucho tiempo con el objetivo de querer saber cuántas mujeres en lugares de decisión tienen, cuántas personas con discapacidad. Y también para que se empiecen a revisar a sí mismos porque no hay estadísticas, no es normal que las organizaciones tengan este tipo de estadísticas y menos los países, también queremos que lo empiecen a considerar porque a medida que se pueden medir se puede gestionar y necesitamos que se gestione que se vea el avance y la evolución.

Es el tercer año consecutivo que se llevan a cabo la entrega de los premios FLOR por la diversidad, y tuvo un jurado compuesto por representantes de del sector público, académico y consultoría: Fabiana Tuñez, Bernardo Kosacoff, Luis Ovjesevich, Daniel Arroyo, Laura Gaidulewicz, Lucas Utrera y Alejandro Melamed. "El jurado es exigente con las instituciones y las empresas. La verdad es que nos seguimos sorprendiendo de las organizaciones y les damos visibilidad porque es la forma de contagiar a otros y es lo más emocionante de los que ganan. Salimos emocionados, nos damos cuenta de todo lo que nos falta hacer pero de lo que podemos hacer si nos damos cuenta de que somos agentes de cambio para que la realidad sea de más inclusión, más integración en una sociedad mucho más justa, mucho más igualitaria en derechos", afirmó Grobocopatel.

La falta de mujeres en puestos de liderazgo llamó la atención de Andrea Grobocopatel y decidió realizar acciones para cambiar la realidad (Getty Images)

-Hablás de una sociedad mucho más inclusiva, integradora y justa. ¿Creés que es hacia donde vamos?

-Hubo años donde nos separábamos como sociedad, porque a los mejor la era industrial requería que la gente que tenía alguna dificultad vaya a un espacio diferente, las personas con alguna otra discapacidad estén en otros centros o escuelas: hoy vamos a la integración, a la inclusión. Éste es el año, es el siglo de la inclusión, creo que estamos bien, estamos trabajando bien.

-¿Por qué elegiste tener un panel destinado a la diversidad y en primera persona ?

-Fue un panel muy interesante porque teníamos personas que tienen alguna dificultad para insertarse en el mercado laboral o que la tuvieron. Por ejemplo, una persona que viene de otro país, una persona que está recuperado de adicciones, una mujer que dejó su trabajo y quiere reinventarse, todos contando sus experiencias y su necesidad de incluirse laboralmente. Dentro de los que estábamos escuchando, había muchos empresarios, embajadores, gente común y muchos hombres, lo que me llamó la atención y fue muy bueno porque a veces estamos muy acostumbradas a estos eventos en los que hablamos de líderes y que haya muchas más mujeres en espacios de decisión y normalmente nos hablamos entre mujeres.

Hoy el mundo está cambiando y hay más mujeres en puestos de decisión que en los comienzos de la Fundación (Getty Images)

-Hablás de empoderar a las mujeres y de invitarlas a reflexionar sobre aquello que son capaces de lograr, ¿cómo lo trabajan?

-A través del programa Mujeres en Decisión. Lo que hacemos es prepararlas en temas de gobierno corporativo pero con perspectiva de género. Las ayudamos a que entiendan lo que es gobernar una empresa, que no es lo mismo que ejecutar, pero también que se den cuenta de lo que ellas pueden hacer: desde negociación, marketing personal a oratoria para que también se animen. Tenemos que trabajar en nosotras mismas, en darnos cuenta de que tenemos que ser más protagonistas y no esperar a que nos llamen para serlo, sino atreverse. Además tiene un fuerte componente de lo que es gobierno, gobernar organizaciones e instituciones, qué preguntar, qué riesgos tomar. Trabajamos mucho sobre esos aspectos pero lo más interesante es la red que se forma -Red de Mujeres Profesionales- que se entusiasman con ayudarse entre sí. Me gusta esa generosidad que aparece después de que las mujeres cursan el programa porque salen conformes consigo mismas, empoderadas y más fortalecidas pero además con una red que quiere ayudar.

–El programa está presente en Latinoamérica. ¿Es una forma de contagiar a las demás naciones?

-Y es que así logramos que otros países puedan hacer el mismo trabajo que tan bien estamos haciendo, y así poder tenerlo en Colombia, Panamá, México, Brasil y Chile porque necesitamos que ellas mismas vuelvan a su país y transformen la realidad como lo estamos haciendo acá más de 300 mujeres y de esa forma todas juntas y fortalecidas cambiar la realidad en los distintos espacios que podemos.

Andrea Grobocopatel se convirtió en una activa promotora de la independencia económica y del desarrollo profesional de las mujeres

-Si tuvieras que darle un consejo a una mujer que aún no puede dar el salto y animarse a descubrir una nueva forma de ver el mundo, ¿cuál sería?

-Que la mejor inversión es en una misma, lo mejor que pueden hacer es darse cuenta de que no hay que elegir entre la profesión o el estudio y la familia, que las dos cosas se pueden hacer, que se animen, se fortalezcan y se animen a hacer tres cosas a la vez: prepararse a sí mismas, tener una familia, tener una profesión, que se den cuenta de que pueden elegir y que también pueden hacer las tres cosas a la vez y estar bien consigo mismas y con los demás aspectos.


Fuente:https://www.infobae.com/tendencias/2018/10/29/andrea-grobocopatel-presidente-de-fundacion-flor-este-es-el-siglo-de-la-inclusion/

Mayim Bialik ¿Cómo afectan los celulares a nuestro cerebro?

The following information is used for educational purposes only.


Mayim Bialik ¿Cómo afectan los celulares a nuestro cerebro?


Published on Feb 3, 2018












Source/Fuente: www.youtune.com/Recomendado en Linkedin por Mariano Castro.

Macri y sus errores por escuchar a la oposición, por Fernando Laborda

The following information is used for educational purposes only.



Ver este link: Macri y sus errores por escuchar a la oposición


"https://www.lanacion.com.ar/2185380-macri-sus-errores-escuchar-oposicion -


por Fernando Laborda.


Copyright © LA NACION

How to: Academy-Yuval Noah Harari & Natalie Portman

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How to: Academy


Yuval Noah Harari & Natalie Portman



Published on Sep 29, 2018

Yuval Noah Harari sits down with the award-winning actress, 

director, and Harvard graduate Natalie Portman to discuss his new

 book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

Filmed on 27th September 2018 - at Central Hall Westminster










Source: www.youtube.com

Adapting education to the demands of a rapidly changing economy: An interview with Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley

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Adapting education to the demands of a rapidly changing economy: 

An interview with Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley

By Wan-Lae Cheng, Thomas Dohrmann, Bryan Hancock, and Jonathan Law


The head of California Community Colleges discusses partnering with businesses to train and reskill the workforce and his role in reimagining the current education model through online learning.

