March, 2015

Last week Mary Jordan’s post on the Linkage Leadership Blog showed up in my Inbox.  She is a Principle Consultant and Co-Leader of the Change and Transition Leadership Practice at Linkage, an international consulting practice focusing on developing organizations. We have all heard this admonition to “be still” at various times in our lives.  Usually, at […]

I suspect that we all have heard enough about Secretary Clinton’s decisions, first to use a non-government email server for both her government-related email as well as her personal email, and subsequently about the processes followed to preserve or delete emails.  And, that you like me want to be done with it.  Even with that as […]

I thought this would get easier as time went on, but had been feeling the opposite.  When I got back from Session 1, I was jazzed.  Before my flight back to CT, I wrote my boss a genuine note of thanks for the opportunity to participate in the MOR program and told her about the […]

As I reflected on what has transpired over the past several weeks, I wanted to revisit the essay that I had prepared in hopes of being selected for this wonderful leadership opportunity.  Here is my original objective from that essay: “My ultimate objective is to improve the impact of my team on the customers they […]

We’ve all been in situations where we’ve succumbed to peer pressure.  We often argue to ourselves that it’s too hard to step up with a different point of view – we won’t be liked, we’ll do harm to our relationships, and after all it’s not that big of a deal.  However, in many cases, it […]

Last week I was attracted to a short piece [1] on networking by Marc Thompson.  Thompson is an author, leadership coach, and investor.  The article’s title, “Why Jeff Bezos, Tony Hsieh and Al Gore Told Me to Stop Networking,” was what caught my eye.  Thompson notes at the beginning of the piece that the typical advice […]

One of the things that I have been working on since our session in February is using the three lenses – strategic, political, and cultural – to get a multidimensional perspective on changes and projects which I am leading at the School of Music, Theater, and Dance (SMTD).  As I think about perspective in this […]

I have read the pages in our binders on Neuroscience and Leadership many times in the last few months.  It comforts me to know why it’s so difficult to change my old habits.  On some level I realize that making changes to behaviors will cause a certain amount of pain or unpleasant feeling.  My instinct […]

“Humble listening” is among the top four characteristics of leaders.     – Jeff Immelt, Chairman and CEO, GE “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.”     – Henry Ford “To be able […]

For the past three weeks, the Tuesday Readings have focused on one or another facet of employee engagement.  Today, we shift the focus a bit and turn our attention to “Employee Morale.”  Our author is Vi Bergquist, CIO at St Cloud Technical & community college.  Vi’s essay was a recent weekly reflection in one of […]