The Mona Lisa Essay Example for Free

The Mona Lisa Essay The Mona Lisa is perhaps Leonardo Da Vinci’s most famous of paintings. It is an oil painting, painted on poplar wood. The painting is most famous for the smile of the woman, which people have been trying to decipher for a long time. Many believe that the portrait is that of Da Vinci himself, while many also place a lot mystic connections with this painting. The portrait depicts a woman’s bust, with a distant landscape that is visible in the backdrop. Leonardo used a pyramid design to install in simple and calm manner within the painting. The woman is shown with her hands folded, with her breast, neck, and face painted the same color as her hands. The light is diffused so that the various curves and geometrical shapes on the painting are made visible through it. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the painting is the woman’s smile. Many believe that it is innocent and inviting, while others believe that of smugness and a smirk. Many scientific studies have been undertaken to determine the exact nature of the smile and the real reason remains a mystery. It is believed that every person sees the smile differently because of the changes in the lightning that Leonardo presented. The woman is shown seated in an open area, and behind her is a vast landscape, which recedes to an icy mountain. Some winding paths and a far away bridge is also perceptible in the background. The painting is an amazing one should definitely take a look at it in order to appreciate its full beauty. The painting is currently on display at the Musee du Louvre, in Paris.

College Student Stress Coping Essay Example for Free

College Student Stress Coping Essay College students facing academic, social, and other stresses such as finances and how to cope with them. The most common stress most college students face is the stress from the work load that is common in a higher education system. This is the major challenge, and you will be facing without the close guidance you may have previously enjoyed from a teacher or parent; Social stress seems to be more prominent with underclassmen leaving home and there support structure from home but can affect any college student. Most students find that the number one cause of stress for them is financially trying to juggle a full load, and work full time to support yourself and for other students pay for school. Academic stress seems to be what cause the biggest problem for most students. There are some things you can do if you would like to lower your stress level and make student life better. First thing you should do is get the right information from the very beginning. How many lectures, seminars or laboratory sessions are you supposed to be attending? With your assignments make sure you know exactly what you are being asked to do? How many words you’re expected to write and what the deadline is for handing it in. Also try to set up your own space for academic’s to make it easier to focus and concentrate, if you have a noisy roommate try to find a place in the library or even a local coffee shop to frequent. These suggestions will help lower your academics stress which will make life easier for the college student. Social stress for college students is something else that is very common especially in new college students. Most social stress comes from trying to fit it or even trying to create a new social network because in most case’s this is the first time away from home and away from your entire support structure and comfort zone. With social stress one of the most important things to remember is to try and stay involved in different activities at school and get involved with different organizations on campus to meet new people. When getting involved with the organization’s on campus you’ll meet new friends and become more socially outgoing which will help greatly with social stress. Reducing the amount of social stress in college students, will lead to a more enjoyable and positive experience. Financial stress tends to be to\he root of most students problems whether it’s from overspending, lack of proper guidance, peer pressure, inexperience or many other factors. As a result just about everyone is bogged down with large debts increasing day by day. As students many have tried different things to cut down expense but still no luck. There are many ways to help lift the financial stress for college students like taking federal or private loans, grants and scholarships, and working during the summer vacation. By taking federal or private loans you get to choose the best one that is suitable for your need, if you decide to go for a private one then do enough research to make sure you’re not at a loss and end up paying more instead of benefitting from it. Grants and scholarships are another great ideas because these will help lift the burden of some financial stress. When applying for grants and scholarships keep in mind these are offered free by federal organizations for the benefit of students. Make sure to take advantage of the situation but you have to prove worthy for these aids. Getting summer jobs will also help lift some of that financial stress because you can do it in your off time and not stress with studying or school work but catch up and save some money! The best ways for college students to cope with the stress of being away from home, social stress, and financial stress. Academic stress seems to be one of the most common among students. Most college students find that the added freedom of being away from the structure at home and the more difficult classes to be extremely stressful. Just remember try and create your own space for studying with a desk and a quiet place, if you have a noisy roommate find a nice place in the library or a nice local coffee shop to visit. Social stress also seems to be a major problem with college students. Trying to fit in and make new friends after leaving there comfort zone and support structure can be difficult. When starting at college try and get involved in activities to get you out and have a good time. Another great thing to do is get into some organizations to help meet new people and even become more outgoing to make the college experience more fun and less stress. Financial stress seems to be the biggest burden for college students trying to survive on your own and worrying about how you will pay for  school. Remember federal and private loans are a great way to lift stress off you but just do your research and find the one that will work best for your needs. Grants and scholarships are the best thing for most students because they are offered for free from federal organizations but you must prove yourself for these aids Summer jobs are great for students who want to make a little extra cash on the side and lift the stress and worry of college off their mind. B y following some of these tips you are sure to reduce some stress in your everyday college life.

