Jim Bruce

We all attend too many meetings.  Some are initiated by others and we attend to contribute.  And some are our meetings, designed to further our team’s work.  Some of them are productive and some are not.  And, everyone I’ve talked to yearns for fewer of them. This week’s Tuesday Reading is drawn from Amy Gallo’s essay […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, I Sit Too Much, should actually be titled “I Sit Too Much and So Do You.” Researchers agree that we all sit far too much, about 10 hours per day – hours at the desk, focused on the computer screen, reading and writing emails, working on reports, eating lunch, in meetings, in […]

Who hasn’t had one?  No milk for the cereal.  A tanker truck cut you off as you were driving to work.  Joe wasn’t prepared for the meeting.  Sam’s presentation wasn’t aligned to the audience.  Stuff happens, and it usually leads to a foul mood. And, as I’ve been told many times, you have to learn […]

I’ve attempted to maintain and effectively use a To Do list for much of my professional life.  At the moment, I have an application (Things) on my laptop, my iPhone, and my iPad that keeps the list synchronized.  This is really helpful, and would be even more helpful if I was good at keeping the […]

July 1, 2013 was the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.  In the course of that three-day battle, the armies of the North and South deployed some 180,000 troops on the field of battle and suffered some 51,000 casualties and the course of American history was forever changed. Much has been written about the […]

Our Tuesday Reading today is drawn from Robert Steven Kaplan’s new book, What You Really Need to Lead.  Kaplan was recently named President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.  Previously he was the Martin Marshall Professor of Management Practice and a Senior Associate Dean at the Harvard Business School. In a review of […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, The Five Leadership Lessons of Frank Underwood, is an essay written by Dustin Atkins last June.  Dustin is the Director of IT, Sponsored Research & Strategic Communications at Clemson University and is an alumnus of the MOR Leaders Program. In the spirit of bringing you all to South Carolina, I thought I […]

Adam Grant, in a recent blog post, 5 Myths About Introverts and Extroverts, debunks five strongly held beliefs about introverts.  Grant has been recognized as Wharton’s top-rated teacher for four straight years, as one of the world’s top 40 business professors under 40, and as one of HR’s most influential international thinkers.  He is the author […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, “If You Want People to Listen, Stop Talking,” comes from the pen of Peter Bregman and appeared in the Harvard Business Review blog on May 25, 2015.  Bergman is CEO of Bergman Partners, a company that strengthens leadership in people and organizations through programs, consulting, and coaching.  He is also author of […]

Over the past few weeks, a number of articles about performance reviews and performance management have made it to my inbox.  Some of these are listed as references below. Most universities, and most businesses for that matter, have annual employee rating systems that, through a process of evaluating the individual, assign to him or her […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, Life Balance, is an essay by Jenn Stringer, Associate CIO, Academic Engagement and Director of Educational Technology Services at the University of California Berkeley.  Jenn is also a recent MOR Leaders Program alumnus.  Her essay first appeared as a program reflection last winter. We gave quite a bit of time and lip […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, The Balance of Planning and Spontaneity – What We Can Learn From Bilbo Baggins’s Journey Through Mirkwood, comes from the pen of David Kaplan – writer, software developer, and all around thinker of wacky thoughts.  It was published on medium.com in their Life Hack: Your Story, Experience, etc. blog which shares the […]

Adam Galinsky, a faculty member at the Columbia Business School, and author of the New York Times article “When You’re in Charge, Your Whisper May Feel Like a Shout,” recalls casually saying to one of his doctoral students, “I need to see you this afternoon.  Can you come by my office at 3 pm?”  He didn’t […]

In a recent Interact/Harris Poll of some 1000 U.S. workers, 91% of the respondents said communication issues prevent leaders from being as effective as they might be.  The most frequent issues noted in the survey were:  1  Not recognizing employee achievements2  Not giving clear directions3  Not having time to meet with employees4  Refusing to talk […]

Marshall Goldsmith, one of the best known executive coaches in the U.S., has just published a new book, Triggers:  Creating Behavior That Lasts, Becoming the Person You want to Be.  One of the things that caught my eye in one of the book’s reviews that I read, was a practice Goldsmith has to bring significant […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, G–I–V–E Feedback:  A Path to Improvement, is an essay by Mary Therese Durr, Director of Computing Support and Information Technology Service Management at Boston College an ad MOR Leaders Program alumnus.  Her essay provides an additional tool, beyond those in the Tuesday Readings of last June, for formulating and giving feedback. There […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, Be Nice!, is based on Christine Porath’s June 19, 2015, New York Times Sunday Review essay, No Time to Be Nice at Work.  Porath is an associate professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Her research over the past two decades makes it clear that incivility, rudeness and bad behavior have […]

In the Harvard Business School 2015 winter term, Frances Frei, UPS Foundation Professor of Service Management at HBS, and Amy Schulman, Senior Lecturer in Technology and Operations Management, also at HBS, taught a new course “Why You Should Care:  Creating the Conditions for Excellence” to a group with equal numbers of law and management students.  […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is a short video Emotional Intelligence in Tough Conversations from the Harvard Business School’s “The Management Tip” series.  The presenter is Susan David, CEO, Evidence Based Psychology and Codirector, Institute of Coaching, McLean Hospital.  David is also co-author of Emotional Agility, which appeared in the November 2013 issue of the Harvard Business Review. […]

Two weeks ago I began a series of Tuesday Readings focusing on feedback.  In the first reading, I suggested that feedback was the sharing of information between co-workers about the impact of their behavior on the team’s results, its processes, and/or its relationships.  This past week I focused on giving feedback and suggested six simple, […]