Emotional Turmoil

One of the products that I offer on my 360 degree feedback site is for assessing Emotional Intelligence at Work. Anyone who has read Daniel Goleman's book will know that the main behavioural competencies involved in Emotional Intelligence are Self Awareness, Managing Emotions, Self Motivation, Managing Relationships and Emotion Coaching.

I often get queries about profiling Emotinal Intelligence - but the most important aspect seems to be lost on most people. you cannot assess Emotional Intelligence in isolation. It is largely to do with the way that people interract with each other and so to make any meaningful assessment you have to include the observations of other people.

That's where 360 appraisal, also known as multi-rater feedback comes in. The subject of the assessment fills in their own profile and then the same set of questions is given to a number of observers who know the subject well. Then you compare the subject's self assessment with what the observers had to say.

That really is the only way...

Using 360 degree feedback to help appraisal and professional development

If you are looking for a tool to help your professional development and appraisal process you could do worse than look at my Appraisal360 system at www.appraisal360.co.uk. 360 degree feedback is a system that works well for encouraging teamwork, helping people to take ownership of their own development. It is also known as multi rater feedback and can be used to help assess emotional intelligence because it is based on observations of people's real life behaviour.

Here's a copy of the sitemap.
Home: 360 degree feedback as part of the appraisal process (1)
How the Appraisal360 system works (24)
Appraisal360 feedback products (27)
Tell a friend about Appraisal360 (28)
Appraisal360 packages and pricing (36)
The 360 appraisal process (37)
Contact Appraisal360 (42)
Management competency frameworks for 360 appraisal (47)
360 feedback as an equality and diversity tool (49)
Emotional Intelligence (50)
360 degree appraisal partner solutions (52)
Appraisal360 download area (53)
Register as an Appraisal360 affiliate (59)
Emotional Intelligence Homepage (66)
360 feedback enterprise solutions (67)
360 degree appraisal systems for employers and managers (68)
360 degree feedback system for individuals (70)
Gail Machin: 360 feedback case study (71)
Running a 360 appraisal project (72)
Links: directories (79)
Diversity Homepage (80)
Appraisal360 QuickStart guide (81)
Win a free prize with your 360 degree appraisal (83)
www2.appraisal360.co.uk

Nuclear standoff

When Patrick and I decided to measure the power that household appliances drew on standby, an hour's investigation turned out to be very instructive .

The standby power of the TV was a staggering 74 watts - enough to light the whole house using energy saving bulbs. And the common myth that leaving flourescent lights on rather than turning them off and on saves electricity proved to be a complete fallacy. The startup surge of a flourescent lamp amounts to only a few seconds worth of run-time consumption.

Anyone who thinks that building a new generation of nuclear power plants to supply a nation of incandescent bulbs and equipment left on standby has clearly lost the plot.

Dr Strangelove rides his nuke

The news that Tony Blair has been in secret talks with Bush about siting nukes on British soil again rather reminds me of the closing scene in Dr Strangelove where a crazed Dr Strangelove wearing a cowboy hat, having evaded all attempts to rein him in, is seen riding his nuke out of the bomb bay towards a waiting Russian capital wired for automatic retaliation.

The chilling prospect of Bush starting a new Cold War indicates stupidity evolving into insanity. The fact that our political system does not immediately annilate such an extreme fuckwit shows the mindnumbing extent of CBA (Can't Be Arsed) amongst the populus and the deeply flawed nature of the democratic system - which assumes that the population actually take an interest in what is going on.

So: what's the difference between a Labour MP and a supermarket trolley? Answer: The supermarket trolley has a mind of its own. I'm not suggesting that other MPs are any different of course, but the way that they still support Blair after the events of the last few years - even before Iraq and the dodgy dossier - obliterates the boundary between loyalty and stupidity beyond intelligent comment.

The prospect of having billions of my tax payers money spent on hi-tech toys of mass destruction at the whim of unarguably the most stupid man ever to occupy the Whitehouse makes my blood boil. Save the money. Build a European Supergrid instead so we can start to use all the sunshine that falls free of charge on the deserts of North Africa.

