Change

As I sit here before our last dinner and day together as a formal group, I remember our first day together and my inherent skepticism about whether this program would be much different from other leadership programs. I seem to have neglected the obvious difference between one week long leadership programs and eight month long […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

I hope that everyone is taking advantage of the summer weather. My reflection for this week has to do with taking actual vacations from work in just as meaningful and purposeful a way as tackling a major project or presentation. This is a new approach to vacations for me because recently I have become rather […]

From the 2015 MOR Leaders Conference, keynote Chris Mayer talks about the industry parallels between media and higher education.  In this three part video series, he prompts us to think about how education is defined and the experience will continue to change, in large part by students and employers. Universities as a whole need to understand […]

Returning to work after our second session, I felt like I was coming back not just with new tools, but with new lenses and sharper vision.  But would that have an impact?  I think it has.  Here are three mini-reflections focused around new things that happened in my leadership because of lessons and tools I […]

Stop Getting in Your Own Way My big takeaway from our first set of meetings has to be to “get on the balcony.”  Related to getting on the balcony, I recognized through our reading and activities that I need to delegate more, give work back, and say no more.  Once I condition myself to make […]

A couple of years ago I had my kitchen remodeled.  During the process, I, along with my young boys, reveled in the tools the contractors had at their disposal, and their skill in using them.  They had so many tools – some for general use (hammer) and others more specialized (router) – their truck looked like an […]

For the 2015 MOR Leaders Conference held May 27-28 in Indianapolis Brian McDonald and Jim Bruce collaborated on the following top trends impacting our clients: 1. Globalization of Education Education is global. Increased numbers of international students, US campuses abroad, countries creating new universities some of which are world-class and attract US students. The list […]

No, today’s Tuesday Reading is not bad driving advice!  The curves here are those Brad Wheeler, Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer for Indiana University and a professor of information systems in IU’s Kelly School of Business, is speaking of in his January/February 2014 EDUCAUSE Review essay “Speeding Up On Curves” which is […]

Today’s reading, IMPACT, was written by Bruce Barton, as a reflection in one of the Leaders Program cycles.  Bruce manages the Shared Development Group of the General Library System at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.   Something I’ve been thinking about: Name five leaders.  Chances are that the same names will appear on many […]

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 […]

We began the 2015 Tuesday Readings with a series of readings focused on being intentional.  A week later, we focused on being intentional about developing new practices to strengthen our leadership.  We next focused on the art of saying “NO,” about being intentional in adding to your deliverables.  And then, last week, we focused on […]

We began the Tuesday Readings for 2015 with a focus on being intentional, and followed that with an essay on practices and then, last week, on the art of saying “no.”  Today we want to take a next step and turn to your calendar and being intentional about it.  It’s been noted that you have a […]

Almost everyone I run into bemoans their busyness, the large number of To Do’s that are in front of them, and the seeming inability to make headway in reducing the length of the list.  Author and consultant David Allen suggests that the typical mid-level manager, at any one time, spanning all aspects of his or […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is an essay by Jim Dezieck, Leadership Coach at MOR Associates.  In the essay, Jim focuses on developing new practices.  As I indicated in last week’s Tuesday Reading, building new practices is one step in becoming more intentional. Everywhere in our work at MOR we promote practical action, through practices, as the […]