A recent Psychology Today article on workplace kindness examines a number of views and demonstrates how the word kindness itself can seem soft to many people in business. Perhaps with a precise definition and some important context, more people would agree that there's strategic value in workplace kindness. Let’s take a closer look.

Collaboration is at the center of an important shift for leaders as more and more companies move to decentralized management models — including managing in the matrix, flattened structures, and so on. Leaders now stress collaboration, including President Obama in a directive to leaders in his new administration.

I've blogged about that here.

As Interaction Associates celebrates our 40th anniversary in 2009, four decades as the leading innovator of collaboration methods that help clients achieve critical business results, we’re watching how collaboration is reaching a critical tipping point. A rapidly growing cadre of leaders across the world — in business and elsewhere, including government — now view collaboration as vital for empowering individuals and for driving change. And, they're speaking up about it in clear and powerful terms.

Motivating employees and keeping them productive and engaged is difficult even in the best of times. Nowadays, with economic fears and pressures, and having to do more with less, it's harder than ever. But there are proven ways to increase engagement in your organization, at low cost. The result is harder-working employees who bring their best selves to work.

This is a milestone year for Interaction Associates! We want to take this opportunity to celebrate our 40th year — and to thank our wonderful network of colleagues and friends for your support over the years, and in years to come.

So, turn on your speakers and please enjoy these "40 Wishes" for the coming year.

While 2009 promises to be challenging for all of us, we know that working together to solve problems is the path to success. Let's work together to succeed in 2009.

This is the year — 2009 — that Interaction Associates celebrates its 40th anniversary as an innovator of solutions grounded in the discipline of collaboration that helps drive organizational performance. That's 40 years of helping clients use collaboration for strategic ends — including developing leaders, navigating change, developing powerful teams, and achieving critical growth goals.

Interaction Associates works with leaders globally to develop inclusive, facilitative, and collaborative leadership practices. Facilitative Leaders have the ability to build agreements among deeply entrenched factions with differing interests. This is as badly-needed in the global business organization as it is on the world stage.

I'm certainly not alone in reflecting on how much Tuesday’s election was a defining, galvanizing moment in American history — and in the perception of the United States around the world.

On Saturday, we met for the morning only, to conclude the proceedings and deliver the Charter for a World Without Violence, which is the output of this 8th World Summit.

Today, Thursday, the Summit opened in the heart of Rome. The proceedings are happening in the Capitol, known as the Compidoglio in Italian. This area, reached by a zig-zag path from the Forum, was once the centre of the Roman world. The hill itself and the temples here in ancient times came to symbolize Rome’s authority as caput mundi or "head of the world" and thus the concept of a capital city is derived from the Capitol.