Discuss Unreliability In Shutter Island

Discuss Unreliability In Shutter Island Films more often than enough can demonstrate signs of unreliability and the majority of the time it is the narrator who is the cause of the films dubiousness. The dictionary definition of an unreliable narrator asserts that they demonstrate qualities and tendencies that denote an absence of reliability or perception of the narrative. Whether due to age, mental disability or personal involvement, an unreliable narrator provides the reader with either incomplete or inaccurate information as a result of these conditions.  [1]  As Wayne Booth once stated: I have called a narrator reliable when he speaks for or acts in accordance with the norms of the work, (which is to say, the implied authors norms) unreliable when he does not  [2]  . We are consumers of narratives which has given us the ability to identify unreliable stories. However as theoreticians, we are less well able to say what constitutes unreliability and how it is detected.  [3]  Shutter Island is a film adapted, from a novel, by Martin Scorsese; the film is within the film noir genre, with an unreliable narrator that, as result, plays with your mind and makes the film appear to be very ambiguous. Shutter Island is clearly shown through the perspective of a fallacious narrator. A narrators job is to reveal what is real in the narrative and, comparable to tellers in reality, the narrator may have it incorrect or would rather disclose what they deem to be true. On this model we perceive narrative unreliability when we perceive a disparity between the intentions of the implied author concerning what is true in the story and the intentions of the narrator concerning what she would have the reader believe.  [4]  Shutter Islands narrative follows this idea as throughout the film, the central characters perspective gradually becomes more and more inconsistent. The narrator successfully distorts the lines between fantasy and reality which as a result makes the audience struggle to distinguish between the two. It is not until half way through the film where we are initially required to consider the option that the protagonist himself is the one who is in fact mad. It is, to a certain extent, evident from the beginning that something is not right or clear. Scorse se suggests that the narrator is unreliable without explicitly revealing where the perspective diverges from an objective view of events  [5]  ; thus, we can, on no occasion, really believe what we are being shown. In many films it is possible to distinguish between dream sequences, flashbacks and concrete reality.  [6]  Shutter Island has all of these components however it is hard to distinguish which section is which. The unreliability of the narrator in Shutter Island is hard to decipher as the narrator does not really give us a motive to suspect Teddy. The uncertain characteristics of the island and of the establishment are reinforced with the blustery weather, but also visually with repeated long shots. These shots emphasize the remoteness and eeriness of the area as well as the uncanny diegetic and non-diegetic choice of symphony music. Furthermore, figures like Dr Cawlez (Ben Kingsley), Dr Naehring (Max von Sydow) or the warden (Ted Levine), not to mention the patients themselves, make it even easier to align oneself with Teddys judgment that what is happening on Shutter Island is uncanny.  [7]  It is as the film develops that Teddys illusions turn out to be more powerful and make his reliability dither. For example, during his discussions with Noyce in the prison, Dolores interferes as a hallucination and enhances the unsettling of Teddy. Whats more, Richard Dyer and Douglas Pye are two theorists who indicate with respect to film noir the way in which dream, flashback and voice-over structure cast into doubt the status-as-truth of the eventers presented  [8]  . In Shutter Island, Teddy repeatedly has memories and recollections of Dachau, which he recounts to Dr Naehring. These flashbacks however also blend with his dreams and as result become more detached from the proceedings happening in real life. This is an exemplar for the cooperation