Ever heard of a zero cost solution? Ban the sale of incandescent bulbs and scrap the next generation of nuclear powerstations: because you won't need them any more.

Of course - invest in nukes and there's a small chance that we might wipe out life on earth. Do nothing and there's a virtual certainty that life on Earth won't survive the next century.

My Blair can safely be ignored - he's on the way out. Great British Public - take your pick.

Carbon is the new Gold

Some of you may be old enough to remember the Gold Standard. I'm not, but yesterday a comment from a reader got me thinking.

It's becoming increasingly apparent to me that future energy policy - and indeed the total solution to regulating carbon emissions - will require a global emissions trading scheme.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to have noticed that trading carbon emissions is much like trading any other commodity. You need a market, a mechanism for establishing futures, a means of setting interests rates and prices. Carbon savings now are worth more than carbon savings in the future - and so on. Hmmmm... now where have we seen all that before?

But two things make carbon emissions different: they are a truly global commodity and the total emissions worldwide have to be tightly regulated - in fact, much like the way a Central Bank regulates a currency. Carbon emissions will have a monetary value - the same the world over, so how long before the value of our currencies is defined against the Carbon Standard?

If there are any money men reading this, give me a call....

Google - are you listening

There are a lot of people out there who want to know all about my 360 degree feedback service at appraisal360.co.uk. But your spider is taking rather a long time to look at the sitemap which can be found at www.appraisal360.co.uk/-54 so can you send your robot round please?

Strewth!!!

This morning's announcement by the Australian government that they will be banning the sale of incandescent lightbulbs by 2010 is an interesting development.

Commentators have been suggesting for a while now that the incandescent bulb will be extinct within ten years. And regular readers will recall that when I changed every lightbulb in the house to a low enegy type the household electricity consumption dropped by a staggering 30% and an article in today's Independent suggests that this is typical.

But the Australian conversion is interesting because Australia is on of the few developed countries other than the United States to have refused to sign up to Kyoto on the grounds that it would damage their coal based electricity industry too much. Strange that, when you consider that Australia is one of the sunniest countries in the world and that the scope for solar power generation using CSP (Concentrated Solar Power) technology must be huge.

So is it too much to hope that the recently awakened Australian government will follow their lead in becoming the first major economy to outlaw incandescent bulbs by phasing out their coal fired power stations in favour of cheap, clean, plentiful, everlasting power from the sun?

Now the light is really starting to go on.... Strewth Bruce!!

Nukes again

I felt somewhat reassured when Greenpeace managed to force a rethink of the government's decision to push ahead with a new nuclear power programme. The reality is that there is enough renewable energy around to power the world many times over and at a fraction of the price of a nuclear programme that will only ever supply a fraction of the electricity that the world needs.

But to my surprise - this Sunday's Grauniad carried an article by James Lovelock (creator of the Gaia theory) in favour of nuclear power. His premise is that nuclear is the only way of generating sufficient power quickly enough to avert a total disaster. He may have a point - but strange because nuclear is in itself not a renewable energy source, and ramping up the nuclear programme will take some considerable time. Not least because the number of trained and experienced nuclear engineeers has been run down considerably in recent years.

Renewable energy protagonists take the view that a nuclear programme will reduce the resources put into the real long term solution.

However, here Lovelock and the renewable energy guys see eye to eye. Long term nuclear is not the answer - renewables are the only way, and for that we should be optimistic. Clean renewable energy to power the world hundreds of times over. Why didn't we think of it before?

Chavs in suits

This morning I was at another dreary business breakfast. Full of grey men in grey suits - supposedly the good and the great of Stoke on Trent. God help us.