The global economy is in the midst of rapid transformation. Across industries, digital technologies are destroying established business models and creating new ones, which has led to a shortfall of qualified workers to fill open positions.Requirements are changing so rapidly that many workers who have been with companies for years wouldn’t be considered today for those same jobs without additional credentials. It’s little wonder that upskilling and reskilling have become a top priority for companies and government administrators alike.

US community colleges—and comparable postsecondary schools in other countries—have a critical role to play. Long important players in vocational education and workforce development, their traditional focus on technical skills and industry-specific certifications have made them indispensable to sectors from manufacturing to healthcare. And with an expansive network of institutions across the country, community colleges are well placed to serve both traditional students and adult workers seeking to expand their skills and expertise.

Eloy Ortiz Oakley, chancellor of the sprawling California Community Colleges system, understands intimately how integral these institutions are to the continued vitality of a changing economy. His vantage point isn’t just professional but personal: Oakley’s experience as a community college graduate has indelibly shaped his views on the system’s role in creating a qualified workforce. We recently sat down with Chancellor Oakley at his office in Sacramento, California, to discuss the future of public colleges, the importance of public–private partnerships, and the potential of technology and online learning.

Interview transcript

McKinsey: How would you characterize the ability of public education in the US to meet the needs of today’s economy?

Eloy Ortiz Oakley: Our educational model often no longer works. The current pipeline consists of K–12 education, a four-year institution or a community college education followed by a transfer to a four-year university, and then sometimes graduate school. It is a very siloed process with rigidly segregated levels of higher education.

Instead, we may need to think about a K–14 model. We’ve seen some success with this approach across the country. P-tech is a great example: it is a six-year high-school program, developed through a public–private partnership, that allows students to graduate with both their high school and associates degrees. This model truly prepares students for the future of work.

McKinsey: What is the role of community colleges in preparing people for the workforce?

Eloy Ortiz Oakley: Whether students are coming to us right out of high school, after serving in the military, or from the workforce to reskill after a layoff, community colleges are a great fit. So many people who were able to get good jobs coming out of high school now need additional skills, often because employers are demanding postsecondary credentials.

Community colleges have both experienced faculty and support systems in place. And we open our doors to all students, regardless of where they have been, how they did in high school, or how they have done in life.

McKinsey: What are some of the ways your community college system is using technology to help students navigate through higher education?









Eloy Ortiz Oakley: One of the challenges in community colleges is that we have historically placed students in what we call remedial or developmental education classes based on their standardized test scores. That’s a disservice to these individuals because it doesn’t really represent how well they can do in college.

We are doing a tremendous amount of work to better understand students’ skills and talents, and to place them in college in a way that allows them to progress as quickly as possible. We’re getting much better information and using predictive analytics to better understand students’ educational attainment when they come to us and determine which courses they should be taking. For example, to place students today, we’re taking high school transcript data and creating algorithms that we call Multiple Measures Assessment and Placement (MMAP) models. These MMAPs will improve as we gain access to more and more data about a student’s life experiences—education, work, internships, clubs, activities and so on. As we get better at collecting that data, the MMAPs will give us much better information on how to personalize education for each individual. We want to be able to tailor an educational experience personally for you the day you walk in the door and having access to data is going to give us that opportunity. Students will be much better placed than just walking into a class of 50 as one of many, where our faculty and staff see only the average of what’s going on in that classroom.

So many people who were able to get good jobs coming out of high school now need additional skills, often because employers are demanding postsecondary credentials.

McKinsey: Community colleges have increasingly been working with the private sector on training programs and curriculums. What are the elements of effective public–private partnerships?

Eloy Ortiz Oakley: The employer–community college partnership is critical to ensure that the private sector has the workforce it needs to grow. We see the economy changing right before our eyes, so without this strong partnership we’re going to fail to educate a sufficient pool of workers.

We need employers that are invested in the future of public higher education to be at the table, helping us to design curriculum and advising us on how to upskill and reskill the workforce. For example, Genentech in the northern San Francisco Bay Area, has partnered with colleges such as Solano Community College to create and prepare an entry-level workforce. Solano Community College in partnership with Genentech has also developed a bachelor’s degree that feeds into its particular industry, enabling more folks in the workforce to move into management positions.

Most companies understand the value of partnering with broad-access public education institutions. Whether they are an automotive manufacturer or a tech company, they are already spending to train new employees, reskill them as workers progress through the ranks, and retain talent in a tight labor market. Community colleges are the ideal partner: we’re already here, we’re affordable to many students, and we’re located throughout the country. Moreover, we’re designed to adapt to the changes in the workforce much more quickly than public or private university systems can.

McKinsey: So how do you pitch a community college student alongside a student from a top-name university?

Eloy Ortiz Oakley: Part of the challenge we have today is the way that we communicate value is the diploma that you offer on your résumé. Not that one degree is better than the other, but if you have a degree from an Ivy League school, that communicates a certain value, while a degree from a public university conveys a different value. In the future, I think we’re going to rely less on where a degree came from and more on the entire picture of degrees, experience, and demonstrable skills. That’ll force us to reassess the value we create through our credentials.

The goal, really, is about building a portfolio so that people can accumulate and demonstrate knowledge to an employer. The challenge for us is, how do we take a student’s information over a lifetime and package it in a portfolio of skills for an employer, including education, military service, and skills gained as an adult learner. Think about how employers are screening applicants. They’re using various algorithms and predictive analytics to screen applicants out on a number of criteria. Applicants rarely get a chance to sit in front of people anymore for a first interview.

McKinsey: Are you talking about a digital portfolio of some sort?

Eloy Ortiz Oakley: Yes, I think having a digital portfolio is the wave of the future. Right now, every time you apply for a job or go to school for an advanced degree, you have to request your transcript from the university you last attended. That is such an outdated way of helping us understand what your skills and talents are.

In contrast, LinkedIn, Indeed, or any of the other job services are essentially digital packages. They capture work experience and duration, education, membership in different organizations, and hobbies and interests. We have also seen advances in student portfolios.

It’s really about how we package all of these skills in a way that’s transferrable and follows individuals throughout their career. It’s unclear what that will look like, but I think being able to demonstrate the accumulation of all your talents and experiences is a much better way of understanding how you’re going to fit into my company or my venture than just a college diploma.


McKinsey: You’re in the process of developing a fully online community college that will offer multiple career pathways starting in 2019. What specific needs will this college address?