amongst the narrators partiality, recollection and trustworthiness, which we reexamine after the recognition of Teddys psychological condition. This unreliability persists all throughout the film and even at the end we are still unclear as to what is real. Furthermore, Shutter Island is made within the film noir genre. A key characteristic in film noir is that there will permanently be some form of a mystery. Shutter Island would be considered a neo-noir film due to the fact that it does relate or draw upon the notion, the image and the putative conventions of film noir, and, directly or indirectly, on some of the film featuring centrally within most version of the basic noir canon.  [9]  It has been affirmed that an element of the film noir genre is that the characters the story is centered on are mentally and emotionally vulnerable  [10]  and occasionally they are, or envision themselves, to be physically helpless too. Leonardo Di Caprio is the protagonist in Shutter Island; he has been through a distressing incident where his wife and children have died. He is plagued by images of his dead family and haunted by the fact he was unable to stop it; as a result, he is on a mission to find and murder his wifes murder. However, he is hampered by himself through his mental condition of suppression and deterioration which is the primary narrative impediment for the audience. A quote by Leonardo from the film Memento that sums this idea up: Memories can be distorted. Theyre just an interpretation, theyre not a record, and theyre irrelevant if you have the facts.  [11]   As a final point, when watching a film, we need to be conscious that nonentity may appear as it seems and that even the camera may be lying to us. Seymour Chatman once asserted that visuals are no more sacrosanct than words and that the camera can even conspire with an unreliable narrator  [12]  . In the genre film noir, this method of narrative disruption is very common, for example in the movie The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles), the cameras focal point is on the main character who is correspondingly the unreliable narrator, which is confessed by mistake in the introductory narrative. In Shutter Island red herrings can be discovered, however they are quite simply disregarded, which operates to subvert the narrative. Shutter Island supports this idea of not being able to trust the camera: one example is seen when Teddy fires his gun at Cawley where his blood is dashed all over the white board. However, shortly after the image we are presented with a shot that makes it appear as if nothing has occurred, that the gun is fake and the Cawley is still positioned in the same place and very much alive. It is clear in this sequence that the narrative discourse here is built for shock effect  [13]  ; however it also clearly demonstrates to the audience that Teddy and the camera are scheming with each other and that the camera is in actual fact Teddys coconspirator. In conclusion, it can be debated that Shutter Islands story occurs on six distinct planes which are the actual reality, the narrated reality, the perceived reality, the flashbacks, the dreams and finally the hallucinations  [14]  . It is difficult to differentiate each one throughout the film due to the fact that they all blend together which is what makes it confusing and difficult for the audience to extricate reality and the truth from the rest. As a result, the audience, between the unreliable narrator and the unreliable camera work, are left with unclear knowledge of what is really happening. Shutter Island strongly follows the film noir genre characteristics by leaving the revelation of what is real until the end, however, Shutter Island is slightly different to many common film noir films due to the fact that even the ending is slightly unclear, while it is generally supposed that the film will end with Teddys lobotomy as he is taken away by the orderlies in the final imag e of the film  [15]  . Due to the fact that even the ending is ambiguous, it is clear that Shutter Island has a very unreliable narrator which makes it difficult for the viewer to distinguish reality from the rest.