It wasn't long before the sprinkling of snow that had brought the nation to a halt turned the conversation to global warming. "They won't do anything about it ho-ho-ho" went the grey coffin dodger on the other side of the table. Resisting the templation to lunge across the table and grab him warmly by the throat I pointed out that we were now committed to a level of climate change that would wipe out around a third of the world's population within about a hundred years. "But we don't know if it's caused by human activity." I thought that there was only one idiot left on the face of the planet who still believed that rubbish. And he's imprisoned in the Whitehouse. "Oh, but we've still got to have growth."

Presumably the enlightened long term outlook of this particular grey gentleman says something about the current predicament of Stoke on Trent. Perhaps he doesn't have any children or grandchildren - either that or he's too dense to see that the things we are talking about are impending during their lifetime. That he is condemning them to live in a world torn by conflict and strife - or that they will pay many times over every time he turns the key in his Jag or whatever it is.

To be blunt I struggle to tell the difference between people who carry on like this in the full knowledge of the impact of their actions and those who open the taps on the gas chamber. The result is the same, just maybe it's a bit easier to pretend that the link doesn't exist.

It would be nice to think that those fortunate enough to live in parts of the world that are likely to get through this are those wise and forward looking. That those destined to have their lands turn into deserts or floods will be the ones we can do without. Maybe we should have passports issued on merit - but somehow I don't think it's going to happen that way.

Many of our biodiesel customers are simple folk. Taxi drivers, van drivers, but concerned enough to see that they can play their part. They recognise that they owe it to their children and they deserve their place in the future of the planet. But many of the great and the good of Stoke on Trent, it seems, are just chavs in suits.

As reliable as a VolksWagen

Some of you may remember a particular VW advert on the telly. A young woman comes out of her mews townhouse in an obvious fit of high maintenance stroppery. She takes off her engagement ring and throws it down the gutter. Ditto with the house keys. Then comes the car keys. She stops and looks at them. She smiles and gets into her conveniently parked VW Golf. "If only everything was as reliable as a Volkswagen" cries the ad smuggly.

Indeed - if only everything was as reliable as a Volkswagen. It was a bad omen from the start when I bought my Golf 2.0 TDI. Even before I hit the road I emailed the salesman with some information he needed. When I heard nothing I rang him up: "Our email isn't working." He seemed a bit shocked when I asked him if his cars were any better - but thus history has proven.

I've lost count of thie number of times the car has had to spend a day off the road to be fixed under warranty. The most expensive was to replace the turbo which died on the M6Toll. Rear wash/wipe, the throttle position sensor, the fuel pump (which died on the way into town leaving me stranded at the side of the road), the turbo seals (apparently they were leaking oil) and today the foglight switch gave up the ghost. It's got to the stage that every time the car seems to falter or sound a little different I'm worried that it's going to die yet again. When the AA man towed me in I said to him "The most unreliable car I've ever, ever had - does that sound right?" He nodded. But then maybe "Worst cars on the road" was his sympathetic response to every driver he rescued from the roadside.

That said it's still a lovely car, just unreliable - maybe it's a woman!

White House Muppet v Big Energy

It would be nice to think that George Bush was watching the UKTV History channel last night. Somehow I don't think he was, but when he reads this he'll know what it was all about.

'Meltdown' was a part of a series on climate change. The big question is - given that we know beyond doubt that the planet is heating up, how much can be attributed to natural variations and how much can only be explained by man made effects?

For thousands of years the temperature of the Earth was governed by two main drivers: the solar cycle (i.e. variations in the sun's output) and the amount of volcanic activity which affects the amount of dust in the atmosphere and hence the amount of sunlight that can penetrate. The match between the actual temperature and the predicted temperature is stunning - until you get to the last 150 years. The increase of greenhouse gasses and with it the global temperature has been in liftoff, tracking the course of the industrial revolution and consequent carbon emissions.

Surprisingly one of the big voices in the debate in America putting pressure on the White House Muppet has been Big Energy. Surprising? Yes, until you realise that they own massive infrastructure and they need to be able to plan their businesses. They know that carbon emission caps will be arriving sooner or later, but until they have a regulatory level playing field it is hard for them to know how to invest their shareholders' capital.

