John Rowland - Washington Post Article

A Look Back, And Up - washingtonpost.com

FROM THE ARTICLE:

"Gratuities were accepted as if they were his due," U.S. District Judge Peter Dorsey noted at Rowland's sentencing in March 2005. He went off to federal prison as inmate 15623-014, in Loretto, Pa.

In his job, he denied himself virtually nothing. "I did some stupid things," [Rowland] says now. "It started with my sense of entitlement, the belief that I deserved whatever came to me, that everything was about me."

"From the time you arrive, the job of everybody in the office is about making you look good and feel good, and after a while you believe that is the way your life is supposed to be -- people doing things for you. The sun is rising with you -- that's what everybody believes. You end up believing it, too. The people in your office and the lobbyists, they're all saying the same thing: how great you are, and how hard you work for the state, and how much everybody appreciates you, and how you deserve to be rewarded. It starts there."


ONE COMMENT:

Truth is no one is entitled to gratuities even when they are given by loved ones. They are to be appreciated in moderation like fine brandy but to expect they are entitlements lead to ruin.

Many said they were tired of reading about this man in The Washington Post.

Some question whether he's really learned anything at all.

Whatever it is, it is a sad story. Among other things, his impulsivity, if the anecdote is true that he ran into a old sweetheart at a dance and immediately suggested they both divorce and marry.
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One of the pitfalls of high-level positions is when you allow yourself to be surrounded only by people who tell you what you want to hear.

TAKE THE EQ COURSE and increase your emotional intelligence.

Emotoinal Intelligence: Flaming

HOW OBNOXIOUS IS THAT??

MoneyLaw, the art of winning an unfair academic game, has a great post about emotional intelligence:

"Today's New York Times posits a scientific explanation for the difference in behavior of those who are civil in face-to-face encounters but brutally venomous in email or instant messaging exchanges. In Flame First, Think Later, New Clues to E-Mail Misbehavior, Daniel Goleman (of Social Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence fame) explains that, in the absence of visual social cues, our brains no longer have that 'uh-oh' control that keeps us from inadvertently offending the person with whom we're electronically communicating. As Goleman puts it:

The emerging field of social neuroscience, the study of what goes on in the brains and bodies of two interacting people, offers clues into the neural mechanics behind flaming.

The blogger goes on to say that in face-to-face interatction, we get a continual barrage of emotional signs and cues which are missing, of course, in emails.

"Much of this social guidance occurs in circuitry centered on the orbitofrontal cortex, a center for empathy," says the blogger. "This cortex uses that social scan to help make sure that what we do next will keep the interaction on track."

The blog is about flaming and nasty emails.

Intentionality is an EQ competency that plays a part. Perhaps they are intentionally being insulting and inflammatory. If not, they are "clueless" -- and that's one way to describe email writing. The missing of social cues.

I could go on and write for another hour here, for instance, and I will never have a "clue" as to whether you, my reader, are bored or not.

Flaming - unless it's understood that's what's supposed to go on - is bad manners. The rules of etiquette exist, basically, to keep us form killing one another; particularly the strong impinging on the weak.

People have a lot more nerve behind the anonymity of an email and also operate without the clues of normal social interchange. It's not a good mix in the hands of someone who is also not intentional -- another EQ competency. Knowing what you intend to have happen (feelings and well as behavior). Flaming is like bad grammar. It reveals a lot about who you are.