Culture

Almost every time I travel from Cambridge to Boston, I cross the Longfellow Bridge.  The central piers of the bridge feature four carved, ornamental stone towers, which give rise to another name for the bridge, the “Salt and Pepper Bridge,” which many of us still use.  Originally opening in 1906, the bridge replaced previous bridges and […]

A few years ago, Charles Duhigg, who you likely know through his earlier book The Power of Habit, was interviewing people at exceptionally productive companies for his 2016 book Smarter Faster Better:  The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business.”  As he did this, he often asked for help in solving a family problem:  […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, Slow Down, is an essay by Jason Murray, Network Architect at the Washington University in St. Louis.  [He may be reached at [email protected].]His essay first appeared as a program reflection earlier this year.“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”         — […]

As young children, one of the first things we began to do after we had learned to talk is to ask questions.  Our brains thirst for information, for knowledge, to understand.  Paul Sloane, author of the Innovative Leader, tells us that asking questions is the simplest and most effective way of learning.  So, if as […]

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 […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, The Measurement of a Leader, is an essay by Jeff Sherrill, Assistant Director for Information Technology, College of Business Administration, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.  The essay first appeared as a program reflection earlier this year. Last year, I read the memoirs of Union General and later President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant.  I was really […]

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 […]

We have all grown up in a give and take world.  Remember the times when you were small and were either willing to share your toys and stuffed animals with your older/younger siblings, or wanted to accumulate as many of them as possible whether you were playing with them or not, or were willing to […]

“The important thing is not to stop questioning … Never lose a holy curiosity.”                                 – Albert Einstein Young children are incessant askers of questions.  Endless, relentless.  Based on a 2013 Telegraph Media Group Survey of some 1000 mothers in the U.K., kids […]

re·sil·ience    rəˈzilyənsnoun, 
the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties;  toughness. Over the last few days, “resilience” has appeared so many times that it has become the word of the week.  I’ve seen it in leadership articles, it was discussed at recent MOR workshops, and of course, the trait was evident at the NFL’s Superbowl LI on […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, “Don’t Get Gun Shy”, is an essay by Lizz Duke, Senior Systems Analyst and member of the ServiceLink Team at NYU.  The essay first appeared as a program reflection in November 2016.   I got my first job as a teenager at the Pathmark supermarket near my house.  I started there as a […]

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 […]

Civility and Respect?  You might be thinking, why a Tuesday Reading on this subject?   I would have thought so too until several essays by Catherine Porath crossed my desk.  Porath has studied civility and respect for over two decades.  Her studies have clearly demonstrated that civility and being respectful pay off.  She writes:  “It […]