Watch this space.

Low Energy

Having just received my latest electricity bill I have some good news to report.

Aided by the fact that Waitrose was selling low energy lightbulbs at 99p we decided to swap out every bulb in the house. The old incandescent bulbs went in the bin and a few friends were persuaded to do the same.

The good news is that the reduction in our first electricity bill since making the switch has more than paid for the new bulbs. Already! Added to that we've made another small step to reducing our carbon footprint.

Not before time: last night was watching one of Attenborough's Planet Earth series about the impact that the disappearing sea ice is having on polar bears. I'm wondering how long it will be before the polar bear becomes a mascot in the campaign for change. Not long I hope. Even George Global Menace Bush may have to take note if he's seen to be against the white furry things - although I wouldn't recommend going anywhere near one unless you want to be eaten.

Now there's a thought!

Sliding Doors

I took my children to London last week and we called in at the Tate Modern. It's one of our favourites places to visit down there, but to be honest we were a bit disappointed: like the place had lost its way. The Tate Modern was where I first learned what modern art was all about - taking everyday objects, looking at them in a different way and making a statement or triggering a feeling that you wouldn't normally have.

But then we got to the Sliding Doors. Just like the sliding automatic doors you get as you enter a shop on the high street, but a whole series of them like a corridor. And with mirrors in them instead of glass. What a feeling! Just like in life the doors open, and then they shut again and you see yourself coming the other way. Sometimes a whole seris of them opened together as people walked through and you got a glimpse of the future. Then they shut again and and the future became a mystery once more as you were trapped back in your little cell.

It's not often that a piece of art seems so real and so powerful. And of course we get used to seeing everyday objects used in imaginative ways - so the artist has a hard job on his hands. But this time he hit the spot with me - well done!

Boom and bust

One of the more depressing attitudes I come across in life is the "Why should we do anything about our carbon emissions when what we produce in the UK is only 2% of the problem. There's no point until America, China and India come on board." This attitude is variously known as narrow mindedness, negativity, lack of vision or plain lack of understanding of how the world works.

We all know - well some of us do - that all change follows a known cycle. The early adopters are small in number but they lead the pack. In time their numbers increase as problems and costs are resolved. Eventually the new way becomes mainstream and it remains only to tidy up the laggards. The aforementioned countries do look as if they are starting to shift their position - but would they have done so if others had not taken the lead? I think not.

Today an old geezer sat next to me in the overpriced cafe at a trade show and started to expound these sorts of attitudes as if he expected to me agree with him. He was keen to let me know that he had breakfast with the governor of the Bank of England and that what this country needed was people who had made their way up from nothing and not smart arses out of university.

What he didn't know was that I also have had breakfast with the governor of the Bank of England. (And on another occasion dinner with Kate Barker of the Monetary Policy Committee - who can only be admired for her intellect, perception and insight - and who has a working class background as well as having excelled in her academic career.) The Governor, however, was keen to tell us what a great job the Bank of England was now doing having stopped the cycle of boom and bust, and that we hadn't had a recession for over a decade.

At this point I got on my hind legs to say that a good old recession once in a while is a good idea because it pushes some of the less efficient companies out of business and clears out the crap.

He had a counter argument of course, but what he didn't know is that I had a list of names up my sleeve. Businesses that Stoke on Trent can do without. I was going to say that if they are reading this they know who they are - but they probably don't because they are too stupid. As of today the list has just increased by one.

The greening of George Bush

The greening of George Bush may seem like an oxymoron. (That means a contradiction in terms, not that Bush is a moron - which he is.)

However, there are some interesting implications of his quest to rid America of its "addition to oil". The first is his plan to invest massively in bio-ethanol production - a vegetable based substitute for gasoline. This may have more to do with creating a market for their grain mountain - and baiting the votes of said farmers than any green credentials. Environmentalists will tell you that bio-ethanol is the wrong alternative fuel to be going for because of the environmental cost of producing it (biodiesel is a much better option). But the United States have very few diesel cars - unlike Europe where around a half of new car registrations are diesels.