The Mozart Effect Essay -- Child Development

The Mozart Effect is a study that shows listening to classical music can have positive effects on learning and attitude. This occurrence is called the Mozart Effect, and it has been proven in experiments by many scientists. This research has caused much controversy between believers and nonbelievers, because The Mozart Effect is said to enhance the brain and reasoning; it is also used to reduce stress, depression, or anxiety; it induces relaxation or sleep; and the Mozart Effect activates the body. It also claims to help in the brain development in babies and young children and in addition is thought to aid in the process of studying. Scientists and skeptics have different beliefs about the benefits of the Mozart Effect. Scientists found that Mozart â€Å"enhanced synchrony between the neural activity in the right frontal and left tempoparietal cortical areas of the brain,† and that this effect continued for â€Å"over 12 minutes† (Rauscher & Shaw, 1998, p. 839). Based on these results, Leng and Shaw speculated that â€Å"listening to Mozart could be stimulating the neural firing patterns in the parts of the cerebral cortex responsible for spatial-temporal skills, which subsequently enhances the spatial-temporal abilities that are housed in those parts of the cortex†[Dowd]. However nonbelievers suggest that the research is incomplete and misleading. The Irvine study that launched the phenomenon has been widely criticized. The Startling results announced by the initial paper were misleading. First, the researchers claimed that the undergraduates improved on all three spatial-reasoning tests. But as Shaw later clarified, the only enhancement came from one task—paper folding and cutting. Further, the researchers presented the data in the form... ...it. To what extend Mozart’s music affects our brains is still a question for this mom. Works Cited Bruer, John T. The Myth of the First Three Years: A New Understanding of Early Brain Development and Lifelong Learning. New York: The Free Press 1999. Carroll, Robert. The Skeptic’s Dictionary. Robert Carroll. 2010. Web. 12 April 2011. Connor, Steven. â€Å"Mozart Effect Divides Science† Science News 26 Aug. 1999: Research Library, Lexis Nexis. Web. 15 March 2011. Dowd, Will. "The Myth of the Mozart Effect." Skeptic 13.4 (2007): 21-23. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 15 Mar. 2011.) Fordahl, Matthew. â€Å"Mozart Won’t Help Smarts: Studies.† Entertainment, 26 Aug. 1999: Research Library, Lexis Nexis. Web. 15 March 2011. Siegfried, T. "Many Curious Scientists Have Music on Their Minds.† Science News 14 Aug. 2010: Research Library, ProQuest. Web. 12 Apr. 2011.

A Mixed Economic System Would Benefit the United Kingdom Essay

A Mixed Economic System Would Benefit the United Kingdom Two main economic systems have been developed since the Industrial Revolution, these are Capitalism and Socialism. Both systems have advantages and disadvantages, this essay will explain these, and also give my proposals for a mixed system for the whole society of the United Kingdom. Capitalism Capitalism generally started as an economic system in the United Kingdom at the time of the Industrial Revolution. The basic explanation of Capitalism would be to say that 'the economy is left to its own devices with no Government intervention'. A Capitalist economy is a market economy where all economic decision making is decentralised, and the Government will only supply national defence, administer justice and provide certain public works. The goods that are provided in a Capitalist economy are decided by individuals who choose how to use their labour and spend their income. All resources are privately owned and will only be used for obtaining the highest profit. Advantages of Capitalism There are many advantages to a Capitalist economic system which could make it very appealing to society. The system allows the powers of market forces to operate which in turn gives the consumer a wider range of goods and services. Also because producers are always seeking the highest profit they must try to please the consumer and win their custom. This leads to innovation and greater quality and variety. The firms which produce the correct goods and services will win custom and make profit, those which don't will go out of business and therefore release their resources to the successful firms. This will lead to the expansion of the economy and greater prosperity. In summing up the advantages, it is clear to see that the consumer has the power to dictate the goods in the economy. Disadvantages of Capitalism As discussed in the advantages of Capitalism the consumer has all the power in the economy. However individuals purchasing power is drastically unequal because of the inequality of wealth within the economy. This is due to the fact that some people will always be able to work harder, be more innovative and be more talented than others, and therefore be more profitable and promote themselves higher in the economy whilst others will fail. Because of the inequality of wealth in a truly Capitalist society with... ... Since the war the Government has still kept a lot of control but the opportunity for entrepreneurship is available. The economy in the United Kingdom is, as far as I can see, the only way a society can flourish. The Government tax people but provide, health care, infrastructure, education and welfare as well as owning certain industries to keep some form of economic planning available to them. However recently the Government has sold off a lot of nationalised industries and this has allowed for more competition and moves the economy in to a more Capitalist state. Conclusion In a Capitalist society there is great suffering because of the great inequality but in a Socialist society it seems that, even though the idea of everyone living equally in harmony is appealing, the fact of the matter is that the only equality that people will share is the equality of no choice and oppression. True Socialism can never work in any society because it is human nature to want mare than you have and to strive to achieve this. Countries that say they are socialist seem to me to be more of a dictatorship. A true mix between the two must be achieved to sustain a healthy economy and a happy society.

