BY JOHN M. OLDHAM, MD How to be a good leader: Learn by listening. That struck me as the main message of a small book sent to department chairs throughout the country some time ago by the American Association of Medical Schools. I’ve tried to do just that throughout my career, sometimes more successfully than […]
BY JOHN M. OLDHAM, M.D. If you are expecting holiday harmony, you may have to think twice. The family gathering just may not turn out like the Norman Rockwell images of perfect family bliss. Instead, as a Thanksgiving-day op-ed in the New York Times put it, “Make Room at the Table for Difficult People.” Grumble, […]
BY JOHN M. OLDHAM, M.D. “Humility Is Something to Boast About.” That was the headline on a recent article in the print edition of The New York Times. Benedict Carey reports on a recent review of studies of people with a personality trait characterized by an ability to perceive one’s own flaws and strengths, and […]
BY JOHN M. OLDHAM, M.D. Personality influences behavior. No doubt about it, certainly for someone in my field. So information about someone’s personality should help make sense of how–and how successfully–that person acts at school, in the workplace, at home, in social relationships, and in the world of politics. The New York Times recently reported […]
BY JOHN M. OLDHAM, MD If you score really low on Self-Confident style on The New Personality Self-Portrait does that mean you are woefully lacking in self-confidence? What about a really high score? Does that make you an over-the-top braggart? Well, maybe…or, more likely, […]
BY JOHN M. OLDHAM, MD What’s the difference between a personality style and a personality disorder? The Personality Self-Portrait system emerged in answer to that question. First things first: Organized medicine utilizes official terms to diagnose illness. In psychiatry, these are itemized in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). […]
Pretty frequently these days there is a big news story about the latest con artist who seemed to have pulled off an amazing scam until the glittering house of cards collapsed. Bernie Madoff comes to mind, referred to in Wikipedia as “the confessed operator of the largest Ponzi scheme in world history, and the […]
