Change

I don’t know of anyone who hasn’t had some difficulty successfully meeting some, or even most, of his or her goals.  Perhaps it is a large, long project and although you were enthusiastic about the project at the beginning, by the mid-point, it seems dull and boring.  Or, perhaps it is a simple task you need […]

Stop it!  It simply isn’t good for you. In last week’s Tuesday Reading, Busyness as a Proxy for Productivity, Shane Anderson, talked about his multitasking in meetings in order to meet deadlines and complete his work.  He discovered, when he stopped multitasking, that there was a lot of important content in the meetings that he simply […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, Busyness as a Proxy for Productivity, is an essay by Shane Anderson, Director, Solution Architecture in the Business Solutions Group at Yale Information Services.  The essay first appeared as a program reflection earlier this year. Before I began the MOR Leaders Program, I was struggling to get important work done.  I was going from […]

Most of us firmly believe that there is a linear relationship between the hours we work and the productive results that we generate, at least to the point of sheer physical exhaustion.  Research has begun to show, however, that it’s more complicated than that.  That, in fact, the stressors that keep us from focusing and […]

I have it, and so do many of you to a more or lesser degree.  Attention Deficit Trait (ADT) is a term used to describe the effects of a persistent state of information overload that can be generated in our digital world.  Psychiatrist Edward Hallowell first used this term in his 2005 Harvard Business Review […]

Over that past two years, the Tuesday Reading has focused twice on difficult conversations, both with others, Managing Difficult Conversations, and in the form of self-talk, Neuroscience – Managing Self-Talk.      Recently, I reviewed an essay We Have to Talk:  A Step-By-Step Checklist for Difficult Conversations, by Judy Ringer, a conflict and communications skills trainer, black belt in […]

Practice is a word that is frequently used in leadership development.  For example, we can use practice to indicate engagement in a profession – I have a practice in engineering;  or to indicate development of a skill – I habitually practice my listening skills;  or to signify continual development of a skill – I practice the piano for four […]

Now What? There is lots of advice available on running meetings (for our purpose an intentional gathering of two or more people), two examples of which are the MOR Meeting Jogger and the essay “How to Run a Meeting Like Google,” listed among the references below.  However, I’ve found little organized thought about the steps […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is Nancy Koehn’s Whiteboard Session, The Ingredients of Great Leadership (a 4 minute video).  Professor Koehn, a historian, is the James E. Robinson Chair of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School.  She is a prolific writer currently writing about lessons from the leadership journeys of a group of leaders including Abraham Lincoln and […]

Everyone of us, at one time or another, has had “Aha!” moments.  Times when all of a sudden, typically when we are not working on it, the solution to a major issue we are struggling to address floats, as if by magic, through our minds.  Aha!   Cognitive neuroscience provides some insight into what is […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, Mastery, is an essay by Josh Lawrence, Manager of Technical Services at Washington University in St. Louis. The essay first appeared as a program reflection last year.   When I returned from my first MOR workshop, my mind was buzzing with concepts and tools.  My excitement was quickly overshadowed by the usual, day-to-day work […]

Resolutions.  Along with the arrival of the New Year come New Year’s Resolutions.  This is neither new nor all that unique.  Babylonians made New Year’s Resolutions 2500 years ago.  And, since then everyone has followed.    In a typical year about 40% of all Americans make resolutions to improve themselves in some way.  Popular past […]

In the November 1, 2016 Tuesday Reading, Always on Stage, readers were invited to respond to the question  What’s the most important, or effective, way you lead by example?   Some 39 readers replied with 139 responses.  All of these responses can be found here.  I’ve included a group of responses below that I found to be […]

Once MOR begins a leadership journey with someone, we never leave their side.  Or, put another way, they keep us with them.  Perhaps that’s why our organizational client retention rate this year was 100%.  Video of MOR minute with John Gohsman MOR minute with John Gohsman Our clients’ trust is incredibly important to us.  We […]

In last week’s Tuesday Reading, Triggers, Once Again, I pointed to a set of questions Marshall Goldsmith asks at the end of each day.  These 20 questions include ones such as: · Did I do my best today to make progress on each of my priorities for the day? · Did I do my best today […]

Last year, shortly after Marshall Goldsmith’s book Triggers:  Creating Behavior That Lasts, Becoming the Person You Want to Be was published, I focused – in the August 11, 2015 Tuesday Reading, Triggers – on a practice he discussed there that has brought significant discipline into his life.  (Goldsmith is one of the best-known executive coaches in the U.S., if […]

Always on the Stage We say over and over again “Leaders are always on the stage.”  Why?  Because someone is always watching.  Someone is always taking the leader’s behavior to inform their impression of her or him and as an example of how to behave.  Good or bad, it’s OK.  We think, if it works […]

Moving is one of the most stressful experiences.  Packing, cleaning, planning, arguing, worrying, and rethinking just about everything in our daily routine … no thank you. This week MOR moved its global HQ.  Although it is only about 1 mile away, the move required lots of planning and organizing.  Hats off to Maria here at […]

Do you have one? We’ve all encountered them.  The one, or two, or more bad apples on our teams who have little or nothing positive to say about anything, regularly upset and disrupt others, and make work miserable for everyone.  Dylan Minor, a faculty member at the Kellogg School of Management notes that there is a […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, “Don’t waste your time looking back.  You’re not going that way,” is an essay by Mark (Bo) Connell, Assistant Dean for Hospital Operations, Texas A&M University, College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, Texas Veterinary Medical Center.  It first appeared earlier this year as a leaders program reflection.   That quote I’ve […]