Collaboration

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 […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, “6 Management Lessons from Visionary Women Leaders,” is from the pen of Lydia Dishman, a business journalist covering innovation, entrepreneurship and style, and appeared recently in FastCompany. Dishman notes that it has been a big year for women in leadership.  In her piece, she focuses on women who have recently become or […]

Peter Senge has written that After Action Reviews (AAR), the subject of today’s Tuesday Reading, are “one of the most successful organizational learning methods yet devised.”   AARs were designed by the Army as a tool to be used after a project or major activity has been completed.  It allows employees and leaders to learn what […]

“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, […]

As we reflect on the impact of Nelson Mandela’s life and his ability to change the world: for the better: “It always seems impossible until it is done.” Nelson Mandela.   Additionally, from BusinessWeek, “The Leadership Lessons of Nelson Mandela” http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/172548-the-leadership-lessons-of-nelson-mandela   Leadership is behavioral, not positional Choose collaboration over retaliation Never give up on […]

This week’s Tuesday Reading “Real Influence,” from the title of Mark Goulston and John Ullmen’s book “Real Influence:  Persuade Without Pushing and Gain Without Giving In,” is a continuation of the reading begun last week.  Goulston is a business psychiatrist, executive coach and cofounder of Heartfelt Leadership.  Ullmen oversees the website MotivationRules.com and teaches at […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is “Surprises Are the New Normal;  Resilience Is the New Skill,” an essay by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor at the Harvard Business School where she specializes in strategy, innovation, and leadership for change.  The essay appeared in July 2013 in the HBR blog. Kantor introduces the essay with the […]

Jack and Suzy Welch say it simply:  “You have to schmooze.”  They point out that you must schmooze early and often, well before you need the relationship.  In today’s reading “Schmooze or Lose:  How the Lost Art of Negotiation Led to a Shutdown”, which first appeared in Linkedin, they note that building relationships is what you […]

“I don’t care if you like each other right now, but you will respect each other, ” said Coach Herman Boone to his high school football team in the movie Remember the Titans.  In todays Tuesday Reading, Christine Riordan, Provost and professor of management at the University of Kentucky, says it similarly in her essay […]

We have all had experiences when we’ve been trying to sell a new idea of strategizing as to whether to invite the critics, the naysayers, the we’ve-tried-that-before colleagues, etc. to discussions we are having to explain and explore our idea or whether we should manage attendance at these discussions to only include individuals who are […]

Many leaders spend many late nights in the office, sacrifice their own resources, etc. all to increase the likelihood of success.  Sometimes this comes at the expense of people’s health, their families, and their sanity. But, Patrick Lencioni from Table Group notes in “What Leaders Won’t Do” <http://www.wobi.com/blog/leadership/what-leaders-wont-do>, while many leaders make great sacrifices to increase the likelihood of success, […]

Most of us have experienced team members taking the discussion at a meeting off-track.  It could be to a topic not on the team leader’s agenda, either the written one or the one in only the lead’s head.  Or, it could be to an aspect of a topic on the agenda that has already been addressed, etc. The […]

It’s hard to be a good judge of people.  Because it’s hard we often, almost exclusively, depend on extrinsic markers academic scores, results in previous jobs, job titles, salary, etc.  We can also add extrinsic measures from social media – how many friends of Facebook, followers on Twitter, or who we know in common on […]

Colin Shaw,  CEO, Beyond Philosophy, a customer experience consultancy, shares insight on how to be sucessful.  Shaw notes that in his work life he has had some “great managers and some real idiots” and that he could learn from both.  The good managers he copied and he did just the opposite of what the idiots […]

In “Forget The Mission Statement:  What’s Your Mission Question?”,  Warren Berger challenges us to consider responding to a set of mission questions instead of writing a mission statement that is so general it can apply to almost anything.  He argues that mission questions provide a reality check on whether you are staying true to what […]

A key theme of the 2013 MOR IT Leaders Conference was that we are entering a time when disruptive change is the norm. Given that change will happen whether one participates or not, those who actively resist it will hinder their organizations’ progress and imperil their careers.  For the conference participants, the message was clear: […]

It is a fundamental principle that leadership in today’s higher education environment must be collective, concurrent, and collaborative.  To make that happen, campuses need to create, nurture, and sustain communities in which leaders at all levels can be successful. On day three of the 2013 MOR IT Leaders conference, the morning session focused on building […]

Sarah Le Roy, vice president of Talent at Linkage is the author of today’s Tuesday Reading, “Share Your Leadership Vision One Shell at a Time” <http://mylinkage.com/blog/sharpen-your-leadership-vision/>.  In the essay she tells the story of “shelling” with her eight year-old daughter.  As they walked along the beach, Le Roy noted (to herself) that she consistently found better shells […]

All of this year’s conference attendees and all MOR staff members were invited to complete a personal assessment tool called the Strength Deployment Inventory, or SDI for short. It was a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the sometimes messy business of engaging with other people who *gasp!* don’t see things exactly as we do. Susan […]