So - given a grain mountain, a nation of gasoline driven cars, a bunch of pissed off farmers an over dependency on Iraqi oil (now there's another story), a bunch of vehicle manufacturers who say they are more interested in bio-ethanol than bio-diesel and pressure from the Christian right who are getting huffy about trashing God's planet it does seem like a plan.

But - here's the rub. Biofuels have had very little press in the environmental debate in Europe. Very few people have heard of biodiesel even though it is available right now and will run perfectly well in todays diesel vehicles. The unintended impact of his announcement is that biofuels will get a higher profile. And that in Europe that probably means biodiesel - the feedstock (oilseed rape) grows here very nicely and there is a much higher percentage of diesel vehicles on the road.

The obstacles remain a bunch of sceptical vehicle manufacturers who never do anything until the law forces them to and a mean minded chancellor whose idea of a green budget is to raise taxes on alternative fuels.

None of this changes the undisputable fact that Bush is a global menace and Blair is a smarmy arse-licking, self deluded, twat. But there is hope.

A nation terrorised by dogs

I don't like dogs at the best of times - there are some that I tolerate but that's about it. I do know people for whom a dog is a great support in an otherwise difficult life and I would not want to deny them a friend. But largely it's experience of what they and their owners can be like that hacks me off.

At the lowest level, just having some mut hanging around in the kitchen seems unhygenic to me. But some of the dog behaviour I've come across is terrifying if not downright lethal.

First case: Christmas 2005 I was walking across the park in Leamington with my children and my mother (then 86). A large dog - sort of alsatian size - comes bounding over the grass and jumps up at my mother. A shouting match develops between me and the idiot young woman who refuses to put it on a lead and seems oblivious of the potentialy fatal consequences of an old person being knocked over by an out of control dog. If she's reading this then please get in touch - I haven't finished with you yet you ignorant twat.

Case two: I'm cycling along the canal where I used to live in London and a large dog bounds out of a scrapyard, pushes me off my bike and nips me. The owner: "You're lucky it's not the other one - it's f*cking bigger!" Well thanks, obviously you get your kicks from terrorising innocent passers by. Nice guy.

Case three: my neighbour has - did have - a young sheepdog. Playful and relatively harmless I suppose, but it turned my field into a virtual no-go area. One time I had to rescue my daughter from the middle of the field crying and terrified as it circled round her barking. It would always be out there running around you and barking, getting tangled up in whatever you were doing. How it never ended up on the wrong end of a chainsaw I shall never know. It was an accident waiting to happen, eventually it did. Fortunately it got run over and killed and hasn't been replaced.

I could go on. But my point is, why oh why can't people who own dogs understand the distress and fear that their pets cause to other people? And why is so little done about it? When Princess Anne's terrier attacked and injured a child I still cannot understand why the court did not order it to be put down - still less why she did not have it put down of her own instigation. There is no room in a civilised world for people to have dogs that go around attacking people. Period. I'm told that in animal rescue circles a rescued dog that shows any sort of aggressive temperament is put down immediately - and so it should be for all dogs, and in some cases their owners as well.

Late Night Love

One of the factoids that came out at the end of the year - and which did not surprise me - was that married households are now in the minority.

Not surprising? Well considering that human history on this planet goes back around one million years and the Marriage Act only happened around 200 years ago - and that marriage seems to be more about property than love it's surprising that more people haven't smelled a rat before now.

Or perhaps they did - most of old literature seems to be about people forced into unhappy marriages when they would rather have eloped with their lovers.

But listen to Graham Torrington's Late Night Love and you start to wonder if 90% of the population have lost the plot. People ringing in "He/she cheated on me and blah, blah, whahhhh!!" Fill in the blanks and that's most of it covered. Isn't that terrible? No just get used to it, and here's why....

