Coaching

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts…” William Shakespeare’s As You Like It – Act II, Scene VII I had the distinct pleasure recently (sarcasm alert) of leading my team through an ERP […]

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 […]

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, […]

Last week we began a series of Tuesday Readings on the subject of feedback:  Feedback in the workplace is the sharing of information between co-workers about the impact that their behavior is having on the team’s results, its processes, and/or its relationships.  It can be positive in the form of affirmation of specific good work a […]

“We all live in the world with only the vaguest notion of our impact, and sometimes that matters.  Clearly, when we’re effective or helpful, we ought to know it.  And when our actions are working against us or others, we ought to know that too.  Given how most of us put our heads down and […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, More About Questions, continues our discussion from the past two weeks.  As we’ve noted there, being able to ask good, well-formed questions is as important to a leader as being able to listen well.  Today, we’ll focus on crafting our questions, on asking questions, and finally on those terrible questions we should […]

The issue of employee engagement has surfaced in several ways over the past few weeks – what is it?, why is it important?, should I be concerned about my team’s engagement?, how would I improve it?, what could/should a team member do to increase his/her engagement?, etc.  This issue and these questions have led to […]

The Tuesday Reading today is 7 Ways You’re Unconsciously Undermining Yourself.  The essay was written by Gwen Moran for FastCompany.com.  Moran writes about business, money and assorted other topics for leading publications and web sites.  She is co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Business Plans. There are things we all do that undermine ourselves, that make others think we’re not effective […]

Ten years ago today, the first workshop of the first MOR IT Leaders Program, held at the University of Chicago, came to an end.  Beth Hayes, Penn State participant in that first cycle, has written of that time: “Attending the IT Leadership Program was a game changer.  As our session began, I was concurrently moving […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is actually a Marshall Goldsmith video “Leadership is a Contact Sport”.   In this video Goldsmith teaches a very straightforward model for development as a leader or as a team member.  It has eight steps: 1.  Ask.  Create a habit of asking people important questions – how could I have done a […]

This week’s Tuesday Reading is The Dangers of Denial,  an essay by Ron Ashkenas, managing partner of Schaffer Consulting and co-author of The GE Work-Out and The Boundaryless Organization. The essay first appeared as a posting on the HBR Blog Network.Ashkenas notes that great leaders tell it like it is, focusing on reality no matter how […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading turns to the subject of confidence by considering Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s essay “Overcome the Eight Barriers to Confidence”.  Professor Kanter is Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor at the Harvard Business School and the author of Confidence:  How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End. Kanter notes that to be a more confident […]

This week’s Tuesday Reading, “Practice, Practice, Practice” was written by Lucrecia Kim-Boswell as a leadership reflection earlier this year in one of the IT Leaders Programs.  Lucrecia is an IT Capacity Manager at Stanford University.    “I had a session with my boxing coach some weeks ago where we made a key discovery.  For weeks, […]

  The Tuesday Reading this week is Lessons in Leadership: How Lincoln Became America’s Greatest President, an essay by Hitendra Wadhwa, Professor of Professional Practice in the Faculty of Business at Columbia University.  This essay appeared on Inc.com earlier this year. In his essay Professor Wadhwa examines how Lincoln developed the self-discipline to take one of his […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is How to Ask Better Questions.  The essay’s author is Judity Ross, a contributing writer and columnist for Talking Writing, an online literary magazine.  She has written numerous articles and reports for academy, corporate, and nonprofit organizations, including the Harvard Business School.

Several weeks ago, the Tuesday Reading was “Increase Your Team’s Curiosity” […]

Several people have asked me recently – how do you know you are coaching and not just having a conversation or giving someone advice? So I thought I’d share this list of Coaching Indicators.  Enjoy! You know you are coaching if the other person says: “That was a great question”. “I never thought of that before”. […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is “Increase Your Team’s Curiosity” by Roger Schwarz, CEO of Roger Schwartz and Associates.  The essay appeared in the Harvard Business School blogs. Schwarz suggests that at your next team meeting you track how many times you make a statement and the number of times you ask a question soliciting the views of […]

“If feedback is a gift, every day was Christmas.” – MOR Program participant  As we approach this time of giving and receiving gifts, we are reminded of the age-old MOR mantra, “Feedback is a Gift”.  When colleagues, friends and family offer us bits of constructive words of development, take them and thank them!  When Aunt Sally gives you yet another holiday sweater, […]