Eloy Ortiz Oakley: It will be focused on competency-based education and a personalized learning experience. Our target is the adult workforce: there are 2.5 million working adults between the ages of 24 and 35 in California who have no college credential. If you extend that to age 62, that number grows to more than 8 million. These individuals are extremely vulnerable to the changes in the economy: they were severely displaced in the last recession and will be most vulnerable when the next recession hits. They have no real opportunity for economic mobility without some demonstrable skill.

We’re concerned about what is going to happen to these 8 million working adults when automation disrupts their industry. Think about the gig economy and how rapidly it is changing—one day you’re an Uber driver, the next day we have automated cars driving people around. What happens to all those workers?

This college will give adult learners the opportunity to reskill and upskill, pursue promotions, enhance their economic mobility in this economy, and gain a stronger foothold in the economy. Medical coding will be one of the first pathways offered because this role is in high demand in the healthcare field. Every time an industry changes, the jobs that are being created require the demonstration of skills—whether those are badges, microcredentials, or higher-education credentials. That trend is going to pick up speed. If we don’t begin to lay the infrastructure today, then those workers are going to be left without jobs.

McKinsey: A lot of research shows that fully online education doesn’t necessarily lead to great outcomes or teach the soft skills needed to excel in certain industries. How will you address these issues?

Eloy Ortiz Oakley: People have become much more comfortable with online learning. Think about the feedback loops that we’re all accustomed to—such as apps on our phone that tell us about our banking or credit rating. These digital tools allow us to gain more skills and knowledge about what’s going on around us.

We think that technology, particularly around competency-based education, can serve adults very well. There are no doubt places where students will need to demonstrate hands-on skills, but that’s where the employer partnership comes in. We know that employers need to certify workers with technology-enabled skills. Partnering with employer groups and labor organizations enables our colleges to offer hands-on competency certification.

McKinsey: How will you ensure that internet access won’t be a barrier to the online university?

Eloy Ortiz Oakley: We recognize that many working-class citizens can’t afford high-speed internet. For some, their phones are their only path to the internet. For basic instruction and learning, we want to make our courses very mobile friendly and device agnostic so that everyone can participate. For higher-level work, we need to work with our employers, labor partners, and municipalities to ensure that there are places a person can go to gain access to a laptop or another mobile device. We’re going to have to solve for those things.

Working-class students are sometimes working two and three jobs. They can’t just drop everything and go to a brick-and-mortar college or university. We have to try to respond, and the online community college is an opportunity to provide them with access to that competency-based education.

Partnering with employer groups and labor organizations enables our colleges to offer hands-on competency certification.

McKinsey: How do you think the fundamental operating and business model of the community college system will need to change over the next five to ten years?









Eloy Ortiz Oakley: Community colleges are no different than any other part of the higher-education system. We need to adapt to the changes gripping us today as well as the ones that are coming. We need to provide greater access to more and more individuals at a lower cost, and that’s just the reality. Even a state like California, which has seen an increase in investment in community colleges over the past five years, cannot realistically build enough brick-and-mortar institutions to keep up with the demand.

We have to find ways to lower the cost of education, and that may mean that we have to blur the lines between K–12, community colleges, and universities. We have to create much more seamless pathways and access to higher education. In addition, we’re no longer living in an environment where you get your bachelor’s degree and you’re done. We have to package credentials differently so that as industries change individuals can come back to higher education, get the credentials that they need, and increase their economic mobility.

We need to really think about how to adapt our approach to the science of learning. We know how people learn, and we know that every individual learns differently. I want our faculty to be able to take on different learning and teaching modalities, to look at how we move away from sort of the seat-time method to how we actually measure what students are learning on a real-time basis, and to use data to personalize education for an individual.

McKinsey: Ultimately, how do you quantify the value that community colleges can provide in terms of economic impact?

Eloy Ortiz Oakley: We see our value in allowing individuals to more meaningfully participate in civic life. That’s a huge issue for us. We’re also looking at an individual’s ability to transfer to a university and then follow them into employment.

Many of our students come to us from some of the lowest social and economic ranks in America. Can we take those individuals and put them on the path to the middle class? Can we give them the necessary skills? How do we measure that economic and social value? We need to do a much better job with those metrics. So, placement in the jobs, meaningful wage gain, allowing the individual to continue to come back and reskill and upskill that enables more and more economic mobility.

I think we need to expand how we define success and progress. The ideal is to get away from measuring only credential production. That’s an important metric, but we need to do a better job of measuring the economic value that we’re creating for individuals as well as economic mobility. In many cases, individuals come into our system and don’t complete a credential because they have gotten the education needed to achieve mobility in their place of employment.

We also need to measure the economic value of credentials. We want to get away from these metrics on how many degrees did you confer and how many students transferred to four-year universities. Instead, the focus should be on the benefits to individuals, communities, and the nation as whole.

Now is the time to begin to do the work to build the infrastructure. That is my wish for all of our community college leaders: that we embrace this new economy and do everything possible to prepare our students and working-age adults to not only survive but thrive.




Eloy Ortiz Oakley biography


Eloy Ortiz Oakley

Education

University of California, Irvine
1996–99
MBA

1994–96
BA, Environmental Analysis and Design, Business Administration and Management

Career highlights

California Community Colleges
2016 to present
Chancellor

University of California
2014 to present
Regent

Long Beach City College
2007 to present
Superintendent–president

2002–06
Executive vice president, administrative services




About the author(s)

Eloy Ortiz Oakley is a member of the Markle Rework America Task Force, a group of leaders who are seeking to transform our labor market from one focused solely on traditional credentials to one rooted in skills needed for the 21st century. Wan-Lae Cheng is an associate partner in McKinsey’s Boston office; Tom Dohrmann is a senior partner in the Washington, DC, office, where Bryan Hancock is a partner; and Jonathan Law is a partner in the New York office.




Source:https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/social-sector/our-insights/adapting-education-to-the-demands-of-a-rapidly-changing-economy

21 de Octubre: DÍA DE LA MADRE

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                         DÍA DE LA MADRE

Dueñas de una paciencia infinita.


Incondicionales en todo momento.


Amables,aún en el enojo.

Directas y contundentes.

Esmeradas en el afecto continuo.

Líderes claras y firmes.

Amorosas y cariñosas sin medida.

Meticulosas en sus palabras.


Atentas a las necesidades.


Dispuestas al sacrificio sin reparos.


Rápidas en las respuestas a los pedidos de sus hijos.


Entendidas en los temas que nos preocupan.

Fuente: Google Images/Foto de mi madre en su juventud/Acróstico por Clara Moras.

