Disasters can make or break a leader. In the era of COVID-19, some leaders have risen to the challenge – keeping their communities, employees and students informed, pausing and restarting daily life, and managing the secondary effects of social and economic disruption.
Other leaders, meanwhile, are floundering – communicating poorly, not providing trustworthy information and failing to follow through on promises.
Biomedical Engineering’s Matthew Smith and Byron Yu, along with former PhD student Ben Cowley, have studied the neural basis through which internal states in the brain affect decision-making over an extended period of time.
Through recording the activity of populations of neurons simultaneously in two brain areas, they were able to gain unprecedented insight into how the waxing and waning of our mental state influences the decisions we make.
Have you ever wondered what makes some people better at handling stress than others? Or how some people seem to “bounce back” quickly from setbacks while others watch opportunities pass them by?
Social Distancing. It´s not a phrase that most of us were familiar with until very recently, yet now it governs our lives.
Although most people now seem to be obeying the rules, it’s clear that some seem to find social distancing easier than others. The ways that we react to this crisis, and the strategies we find effective, are likely to relate to our personality.
I remember my first job interview. It was a long time ago. I was very young and had yet to learn how to be true to myself.
I was trying to get a job for the summer in between undergraduate and graduate school, and remember thinking to myself: “Answer how they [my interviewers] want you to answer, no matter what.”
I got that job, and at first, I was thrilled. Once I began to do the work, however, I hated it. I couldn’t wait for the summer to end!
What could I have done better? How could I have given a better interview to get not just a job, but the job I wanted?