natural born killers :: essays research papers

Natural Born Killers† is one weird-ass movie. With the weird actors and funky camera movements. It’s unforgettable. A trip into the mind of two serial killers. The film is real good, but I think it might be even better if you were drunk. You might be a little used to everyone acting weird and all the psychedelic colors. But since I am not old enough to do that yet, I’ll just review as how I saw it. Mallory (Juliette Lewis) has a horrible life. Her brother is a little jerk, her father molests her, and her mother does nothing about it. It’s horrible. But the film tries to make it a little funny by making her house look like a sitcom with the audience laughing (the whole movie isn’t like this). Then one day a young man named Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson) comes to the front door of her house delivering fifty pounds of meat. They instantly fall in love. This is where the funky stuff begins. Mickey and Mallory brutally beat and drown her dad, and burn her mom to death. After that they go on a long murder spree, killing more than fifty people, they are finally caught by one of the best cops in America: Seymour Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore). Mickey and Mallory have been apart for a year. Both locked in separate cells in a prison ran by McClusky (Tommy Lee Jones). McClusky has assigned Scagnetti to transport Mickey and Mallory to another place to get a lobotomy done on each of them. But the night before they are sent out, a greedy reporter named Wayne Gale (Robert Downey, Jr.) is giving Mickey a live interview on TV. Pretty soon, Mickey escapes and all hell breaks loose. This film proves to us how screwed up the world is from movies and television. Two innocent people who have been exposed to too much violence go crazy and kill innocent people. I really liked how the film told the truth and held nothing back. The great part is the last act in the prison. Genius stuff! Oliver Stone is a great director and I admire him. He actually makes you feel sorry for this guilty couple. Harrelson gives an awesome performance. Spectacular! After seeing him all goofy on â€Å"Cheers† I was really excited to see him like this. I found it odd that his dad did go to prison for being a hit man. natural born killers :: essays research papers Natural Born Killers† is one weird-ass movie. With the weird actors and funky camera movements. It’s unforgettable. A trip into the mind of two serial killers. The film is real good, but I think it might be even better if you were drunk. You might be a little used to everyone acting weird and all the psychedelic colors. But since I am not old enough to do that yet, I’ll just review as how I saw it. Mallory (Juliette Lewis) has a horrible life. Her brother is a little jerk, her father molests her, and her mother does nothing about it. It’s horrible. But the film tries to make it a little funny by making her house look like a sitcom with the audience laughing (the whole movie isn’t like this). Then one day a young man named Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson) comes to the front door of her house delivering fifty pounds of meat. They instantly fall in love. This is where the funky stuff begins. Mickey and Mallory brutally beat and drown her dad, and burn her mom to death. After that they go on a long murder spree, killing more than fifty people, they are finally caught by one of the best cops in America: Seymour Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore). Mickey and Mallory have been apart for a year. Both locked in separate cells in a prison ran by McClusky (Tommy Lee Jones). McClusky has assigned Scagnetti to transport Mickey and Mallory to another place to get a lobotomy done on each of them. But the night before they are sent out, a greedy reporter named Wayne Gale (Robert Downey, Jr.) is giving Mickey a live interview on TV. Pretty soon, Mickey escapes and all hell breaks loose. This film proves to us how screwed up the world is from movies and television. Two innocent people who have been exposed to too much violence go crazy and kill innocent people. I really liked how the film told the truth and held nothing back. The great part is the last act in the prison. Genius stuff! Oliver Stone is a great director and I admire him. He actually makes you feel sorry for this guilty couple. Harrelson gives an awesome performance. Spectacular! After seeing him all goofy on â€Å"Cheers† I was really excited to see him like this. I found it odd that his dad did go to prison for being a hit man.