Hallan más de 200 especies de arañas, 17 inéditas en Argentina, en ecosistema de Corrientes

The following information is used for educational purposes only.


Hallan más de 200 especies de arañas, 17 inéditas en Argentina, en ecosistema de Corrientes

© ReutersReuters



Más de 200 especies de arañas, 17 de las cuales no figuraban en registros científicos argentinos, fueron detectadas en el Paraje Tres Cerros calificado por los especialistas como "un ambiente particular" de Corrientes por su gran biodiversidad, informó la Universidad Nacional del Nordeste (UNNE).

El estudio se realizó en la Reserva Natural Privada Paraje Tres Cerros, en la localidad de La Cruz, al este de la ciudad de Corrientes, que protege dos de los tres cerros que se encuentran en el área, un ambiente particular por sus afloramientos rocosos en medio de la llanura correntina.

"Diversos aspectos de este ambiente han podido ser estudiados en mayor profundidad, pero no se contaba aún con un inventario de arañas del lugar", según el relevamiento realizado por un grupo de investigadores de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales y Agrimensura de la UNNE, que describió la diversidad taxonómica y funcional del orden "Arañas" en bosques y pastizales en función de las estaciones climáticas.

Los muestreos se realizaron mediante tamizado de hojarasca, golpeteo de follaje, aspirado de pastizal y captura directa nocturna, técnicas para encontrar a estos animales difíciles de rastrear.

De acuerdo a lo observado, se identificaron 224 especie de arañas en la reserva, número considerado elevado en función de la extensión territorial.

Las especies se agruparon taxonómicamente en 36 familias y por sus estrategias de caza en nueve grupos conocidos en ecología como "gremios".

La familia Theridiidae, que incluye la araña conocida como "viuda negra", registró la mayor riqueza; en tanto el gremio Constructoras de Telas Orbiculares, fue el más representativo.

A analizar los datos, se encontraron diferencias significativas en los índices de diversidad entre las estaciones cálidas y frías tanto para los bosques como para los pastizales.

Las arañas cumplen un rol importante en los ecosistemas como reguladoras de las poblaciones de insectos y son buenas indicadoras de calidad ambiental, según detalló el informe que encontró más de 30 nuevos especies para la provincia de Corrientes,

El ecosistema del Paraje Tres Cerros está siendo estudiado en mayor profundidad en los últimos años a raíz de la iniciativa de investigadores de la UNNE y con la participación de expertos de variadas disciplinas del Conicet, entre otras instituciones.

El estudio fue realizado desde el Laboratorio de Biología de los Artrópodos de FACENA-UNNE, con la dirección del Dr. Gilberto Ávalos, y la participación de los licenciados y estudiantes del Doctorado en Biología María Florencia Nadal, Helga Cecilia Achitte-Schmutzler, Ivo Zanone y Pamela Yanina González.


Agencia Télam



Fuente:https://www.msn.com/es-ar/noticias/argentina/hallan-m%C3%A1s-de-200-especies-de-ara%C3%B1as-17-in%C3%A9ditas-en-argentina-en-ecosistema-de-corrientes/ar-BBO23Na?li=AAggPN3&ocid=mailsignout

TED TALKS-Magatte Wade: Why it´s too hard to start a business in Africa-and how to change it

The following information is used for educational purposes only.


TEDGlobal 2017 | August 2017



Magatte Wade: Why it´s too hard to start a business in Africa-and how to change it



Many African countries are poor for a simple reason, says entrepreneur Magatte Wade: governments have created far too many obstacles to starting and running a business. In this passionate talk, Wade breaks down the challenges of doing business on the continent and offers some solutions of her own -- while calling on leaders to do their part, too.


ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Magatte Wade · Brand creator

Magatte Wade creates jobs in Africa -- and calls attention to the 

obstacles to job creation on the continent.

Transcript:


Today, what I want to share with you is something that happened to me, actually, around four weeks ago, it happened. Words were said to me that I never thought I would ever hear it said to my face by another human being. And those words, they shattered my heart. And at the same time, they filled it with so much hope. And the whole experience renewed my commitment to the idea that I came to share with you today.
You see, I tell everyone that I am a haunted person. What haunts me is the impossible stories, story after story after story after story of young people, my people, people like me dying out there on the ocean, right now, laying at the bottom of the ocean, serving as fish food. Do you really think that's the best we can do? To serve as fish food?
And for those of them who are trying to migrate to Europe -- because that's what it is all about, they are trying to migrate to Europe to find a job. Going through Libya. Do you know what happens to us when we're trying to cross through Libya and we're trapped over there? Well, we're being sold as slaves. For 300 dollars, maybe sometimes 500 dollars.
Sometimes I hear stories of bodies that fall off an airplane. Somebody hid in the landing gear of a plane or in the cargo section of a plane, and then you find them frozen to death. Wouldn't you be haunted if, like me, from the moment you were a little girl, you hear these stories and they keep repeating themselves, over and over and over? Wouldn't you be haunted? That's my case.
And at the same time, you know, as my people are dying, my culture is also dying. There, I said it. Because, you know, we have this culture inferiority, which means that anything that comes from us is not good enough. But you know, in my situation, and because I was raised to criticize by creating, it's Michelangelos. My father said, "Do not come to me with problems unless you thought of a couple alternatives. They don't have to be right, but I just want to know that you thought of something."
So, I have this attitude in life -- something is wrong, find a way to fix it. And that's why I start the businesses that I start, that's usually consumer brands, that have embedded in them the very best of my African culture. And what I do is it's all packaged, 21st century, world-class tendered, and I bring that to one of the most sophisticated markets in the world, which is the US. First company was a beverage company, second one is a skin care company, third one is launching next month, and they all have that in common.
So, why are these people leaving? They're leaving because they have no jobs. They're leaving because where they are, there's no jobs. So ... But poverty, that's really striking them, is the root cause of why they're leaving. Now, why are people poor? People are poor because they have no money. You have no money because you have no source of income. And for most of us, what is a source of income? For most of us, what is our source of income, what is it, tell me? Jobs, thank you. Where do jobs come from? Come from where? Businesses, thank you.
Now, if jobs is what fixes poverty, and jobs come from businesses, don't you think -- especially, they come from small and medium size enterprises, SMEs -- then don't you think, maybe for a second, that we should focus on making it easy for a small-business person to start and run their business? Don't you think that it makes sense? Why is it that when I look at the Doing Business index ranking of the World Bank, that ranks every country in the world in terms of how easy or hard it is to start a company, you tell me why African countries, all 50 of them, are basically at the bottom of that list? That's why we're poor. We're poor because it is literally impossible to do businesses in these countries of ours.
But I'm going to tell you exactly what it means on the ground for someone like me. I have a manufacturing facility in Senegal. Did you know that for all my raw material that I can't find in the country, I have to pay a 45 percent tariff on everything that comes in? Forty-five percent tariff. Do you know that, even to look for fine cardboard to ship my finished products to the US, I can't find new, finished cardboard? Impossible. Because the distributors are not going to come here to start their business, because it makes no sense, either. So right now, I have to mobilize 3000 dollars' worth of cardboard in my warehouse, so that I can have cardboard, and they won't arrive for another five weeks. The fact that we are stifled with the most nonsensical laws out there. That's why we can't run businesses. It's like swimming through molasses.
So, what can you do about that? I told you today that someone said to me words that marked me, because I explained the same thing to my employees in Senegal. And one of them started crying -- her name is Yahara. She started crying. I said, "Why are you crying?" She said, "I'm crying because I had come to believe -- always seeing us represented as poor people -- I had come to believe that maybe, yes, maybe we are inferior. Because, otherwise, how do you explain that we're always in the begging situation?" That's what broke my heart. But at the same time that she said that, because of how I explained just what I explained to you, she said, "But now, I know that I am not the problem. It is my environment in which I live, that's my problem." I said, "Yes." And that's what gave me hope -- that once people get it, they now change their outlook on life.
Here, what are some of our solutions, then? If jobs is a solution, don't you think, then, that we should be simplifying the business environment of all of these countries? Don't you think? And along with you, I would like for all of your friends from the other 50 countries that are on the bottom of that list to do the same thing. You do that, we do the rest of the job. I'm doing my part of the game, what are you doing?
What are you doing?
What are you doing?
And as for you, everybody here in this room, I leave you with two marching orders. Get in the game, and the way you get in it is educate yourself, build awareness around yourself, and then also advocate for e-government solutions. He said, "Oh, corruption, how do we fight corruption?" Well, as a matter of fact, I'm here to tell you that yes, you can do it by the stroke of a pen. You do not need anyone to tell you when and how to do that. It is one thing, actually, that you don't need to wait for anyone to do, so do it. Otherwise, don't come and tell me that you want to fix corruption. You and your other 50 friends from the other 50 countries that are at the bottom of that list. That's how you fight corruption.
If you were only charging me 5 percent to get my stuff in the country, my raw material, instead of the 45 percent, do you really think that I would have to go a pay a bribe? That's what breeds corruption. Bad laws, sets of horrible, nonsense laws.
Right?
You want to fight corruption? That's what you do. And again, remember, you don't need to wait for anyone. You can do that by yourself. Unless you're telling me that maybe you have no sovereignty, and that's a whole other problem.
