We all know the saying ''birds of a feather flock together.''  This does not only refer to the fact that those with common interests and values tend to be friends and hang around each other. Research has shown that adopting synchronous body language (essentially mirroring someone else) tends to make the individuals feel closer without ...

About a year ago I met a very engaging and outgoing young woman. She is a successful business leader and a Harvard graduate. There is not much exceptional about this, perhaps, except she is from a rural village in Jamaica and is the first in her family of nine siblings to graduate high school. I was fascinated by her MBA from Harvard but could ...

It's election season and every time I log on to Facebook I am inundated with messages, notifications and newsfeeds (what's the difference between those last two, by the way?) about the elections and the presidential candidates. Some postings are benign but many are pretty inflammatory and a few border on having no basis in reality. Some are ...

Jargon has always been used and does have its place in our communication. Just imagine if a physician wrote out the full name of every test, procedure and medication for every patient very time. In medical lab science where would we be without QC, CBC, CMP, FBS, ESR, PT and the like? Abbreviations are handy and useful. There are also times when ...

Every organization these days has mission and vision statements. We all learn them at orientation. Some companies insist we wear them on name tags or ''buddy badges.'' Others have them plastered in elevators, hallways and in conference rooms. Everyone wants to be the ''provider of choice'' or something similar. Everyone respects patients and ...

It is very common for a laboratory professional who is promoted from the ranks into management to simply stand there like a deer in the headlights.  Now what?  Moving from the bench to supervisor means a laboratorian will have to prepare reports, attend meetings and generally deal with the sticky (and often  thankless) job of ...