Delegating

Today’s Tuesday Reading is from Kirsten Mortimer, Strategic IT Services Manager at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and a MOR program alum.  Kirsten may be reached at [email protected] or via LinkedIn. One of my ongoing challenges is effectively delegating. Despite efforts to improve, still grappling with this fundamental aspect of leadership is frustrating. I have been […]

Work on the right things, use my time to think strategically, and do less of what’s comfortable and more of what’s needed. Focus on impact.

As I’ve completed major projects, gone through big events, or understood new responsibilities, I’ve often said two words to myself: “Begin again.”

[Today’s Tuesday Reading is from Brian McDonald, President of MOR Associates.  Brian may be reached at [email protected].] How much potential do people have and how can we encourage or engage them to explore the answer to this question?   The same question applies to each of us as well. How much potential do you have […]

[Today’s Tuesday Reading is from Bill Wrobleski, Associate Vice President of Infrastructure at Penn State University.  He is a 2007 MOR alum, which he claims is the best MOR cohort of all-time.  Bill may be reached at [email protected].]   I’ve never been invited to my own team’s leadership meeting. Yes, that’s what I said. My […]

[Today’s Tuesday Reading is from Jim Dezieck, MOR Associates Leadership Coach and Henry Gabriel, Associate Director of Finance, University Information Technology Services at Indiana University. They may be reached at [email protected] or [email protected].] The photograph above answers the question: ‘how do we measure value?’ The joyful smile of a newly celebrated centenarian connecting from her nursing home room […]

… Hunting, Fishing, Trawling Every organization has hidden leaders.  They’re everywhere.  They consistently step up to deal with client problems, with intractable issues, with extra effort to meet an unusual request from a key client, etc.  We often don’t think of such individuals as leaders, after all they don’t have a positional title that would […]

As the leadership communities grow across our client organizations, we’ve witnessed several effective approaches in leading other leaders.  We’d like to share a few, as we are also aware that they can be quite different from those that helped us earlier in our careers.  For each approach, we have included practices that you can work […]

… at this year’s commencement exercises This year’s spring graduation season has come to an end.  About 4,700 degree granting public and private, two and four year institutions awarded some 2.8 million degrees at their commencement exercises.  And, every one of these gatherings had speakers that spoke of not giving into the darkness and despair of […]

How to hold yourself accountable and help your staff do likewise. Merriam Webster’s on-line dictionary defines accountability as an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility for, or to account for one’s actions.  This definition does not speak to the issue of one’s success or less than that with regard to our actions.  Yet, as Connors […]

Mike Dewey is Director of Campus Services in the Office of Information Technology at Rice University.  He leads groups that provide desktop computing support and help desk services.  He is also interim director of the Teaching, Learning, and Scholarly Technologies group. To be honest, I did not know what to expect when my CIO asked […]

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 reflection shared by MOR Leaders alum, Jim Hall from UMN. Jim writes, “We only have so much time in a given week. How you divide your time is up to you. But where should you provide focus? Lead, manage, or do? The “lead-manage-do” concept helps us to understand the focus we need to put […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, “The Case for and Against Stressful Deadlines” comes to us from the pen of Laura Vanderkem and recently appeared at FastCompany.com.  Vanderkem is a well-known writer who questions the status quo and helps readers rediscover their true passions and beliefs in pursuit of more meaningful lives. Some of us abhor deadlines, some of […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading “If You’re Not Helping People Develop, You’re Not Management Material” <http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/01/if-youre-not-helping-people-develop-youre-not-management-material/>, first appeared in the HBR Blog Network.  The author is Monique Valcour, Professor of Management at EDHEC business school in France.  She focuses on helping companies and individuals craft high performance, meaningful jobs, careers, workplaces, and lives. Professor Valcour argues that […]

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” […]

This week’s Tuesday Reading, “Where’s Your Focus?”  is a post on Jim Hall’s COACHING BUTTONS Blog.  Jim is an 2007 ITLP alum from the University of Minnesota where he is now Director of Information Services at the University of Minnesota, Morris. Jim’s essay focuses on Leading – Managing – Doing (LMD) and, in particular, on […]

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 […]

This “reading” is a short video presenting the idea that having courage enables you to say NO to something so that you can say YES to something that really matters.  Its author is Michael Bungay Stanier, a senior partner at Box of Crayons, a Toronto-based organization with the slogan “do less Good Work in order […]

Grant Halvorson, associate director of the Motivation Science Center at the Columbia University Business School, notes that everyone who is a professional in today’s workplace experiences bouts of extreme stress.  So, it’s not whether you are going to experience stress but what you are going to do about it.  His Harvard Business Review blog essay offers nine […]