Acting Director Hired into Director of Strategic Operations After ECQ Rewrite

Acting Director Hired into Director of Strategic Operations After ECQ RewriteActing Director Hired into Director of Strategic Operations After ECQ RewriteActing Director Hired into Director of Strategic Operations After ECQ RewriteDiane Thank you for your help. My essays were approved, and I will be permanent in my position starting on Sunday. I am excited for the opportunityDate Hired October 21, 2012Jobseeker Type GS to SESPrevious Job Title Acting Director of OSORA / Executive Secretariat Office of OSTarget Job Title Director of the Office of Strategic Operations and Regulatory Affairs (OSORA)Result HiredWriter/Coach Diane HudsonStrategy/Process The clients ECQ essays were disapproved by OPM stating that the essays did not express executive leadership examples and the client was encouraged to select stories that represented her time as the Acting Director for the role she was seeking. I rewrote all of the clients stories in the CCAR format, by conducting several interviews to hel p the client develop strong leadership stories. I reviewed all the stories against the ECQ leadership competencies. The clients ECQs were approved by OPM with the rewrite and she was officially hired into the SES.

Study This is why negative feedback so often backfires and how to do better

Study This is why negative feedback so often backfires and how to do betterStudy This is why negative feedback so often backfires - and how to do betterWhen you give your coworkers some tough but necessary feedback on their performance, you want them to learn and improve from it.But new research from Harvard Business School found that instead of confronting the hard truths contained within negative feedback were much more likely to cut off our relationships with the negative feedback giver.In an analysis of 300 employees peer-review processes, researchers Paul Green and his colleagues found that employees would avoid the coworkers who gave the negative feedback and would seek more positive reviews from new work relationships.Running from the painIn one experiment, the researchers told participants that they were getting negative feedback from a work partner about a story they had written. The participants who got the schwimmbad feedback were more likely to choose a new work partner for the next task than the participants who got self-confirming feedback.Theres an assumption that what motivates people to improve is the realization that theyre notlage as good as they think they are, Green writes. But in fact, it just makes them go find people who will not shine that light on them.Seeking out affirmationThe researchers found that when the feedback giver and recipient still had to work together, the recipient would seek out new people in different departments at work to offset the bad feedback they had heard. The researchers called this shopping for confirmation, or the search for a positive view of ones self when our world get threatened by the idea that were not as valuable as we want to think we are.How to get better at hearing (or giving) criticismBut this psychological defense mechanism can be unlearned. Green and his colleagues found that when employees were reminded of their value before they had to hear negative feedback, they stopped shopping for confirm ation. Likewise, when recipients of bad feedback were given 10 minutes to write about the values that mattered to them, they did not seek out self-confirming feedback.Greens research shows us how one bad critique can rattle us. When someone at work tells us something about ourselves that we dont want to hear, were not inclined to listen. For us to listen to hard truths, we have to feel safe enough to hear them.The lesson for managers and employees is to remind employees of their value within the workplace before we give them the bad news.More from LaddersThese companies let employees work from the comfort of their homesThese are the 15 highest-paying jobs in the nation, LinkedIn foundWatch out for this disturbing new trend in job interviews

Making Carbon Nanotubes Safer for the Environment

Making Carbon Nanotubes Safer for the Environment Making Carbon Nanotubes Safer for the Environment Even though carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have become a key ingredient in advanced manufacturing processes, surprisingly little is known about how they actually gestalt. The most common method for manufacturing CNTs is through chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of ethylene. This approach, however, results in a complex mixture of volatile organic compounds and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Some of these are likely important to the CNT formation process and others are byproducts that may actually interfere with the formation of CNTs, creating structural defects and degrading overall quality. Some of these byproducts are also harmful to human health and the environment, including contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.Not knowing exactly how CNTs form also makes it harder to improve on carbon conversion and energy efficiency during the manufacturing process this lack of knowledge also limits how CNTs can be used in product design.To learn mora about the formation mechanism of CNTs via CVD, Desiree L. Plata, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Duke University, designed a research experiment to determine how chemical anleihes are built during nanotube synthesis, with the goal of improving the manufacturability of CNTs and minimizing the environmental impacts of this technology. Her study was published in 2010 in the American Chemical Societys online journal ACSNano.Exciting ResultsIn general, CNT growth by CVD involves introducing a gaseous carbon precursor, such as methane, into a heated (1300 C) reaction zone that contains a free-floating or substrate-supported catalyst, says Plata. The catalyst is typically a transition metal or oxide nanoparticle that is thought to mediate the reaction. While the current understanding is limited with respect to chemical details, the prevailing notion is that the carbon-containing precursor adsorbs onto and then dissoci ates at the catalyst.Nanotubes being grown by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. Image Wikimedia CommonsTo simulate the effect of this thermal treatment without the chemical complexities, Plata delivered trace amounts of individual hydrocarbons, along with ethylene and hydrogen, to a cold-wall atmospheric pressure reactor containing a locally heated metal catalyst (Fe on Al2O3). Using these compound-specific experiments, Plata was able to show that many alkynes (including acetylene, methyl acetylene, and vinyl acetylene) accelerated multi-walled CNT formation. The results also demonstrated that the presence of ethylene enhances CNT growth, suggesting that alkynes and ethylene may react at the metal catalyst.This presents a distinct CNT formation mechanism where the chemical precursors may be intact during C-C bond formation, such as in polymerization reactions, challenging the current idea that precursors completely dissociate into C (or C2) units before precipitating from t he metal, she states.Using this methodology Plata was able to quickly form high-purity CNTs with a 15-fold improvement in yield, a 50-percent reduction in energetic costs, and an order of magnitude reduction in the volume of hazardous byproduct formation (toxic and smog-forming chemicals and greenhouse gases).Future PossibilitiesPlatas research supports the following conclusions Alkynes contribute to accelerated CNT formation while other previously suspected molecules such as benzene and methane do not. If alkyne-assisted techniques are fully optimized for high-volume synthesis, dramatic improvements in CNT yield and mass-per-hour production rates can be realized. Reduced byproduct emissions can prevent unnecessary damage to the environment and public health as industrial CNT production continues to expand. Because carbon precursors are intact when they incorporate into a growing CNT, their structures can be used to influence the morphology of the CNTs Hydrogen can be a tunable parameter to control tube length and quality.Plata is confident that engineers will discover the carbon nanotube growth mechanism in the next five years. This will be an amazing accomplishment because it will make renewable energy sources a truly competitive reality by improving their energy storage and distributions systems, she says. These systems will require novel materials and the best candidates are carbon-based nanomaterials such as CNTs.She also points out that her research highlights an advantage of mechanical engineer-environmental engineer teamworkby knowing more about the process on a molecular level, its performance and cost can be optimized in a more expeditious way than it could without the environmental analysis, Plata says. Also, early incorporation of environmental objectives will actually enhance the lifetime of the process because it wont be banned or regulated if some malignant impact is discovered after it is commercialized.Mark Crawford is an indepe ndent writer.High-purity carbon nanotubes were produced with a 15-fold improvement in yield, a 50-percent reduction in energetic costs, and an order of magnitude reduction in the volume of hazardous byproduct formation.Desiree L. Plata, Duke University