Organizational Culture: Present Trends Essay

Organizational culture has been defined as â€Å"the set of shared values and norms that control organizational members’ interactions with each other and with suppliers, customers, and other people outside the organization† (Jones, 2004). Just as an organization’s structure can be used to achieve competitive advantage and promote stakeholder interests, an organization’s culture can be used to increase organizational effectiveness. This is because organizational culture controls the way members make decisions, the way they interpret and manage the organization’s environment, what they do with information, and how they behave. Culture thus affects an organization’s competitive position. As culture is discussed in terms of the values and norms that influence its members’ behavior, it usually determines how members of a firm interpret the environment, bond its members to the organization, and give it a competitive advantage. Recent advances that develop organizational theories that deals with culture in organizations have been instituted. These are developing high performance teams, managing organizational identity and managing diversity. Organizational culture exercises a potent form of control over the interactions of organizational members with each other and with outsiders. By supplying people with a toolbox of values, norms, and rules that tell them how to behave, organizational culture is instrumental in determining how they interpret and react to a situation. In developing concepts that enhance organization’s culture would literally translate success and competitive advantage in organizations. High Performance Teams  When working with a group or a company, one should be a team player in order for your tasks to be accomplished successfully. To quote, â€Å"Someone may be great at his or her job, maybe even the best there ever was. But what counts at work is the organization’s success, not personal success. After all, if your organization fails, it does not matter how great you were; you are just as unemployed as everyone else† (Johnson, Kantner & Kikora, 1990). In the work environment, teams materialize to focus on tasks or solve problems that are beyond the capacity of one individual. With this type of set-up that allow creative and innovative juices to flow through the constant sharing of information, people could appropriate division of labor among the members of the team can lead to more effective, more efficient and less stressful workplace. Their high levels of performance with regards to quantity, quality, and timeliness of work results can contribute to their sense of satisfaction, addressing a psychological and motivational need. With incessant exposure to each other, team members and their superiors could ascertain whether they have a team that can continue working together with synergy or their togetherness poses a detrimental effect on their output and interrelationships. In traditional organizational structures, teams were introduced and experimented on to see what works and what does not. While employees have already formed their own social groups for their personal interaction with other employees, management devised ways to re-group them and build teams that would be more productive for the organization. The old hierarchies were replaced with cross-functional structures that were both flat and self-directed. The emergence of the concept of High Performance Teams evolved. To date, organizations and businesses have shifted to this kind of paradigm. They are depicted as flexible but difficult to put together, expensive but worth every cent. To build a high performance team requires a lot of work, time, effort and money. The team leader can serve to be the conduit between the team and the management or other external organizations. Coordination of the team’s activities is also the responsibility of the team leader. Any team leader should be able to ensure that the team maintains the ethical standards of the organization. What’s important is for team members to be consistently coached by management or external agencies hired by management to continually trust, respect and support each other and the organization. Coaching coupled with their guidelines will keep in check their members’ behavior and enhance their decision making skills. Empowerment is a key for the advancement of these skills. To be empowered, the team needs to have information and resources. It also needs the management’s trust that they won’t abuse the information or the resources they are given, which is often curtailed by the guidelines they have set for themselves. This empowerment leads them to become cross-functional. They are then given a wider perspective of the processes and a detailed coverage of the activities that occur and address what needs improvement in the organization. In developing work environments, more corporations are now staunch in their support for diversity. Dealing with diversity in a way that makes it a strength has come to be known as â€Å"managing† diversity. According to Sharon Nelton: Managing diversity meant, and still means, fostering an environment in which workers of all kinds—men, women, white, disabled, homosexual, straight, elderly—can flourish and, given opportunities to reach their full potential and contribute at the highest level, can give top performance to a company (p. 19). When we refer to â€Å"diversity†, this could mean cultural, demographic, organizational or psychological and encompasses ethnicity, religion, gender, age, personality, values, attitudes, occupations, status, or job tenure. By working together in well-supervised teams that include women and men, young and old, minorities and non-minorities, employees can learn how to realize the full potential of diversity. According to Goetsch & Davis (2004), diversity in teamwork can be promoted by applying the following strategies: †¢ Continually assessing circumstances. Is communication among diverse team members positive? Do bias and stereotyping exist among team members? Do minorities and non-minorities with comparable jobs and qualifications earn comparable wages? Factors that might undermine harmonious teamwork should