{"id":8373,"date":"2019-03-16T14:23:38","date_gmt":"2019-03-16T21:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/?p=8373"},"modified":"2019-03-16T14:23:38","modified_gmt":"2019-03-16T21:23:38","slug":"is-your-pm-a-clown-hopefully-yes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/2019\/03\/16\/is-your-pm-a-clown-hopefully-yes\/","title":{"rendered":"Is your PM a clown? (Hopefully yes.)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Q. \u201cSo what would you say you\u2026\u00a0<em>do<\/em> here?\u201d<br \/>A. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/images\/2Vpn3t\">I have people skills<\/a>!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So I\u2019ve long joked about my career, saying that\u00a0I\u2019m kind of a very expensive router. But maybe, it seems, a somewhat jokey connector is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.economist.com\/science-and-technology\/2019\/02\/23\/the-problems-of-flying-to-mars\">rather vital in a team\u2019s success<\/a>:\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Something researchers have already learned from these experiments is that certain personality characteristics are essential to helping groups work well together. A good group needs a leader, a social secretary, a storyteller and a mixture of introverts and extroverts. Intriguingly, <strong>by far the most important role seems to be that of the clown<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>According to Jeffrey Johnson, an anthropologist at the University of Florida who has spent years examining relations between people in Antarctic crews overwintering at the South Pole, the clown is not only <strong>funny<\/strong>, he is also <strong>smart<\/strong> and knows each member of the group well enough to <strong>defuse most of the tensions<\/strong> that might arise during long periods of close contact. This sounds rather like the role of a jester in a royal court. The clown also acts as <strong>a bridge between different groups<\/strong> of people\u2014in Antarctica the clowns linked scientists on the base with the tradesmen who also worked there. In groups that tended to fight most or to lose coherence, Dr Johnson found, there was usually no clown.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Joke on,<br \/>J.<\/p>\n<p>[Via\u00a0Alasdair Mackintosh]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Q. \u201cSo what would you say you\u2026\u00a0do here?\u201dA. \u201cI have people skills!\u201d So I\u2019ve long joked about my career, saying that\u00a0I\u2019m kind of a very expensive router. But maybe, it seems, a somewhat jokey connector is rather vital in a team\u2019s success:\u00a0 Something researchers have already learned from these experiments is that certain personality characteristics [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8373"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8374,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8373\/revisions\/8374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}