Firstly we've been encouraged to place all our emotional and financial eggs in one basket. It's not realistic nor healthy nor sustainable. Secondly, we humans are primates - and primates generally live in polygamous societies. Why? Because it makes genetic sense to do so - young born in polygamous societies have a better survival rate. And that applies to humans as well as other primates.

What's more - there seems to be a presumption that screwing around is a male preoccupation. Well I've got news for you - every shag requires both a man and a woman - so the numbers must be exactly the same. Not a lot of people seem to have noticed that - perhaps it needs to be pointed out!

So Graham Torrington: next time you're moralising on your radio show about the things that people get up to remember this: the way people behave now is just a continuation of the way they have for the last million years. We evolved that way for good reason and a couple of hundred years of moral code isn't going to change that.

Nuclear power or save the planet?

A recent feature in the Guardian raised some interesting points about renewable power.

A field of mirrors focussing the sun's energy on a furnace can be used to power conventional electricity turbines. Several of these power stations have been operating successfully in desert regions around the world for many years. Engineers have estimated that covering just 0.5% of the world's deserts with these ingenious devices would meet the entire planet's electricity demand with ease.

It seems like the ultimate answer - there's lots of sunshine in Africa so they can get rich selling their electricity to Europe and solve all their problems. We no longer need to buy oil from the late Saddam Hussein and other undesirables. Global warming will be halted in its tracks.

So what's the catch? Well part of the problem seems to be that somebody wants to invest billions and billions of our money in a new nuclear power programme which will generate about 3% of the world's electricity by 2050 - if ever - at many times the cost of these ingeneous solar powerstations. The other problem apparently is that we would need a new pan-Europe high voltage electricity grid to move the power around - and that requires those same people who want their nuclear power to dig into their budgets and build one.

No wonder you're not heard about Concentrated Solar Power before. Doesn't it just make you feel that the planet is safe in the hands of our elected leaders? Erm.... No!

Ode to Saddam

It was predictable if nothing else to hear George Bush proclaiming that Saddam's execution was another milestone on the road to democracy for Iraq. But - and this hardly ever seems to get a mention - who says that democracy in Iraq is the right answer?

As far as I know there are no Muslim democracies - maybe that tells us something? Possibly that democracy and self determination are basically Christian concepts and that maybe Islam has different views on how to run things which should be respected.

What we are actually seeing is a re-run of the Crusades in all but name, orchestrated by a couple of fanatical Christian fuckwits. One of whom seems to think that the way to save God's earth is to open up protected arctic regions for oil exploration, the other presides over a government whose idea of a green budget is to raise the tax on biofuels.

That's what democracy delivers. Stop the world I need to get off!

To navigation the hard way

Call me old fashioned, but when I want to go somewhere I get the map out and plan the route.

Some time ago I was persuaded against my better judgement to buy a satnav. Most of the time it sits in the glovebox switched off, and to be fair it does have its uses in pinpointing an exact destination somewhere you're not familiar with. But the other day I took my son to Sheffield to show him my old uni. We took a detour over to Brightside to see the old steel making area - now all bulldozed and redeveloped. And then on the way back he keyed in "Bakewell" to the satnav to show us the way home. And that was where the trouble started.

It took us out of town a way I would never have thought of - but against my better judgement I thought we'd give it a go. We never did make it. After many miles slowly driving through the dark foggy roads across the Derbyshire Peak district we finally came to the A6 Matlock to Buxton road. A few minutes studying the map put us nearer to Buxton than Bakewell so the satnav was promptly switched off in disgrace and we came home via Buxton.

Thing is: this sort of thing happens every single time I use a satnav.

Where I live is on the A51 and the next village is about a kilometer away on the A53. You can travel along the A51 until it meets the A53 a couple of miles away or you can take the lane direct. A while ago I was walking home and a couple of cop cars flew by blue lights, the lot. I walked back to my house along the lane and as I arrived these same two police cars came flying along the A51. Exactly who they were trying to catch I don't know - but if he didn't have a satnav he would have got away on foot.