be anticipated, identified, and handled. Giving team members opportunities to learn. Humans naturally tend to distrust people who are different, whether the differences are attributed to gender, culture, age, race, or any other factor. Just working with people who are different can help overcome this unfortunate but natural human tendency. However, it usually takes more than just working together to break down barriers and turn a diverse group of employees into a mutually supportive, complementary team in which the effectiveness of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. With regards to compensation, there should be an implementation of an appropriate compensation system. In other words, if you want teamwork to work, make it pay. This does not mean that employees are no longer compensated as individuals. Rather, the most successful compensation systems combine both individual and team pay. In Anne Schauber’s study (2001), it found that if a team’s performance is duly rewarded by the organization, a culturally diverse organization â€Å"may be more economical in the long run† and â€Å"will result in better service to a changing clientele†. It enhances the creativity and problem-solving capabilities of the organization† in such a way that the â€Å"previously untapped talent and energy will be focused on achieving organizational goals† (Schauber, 2001). Thus, diversity has become a positive contributing factor to the achievement of the goals of a high performance team. Moreover, De Vries and Manfred (2005) recently used the idea of Zen Buddhism in leadership group coaching to develop high performance teams. De Vries and Manfred (2005) said that Zen Buddhism has as its fundamental purpose the awakening of the mind and the individual attainment of spiritual enlightenment. A Zen teacher is concerned with self-help and helping others with wisdom and compassion. Given this mindset, Zen teachers can be seen as forerunners of leadership coaches. Like Zen teachers, such management coaches provide learning opportunities by giving constructive and balanced feedback. They serve as sparring partners. They help their clients reflect on their own actions. As a way of clarifying and enhancing consciousness, coaching has become the Zen for executives. With executives finally realizing the value of coaching, the coaching market—now a multi-billion-dollar enterprise—is ballooning. Originally carried out by â€Å"one-person bands,† leadership coaching has become a major activity for many large consulting firms. As corporations are constantly seeking methods to improve their own workplace effectiveness and efficiency, individual and group performance had to be measured. Work teams transform to become empowered to make decisions and improve performance; there is also an increased need for accountability. Virtually, all organizations with work teams need a means for measuring their teams’ performance. Indeed, high performance teams coupled with diversity could spell the success of any organization or corporation in our fast changing global environment. Managing Organizational Identity Organizational identity differs, most sharply, from organizational culture because of the prominent role of transference phenomena. The nature of emotional attachments and connectedness, or disconnectedness, is the footing of organizational life and the essence of organizational identity. The centrality of this emotional substructure is especially crucial when there is demand for organizational change and development. Change depends on members’ willingness to assume responsibility for their actions and to depart from the status quo. But this willingness is the result of mutual understanding of shared emotions between superordinates and subordinates, and often among peers in organizations, and is the outcome of their recognition of unconscious expectations and desires. Helping members to become aware of the structure of organizational identity and their place in it is a precondition for freeing them up for organizational change that is strategically sound and productive (Diamond, 1993, p. 7). Ravasi and Schultz (2006) had presented a recent longitudinal study of organizational responses to environmental changes that induce members to question aspects of their organization’s identity. Their findings highlight the role of organizational culture as a source of cues supporting â€Å"sensemaking† action carried out by leaders as they reevaluate their conceptualization of their organization, and as a platform for â€Å"sensegiving† actions aimed at affecting internal perceptions. Ravasi and Schultz (2006) explored organizational responses to environmental changes and shifting external representations that induced members to reflect on their organization’s recent and prospective courses of action and ask themselves, â€Å"What is this organization really about? † Although past research has documented the impact of desired images on organizational responses to environmental changes, they deemed that the influence of organizational culture—and in particular, the influence of its manifestations—on the redefinition of members’ collective self-perceptions. They found organizational culture became the central construct in understanding the evolution of organizational identities in the face of environmental changes, suggesting that collective history, organizational symbols, and consolidated practices provide cues that help members make new sense of what their organization is really about and give that new sense to others. Furthermore, the role of culture in preserving a sense of distinctiveness and continuity as organizational identity is subjected to explicit reevaluation. The findings suggest that the roles external images and organizational culture play in affecting organizational responses to identity threats may be more complementary than the current literature on organizational identity would suggest (Ravasi & Schultz, 2006). Building on evidence from their research, they developed a theoretical framework for understanding how the interplay of construed images and organizational culture shapes changes in institutional claims and shared understandings about the identity of an organization.