OK, so, from here on, I have simple words for our "leaders." This can go two ways. It can go the nasty way, because we have hundreds of millions of young people coming to life right now, here, and if they don't have an outlook in life, they are going to go for a revolution. They're going to go for violence. And none of us wants that. None, none of us. That's the one way it can go.
Or the second way it can go is, all this happens peacefully, productively, and everything is good, and you do what you need to do, you get out of my way, you let people like me do our job, we create all these jobs we need, and then Africa becomes this very prosperous country that it's designed to be, it should have been for a long time. It happens like that, everybody's happy, we move on with our lives. It can happen in two ways -- pick violence or you pick the calm, productive way. I want the calm, productive way. None of us should ever, ever even try to think about what else could happen if we don't go there. So, please. And the time has come. This type of picture -- prosperity, happiness, human flourishing -- that's what I see if we do our job.Thank you.Thank you.


Source:www.ted.com

TED TALKS-Liv Boeree: 3 lessons on decision-making from a poker champion

The following information is used for educational purposes only.


TED2018 | April 2018



Liv Boeree: 3 lessons on decision-making from a poker champion


Is it better to be lucky or good? Should we trust our gut feelings or rely on probabilities and careful analysis when making important decisions? In this quick talk, professional poker player Liv Boeree shares three strategies she's learned from the game and how we can apply them to real life.


ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Liv Boeree · Science communicator, games specialist

Liv Boeree investigates how we make better decisions in an 

uncertain world.

Transcript:


So I'm a professional poker player, and today, I want to talk about three things that the game has taught me around decision-making that I find apply to everyday life.
Now the first of these things is about luck. Now, like poker, life is also a game of skill and luck, and when it comes to the biggest things we care about -- health, wealth and relationships -- these outcomes don't only depend on the quality of our decision-making, but also the roll of life's dice. For example, we can be perfectly health-conscious and still get unlucky with something like cancer. Or we can smoke 20 a day and live to a ripe old age, and this kind of ambiguity can make it hard for us to know how good our strategies are, sometimes, especially when we're experiencing a lot of success.
For example, back in 2010, I won a really big poker tournament known as the European Poker Tour. And because I'd only been playing full-time for about a year, when I won, I assumed I must be rather brilliant. In fact, I thought I was so brilliant that I not only got rather lazy with studying the game, but I also got more risky, started playing in the biggest tournaments I could against the very best in the world. And then my profit graph went from a thing of beauty to something kind of sad, with this worrying downhill trend for a long time, until I finally realized that I was overestimating my skill level, and got my act together.
And this kind of reminds me of what we've been seeing in the cryptocurrency space, at least in 2017, where the only thing that's been going up faster than the markets themselves is the number of "senior investment specialists" who have been appearing out of nowhere. Now I'm not saying it's not possible to have a strategic edge, but at the same time, it's very easy to feel like a genius when you're in a market that's going up so fast that even the worst strategies are making a profit. So when we're experiencing success, it's important to take a moment to really ask ourselves how much of it is truly down to us, because our egos love to downplay the luck factor when we're winning.
Now, a second thing poker taught me is the importance of quantifying my thinking. When you're playing, you can't just get away with going, "Eh, they're probably bluffing." That's just going to lose you a bunch of money, because poker is a game of probabilities and precision, and so you have to train yourself to think in numbers. So now, whenever I catch myself thinking vaguely about something really important, like, "It's unlikely I'll forget what I want to say in my TED Talk," I now try to estimate it numerically.
Trust me, it helps a lot with the planning process. And the thing is, almost anything that could possibly happen here today, or at any point in the future, can also be expressed as a probability, too.
So now I also try to speak in numbers as well. So if someone asks me, "Hey, Liv, do you think you're going to come along to that thing tonight?" instead of just saying to them, "Yeah, probably," I actually give them my best estimate -- say, 60 percent. Because -- I know that sounds a little odd -- but the thing is, I ran a poll on Twitter of what people understand the word "probably" to mean, and this was the spread of answers. Enormous! So apparently, it's absolutely useless at actually conveying any real information.
So if you guys catch yourselves using these vague words, like "probably" or "sometimes," try, instead, using numbers, because when we speak in numbers, we know what lands in the other person's brain.
Now, the third thing I want to touch on today is intuition. How often have you seen these kinds of inspirational memes in your Facebook feed?
[Always trust your gut feeling and never second-guess.]
They're nice, right? It's lovely. Yes. "Trust your soul." Well, they're terrible advice. These are some of the best poker players in the world right now. Do they look like people who live purely off feelings and intuitions?
Look at them! Obviously, these guys are about slow, careful analysis, and that's because the game has outgrown the days where pure street smarts and people-reading can get you to the top. And that's because our intuitions aren't nearly as perfect as we'd like to believe. I mean, it'd be great, whenever we're in a tough spot, to just have an answer appear to us from some magical source of inspiration. But in reality, our gut is extremely vulnerable to all kinds of wishful thinking and biases.
So then, what is our gut good for? Well, all the studies I've read conclude that it's best-suited for everyday things that we have lots and lots of experience in, like how we just know that our friend is mad at us before we've even said anything to them, or whether we can fit our car into a tight parking spot. But when it comes to the really big stuff, like what's our career path going to be or who should we marry, why should we assume that our intuitions are better calibrated for these than slow, proper analysis? I mean, they don't have any data to be based off.
So my third lesson is, while we shouldn't ignore our intuitions, we shouldn't overprivilege them either. And I'd like to summarize these three lessons today with my own set of memes, with more of a poker-player twist.
"Success is sweetest when you achieve it across a large sample size."
"Your gut is your friend and so is a cost-benefit analysis.
"The future is unknown, but you can damn well try and estimate it."Thank you.


Source:www.ted.com

TED TALKS-Michel Dugon: The secrets of spider venom

The following information is used for educational purposes only.


TEDxGalway | September 2017



Michel Dugon: The secrets of spider venom


Spider venom can stop your heart within minutes, cause unimaginable pain -- and potentially save your life, says zoologist Michel Dugon. As a tarantula crawls up and down his arm, Dugon explains the medical properties of this potent toxin and how it might be used to produce the next generation of antibiotics.


ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Michel Dugon · Zoologist, venom researcher

Michel Dugon researches the potential of spider venom as a source 

of novel therapeutic agents.

Transcript:

Well, hello. This is Sophie. It's all right, don't worry, everything's going to be fine.
There are some people on the balcony that are very happy to be up there now.
So this is Sophie -- not Sophia -- no, Sophie. She has a French name. And you wonder why?
So Sophie, for most people, is the incarnation of terror, really. She's far too leggy, she's far too hairy, and she's far too big to ever be trusted. But to me, Sophie is a fantastic feat of bioengineering. You see, Sophie is a testimony to all those creatures that have managed to survive since the beginning of time; all those animals that have managed to have offspring generation after generation, until this day.
You see, over one billion years ago, the first primitive cells started to evolve on this planet. It took spiders 430 million years to become what they are now: one of the most versatile, one of the most diverse and one of the most evolved groups --of predators to ever walk this earth.
It's actually quite sporty to give a speech while wrangling a tarantula, I have to say.
So, we shouldn't forget that Sophie -- and in fact, all of us -- we all are a testimony to all those ruthless battles that actually were won consistently by all our ancestors, all our predecessors. In fact, all of us, every single one of you, is in fact an uninterrupted, one-billion-years-old success story. And in the gaze of Sophie, that success is partly due to what she has in her chest, just under her eyes. In there, she has a pair of venom glands that are attached to a pair of fangs, and those fangs are folded into her mouth. So, without those fangs and without this venom, Sophie would have never managed to survive.
Now, many animals have evolved venom systems in order to survive. Nowadays, any species of venomous snakes, any species of spider, any species of scorpion, has its own venom signature, if you will, made out of dozens, if not hundreds, of chemical compounds. And all of those compounds have evolved purely for one purpose: disable and, eventually, kill.
Now, venom can actually act in many different ways. Venom, believe me, can make you feel pains that you've never felt before. Venom can also make your heart stop within minutes, or it can turn your blood into jelly. Venom can also paralyze you almost instantly, or it can just eat your flesh away, like acid. Now, all of these are pretty gruesome stories, I know, but, to me, it's kind of music to my ears. It's what I love. So why is that? Well, it's not because I'm a nutcase, no.
Just imagine what we could do if we could harvest all those super powerful compounds and use them to our benefit. That would be amazing, right? What if we could, I don't know, produce new antibiotics with those venoms? What if we could actually help people that are suffering from diabetes or hypertension? Well, in fact, all those applications are already being developed by scientists just like me everywhere around the world, as I speak. You see, hypertension is actually treated regularly with a medication that has been developed from the toxin that is produced by a South American viper. People that have type 2 diabetes can be monitored using, actually, the toxin produced by a lizard from North America. And in hospitals all around the world, a new protocol is being developed to use a toxin from a marine snail for anesthetics.
You see, venom is that kind of huge library of chemical compounds that are available to us, that are produced by hundreds of thousands of live creatures. And --
Oh, sorry, she just wants to go for a little walk.
Spiders alone are actually thought to produce over 10 million different kinds of compounds with potential therapeutic application. 10 million. And do you know how many scientists actually have managed to study so far? About 0.01 percent. So that means that there is still 99.99 percent of all those compounds that are out there, completely unknown, and are just waiting to be harvested and tested, which is fantastic. You see, so far, scientists have concentrated their efforts on very charismatic, very dangerous animals -- vipers and cobras or scorpions and black widows. But what about all those little bugs that we actually have all around us? You know, like that spider that lives behind your couch? You know, the one that decides to just shoot through the floor when you're watching TV and freaks you out? Ah, you have that one at home as well.
Well, what about those guys? Do they actually produce some kind of amazing compound in their tiny body as well? Well, an honest answer a few months ago would have been, "We have no clue." But now that my students and myself have started to look into it, I can tell you those guys actually are producing very, very interesting compounds. And I'm going to tell you more about that in a second, but first, I would like to tell you more about this "we are looking into it." How does one look into it?
Well, first of all, my students and I have to capture a lot of spiders. So how do we do that? Well, you'd be surprised. Once one starts to look, one finds a lot of spiders. They actually live everywhere around us. Within a couple of hours, we are capable of catching maybe two, three, four hundred spiders, and we bring them back to my laboratory, and we house each of them in its own individual home. And we give each of them a little meal. So now I know what you're thinking: "This guy's nuts. He has a spider B&B at work ..."
No, no it's not exactly that, and it's not the kind of venture I would advise you to start. No, once we're done with that, we wait a few days, and then, we anesthetize those spiders. Once they're asleep, we run a tiny little electric current through their body and that contracts their venom glads. Then, under a microscope, we can see a tiny little droplet of venom appearing. So we take a hair-thin glass tube, a capillary, and we collect that tiny droplet. Then, we take the spider and we put it back into its home, and we start again with another one. Because spiders are completely unharmed during the process, it means that a few days later, once they've produced a little bit of venom again and they've recovered, we can release them back into the wild.
It takes literally hundreds of spiders to just produce the equivalent of one raindrop of venom. So that drop is incredibly precious to us. And once we have it, we freeze it, and we then pass it in a machine that will separate and purify every chemical compound that is in that venom. We're speaking about tiny amounts. We're actually speaking about a tenth of a millionth of a liter of compound, but we can dilute that compound several thousand times in its own volume of water and then test it against a whole range of nasty stuff, like cancer cells or bacteria. And this is when the very exciting part of my job starts, because this is pure scientific gambling. It's kind of "Las Vegas, baby," for me.
We spend so many hours, so much resources, so much time trying to get those compounds ready, and then we test them. And most of the time, nothing happens. Nothing at all. But once in a while -- just once in a while, we get that particular compound that has absolutely amazing effects. That's the jackpot. And when I'm saying that, actually, I should take out something else from my pocket -- be afraid, be very afraid.
Now, in that little tube, I have, actually, a very common spider. The kind of spider that you could find in your shed, that you could find in your basement or that you could find in your sewer pipe, understand: in your toilet. Now, that little spider happens to produce amazingly powerful antimicrobial compounds. It is even capable of killing those drug-resistant bacteria that are giving us so much trouble, that are often making media headlines. Now, honestly, if I was living in your sewer pipe, I'd produce antibiotics, too.
But that little spider, may actually hold the answer to a very, very serious concern we have. You see, around the world, every single day, about 1,700 people die because of antimicrobial-resistant infections. Multiply that by 365, and you're reaching the staggering number of 700,000 people dead every single year because antibiotics that were efficient 30, 20 or 10 years ago are not capable of killing very common bugs. The reality is that the world is running out of antibiotics, and the pharmaceutical industry does not have any answer, actually, any weapon to address that concern. You see, 30 years ago, you could consider that 10 to 15 new kinds of antibiotics would hit the market every couple of years. Do you know how many of them hit the market in the past five years? Two. The reality is that if we continue this way, we are a few decades away from being completely helpless in front of infections, just like we were before the discovery of penicillin 90 years ago.
So you see, the reality is that we are at war against an invisible enemy that adapts and evolves a lot quicker than we do. And in that war, this little spider might be one of our greatest secret weapons. Just a half a millionth of a liter of a venom, diluted 10,000 times, is still capable of killing most bacteria that are resistant to any other kind of antibiotics. It's absolutely amazing. Every time I repeat this experiment, I just wonder: How is that possible? How many other possibilities and secrets do the siblings actually have? What kind of wonderful product can we really find, if we care to look?
So when people ask me, "Are bugs really the future of therapeutic drugs?" my answer is, "Well, I really believe that they do hold some key answers." And we need to really give ourselves the means to investigate them. So when you head back home later tonight, and you see that spider in the corner of your room ...don't squash it.
Just look at it, admire it and remember that it is an absolutely fantastic creature, a pure product of evolution, and that maybe that very spider, one day, will hold the answer, will hold the key to your very own survival. You see, she's not so insignificant anymore now, is she?Thank you.

Source:www.ted.com

TED TALKS-Christine Porath:Why being nice to your coworkers is good for business

The following information is used for educational purposes only.


TEDxUniversityofNevada | January 2018


Christine Porath:Why being nice to your coworkers is good for business



Looking to get ahead in your career? Start by being nice to your coworkers, says leadership researcher Christine Porath. In this science-backed talk, she shares surprising insights about the costs of rudeness and shows how little acts of respect can boost your professional success -- and your company's bottom line.


ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Christine Porath · Management professor, researcher

Christine Porath helps organizations build thriving workplaces.

Transcript:

Who do you want to be? It's a simple question, and whether you know it or not, you're answering it every day through your actions. This one question will define your professional success more than any other, because how you show up and treat people means everything. Either you lift people up by respecting them, making them feel valued, appreciated and heard, or you hold people down by making them feel small, insulted, disregarded or excluded. And who you choose to be means everything.
I study the effects of incivility on people. What is incivility? It's disrespect or rudeness. It includes a lot of different behaviors, from mocking or belittling someone to teasing people in ways that sting to telling offensive jokes to texting in meetings. And what's uncivil to one person may be absolutely fine to another. Take texting while someone's speaking to you. Some of us may find it rude, others may think it's absolutely civil. So it really depends. It's all in the eyes of the beholder and whether that person felt disrespected. We may not mean to make someone feel that way, but when we do, it has consequences.
Over 22 years ago, I vividly recall walking into this stuffy hospital room. It was heartbreaking to see my dad, this strong, athletic, energetic guy, lying in the bed with electrodes strapped to his bare chest. What put him there was work-related stress. For over a decade, he suffered an uncivil boss. And for me, I thought he was just an outlier at that time. But just a couple years later, I witnessed and experienced a lot of incivility in my first job out of college. I spent a year going to work every day and hearing things from coworkers like, "Are you an idiot? That's not how it's done," and, "If I wanted your opinion, I'd ask."
So I did the natural thing. I quit, and I went back to grad school to study the effects of this. There, I met Christine Pearson. And she had a theory that small, uncivil actions can lead to much bigger problems like aggression and violence. We believed that incivility affected performance and the bottom line. So we launched a study, and what we found was eye-opening.
We sent a survey to business school alumni working in all different organizations. We asked them to write a few sentences about one experience where they were treated rudely, disrespectfully or insensitively, and to answer questions about how they reacted. One person told us about a boss that made insulting statements like, "That's kindergartner's work," and another tore up someone's work in front of the entire team. And what we found is that incivility made people less motivated: 66 percent cut back work efforts, 80 percent lost time worrying about what happened, and 12 percent left their job.
And after we published these results, two things happened. One, we got calls from organizations. Cisco read about these numbers, took just a few of these and estimated, conservatively, that incivility was costing them 12 million dollars a year.
The second thing that happened was, we heard from others in our academic field who said, "Well, people are reporting this, but how can you really show it? Does people's performance really suffer?" I was curious about that, too. With Amir Erez, I compared those that experienced incivility to those that didn't experience incivility. And what we found is that those that experience incivility do actually function much worse.
"OK," you may say. "This makes sense. After all, it's natural that their performance suffers." But what about if you're not the one who experiences it? What if you just see or hear it? You're a witness. We wondered if it affected witnesses, too.
So we conducted studies where five participants would witness an experimenter act rudely to someone who arrived late to the study. The experimenter said, "What is it with you? You arrive late, you're irresponsible. Look at you! How do you expect to hold a job in the real world?" And in another study in a small group, we tested the effects of a peer insulting a group member. Now, what we found was really interesting, because witnesses' performance decreased, too -- and not just marginally, quite significantly.
Incivility is a bug. It's contagious, and we become carriers of it just by being around it. And this isn't confined to the workplace. We can catch this virus anywhere -- at home, online, in schools and in our communities. It affects our emotions, our motivation, our performance and how we treat others. It even affects our attention and can take some of our brainpower. And this happens not only if we experience incivility or we witness it. It can happen even if we just see or read rude words. Let me give you an example of what I mean.
To test this, we gave people combinations of words to use to make a sentence. But we were very sneaky. Half the participants got a list with 15 words used to trigger rudeness: impolitely, interrupt, obnoxious, bother. Half the participants received a list of words with none of these rude triggers. And what we found was really surprising, because the people who got the rude words were five times more likely to miss information right in front of them on the computer screen. And as we continued this research, what we found is that those that read the rude words took longer to make decisions, to record their decisions, and they made significantly more errors. This can be a big deal, especially when it comes to life-and-death situations.
Steve, a physician, told me about a doctor that he worked with who was never very respectful, especially to junior staff and nurses. But Steve told me about this one particular interaction where this doctor shouted at a medical team. Right after the interaction, the team gave the wrong dosage of medication to their patient. Steve said the information was right there on the chart, but somehow everyone on the team missed it. He said they lacked the attention or awareness to take it into account. Simple mistake, right? Well, that patient died.
Researchers in Israel have actually shown that medical teams exposed to rudeness perform worse not only in all their diagnostics, but in all the procedures they did. This was mainly because the teams exposed to rudeness didn't share information as readily, and they stopped seeking help from their teammates. And I see this not only in medicine but in all industries.
So if incivility has such a huge cost, why do we still see so much of it? I was curious, so we surveyed people about this, too. The number one reason is stress. People feel overwhelmed. The other reason that people are not more civil is because they're skeptical and even concerned about being civil or appearing nice. They believe they'll appear less leader-like. They wonder: Do nice guys finish last? Or in other words: Do jerks get ahead? (Laughter) It's easy to think so, especially when we see a few prominent examples that dominate the conversation.
Well, it turns out, in the long run, they don't. There's really rich research on this by Morgan McCall and Michael Lombardo when they were at the Center for Creative Leadership. They found that the number one reason tied to executive failure was an insensitive, abrasive or bullying style. There will always be some outliers that succeed despite their incivility. Sooner or later, though, most uncivil people sabotage their success. For example, with uncivil executives, it comes back to hurt them when they're in a place of weakness or they need something. People won't have their backs.
But what about nice guys? Does civility pay? Yes, it does. And being civil doesn't just mean that you're not a jerk. Not holding someone down isn't the same as lifting them up. Being truly civil means doing the small things, like smiling and saying hello in the hallway, listening fully when someone's speaking to you. Now, you can have strong opinions, disagree, have conflict or give negative feedback civilly, with respect. Some people call it "radical candor," where you care personally, but you challenge directly. So yes, civility pays. In a biotechnology firm, colleagues and I found that those that were seen as civil were twice as likely to be viewed as leaders, and they performed significantly better. Why does civility pay? Because people see you as an important -- and a powerful -- unique combination of two key characteristics: warm and competent, friendly and smart. In other words, being civil isn't just about motivating others. It's about you. If you're civil, you're more likely to be seen as a leader. You'll perform better, and you're seen as warm and competent.
But there's an even bigger story about how civility pays, and it ties to one of the most important questions around leadership: What do people want most from their leaders? We took data from over 20,000 employees around the world, and we found the answer was simple: respect. Being treated with respect was more important than recognition and appreciation, useful feedback, even opportunities for learning. Those that felt respected were healthier, more focused, more likely to stay with their organization and far more engaged.
So where do you start? How can you lift people up and make people feel respected? Well, the nice thing is, it doesn't require a huge shift. Small things can make a big difference. I found that thanking people, sharing credit, listening attentively, humbly asking questions, acknowledging others and smiling has an impact.
Patrick Quinlan, former CEO of Ochsner Health [System], told me about the effects of their 10-5 way, where if you're within 10 feet of someone, you make eye contact and smile, and if you're within five feet, you say hello. He explained that civility spread, patient satisfaction scores rose, as did patient referrals.
Civility and respect can be used to boost an organization's performance. When my friend Doug Conant took over as CEO of Campbell's Soup Company in 2001, the company's market share had just dropped in half. Sales were declining, lots of people had just been laid off. A Gallup manager said it was the least engaged organization that they had surveyed. And as Doug drove up to work his first day, he noticed that the headquarters was surrounded by barbwire fence. There were guard towers in the parking lot. He said it looked like a minimum security prison. It felt toxic.
Within five years, Doug had turned things around. And within nine years, they were setting all-time performance records and racking up awards, including best place to work. How did he do it? On day one, Doug told employees that he was going to have high standards for performance, but they were going to do it with civility. He walked the talk, and he expected his leaders to. For Doug, it all came down to being tough-minded on standards and tenderhearted with people. For him, he said it was all about these touch points, or these daily interactions he had with employees, whether in the hallway, in the cafeteria or in meetings. And if he handled each touch point well, he'd make employees feel valued.
Another way that Doug made employees feel valued and showed them that he was paying attention is that he handwrote over 30,000 thank-you notes to employees. And this set an example for other leaders. Leaders have about 400 of these touch points a day. Most don't take long, less than two minutes each. The key is to be agile and mindful in each of these moments.
Civility lifts people. We'll get people to give more and function at their best if we're civil. Incivility chips away at people and their performance. It robs people of their potential, even if they're just working around it. What I know from my research is that when we have more civil environments, we're more productive, creative, helpful, happy and healthy.
We can do better. Each one of us can be more mindful and can take actions to lift others up around us, at work, at home, online, in schools and in our communities. In every interaction, think: Who do you want to be?
Let's put an end to incivility bug and start spreading civility. After all, it pays.Thank you.


Source:www.ted.com