Emotional Intelligence

Last week my attention was drawn to a 2007 article by Harry M. Jansen Kraemer, Jr. “What is this thing called CEO leadership?“.  Kraemer is clinical professor of management at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and an executive partner with Madison Dearborn, a private equity firm based in Chicago.  He is also the former […]

Some people seem to be born full of confidence, while others have difficulty speaking up about their ideas.  Is confidence, then, something you are born with and therefore that those of us less gifted, just have to muddle through? No!, say both Jessica Stillman – London-based free-lance writer with interests in green business and technology, and […]

Today’s Reading, “How to Handle Surprise Criticism”, focuses on feedback that comes as a surprise, even as a shock, from out of nowhere, about an issue you haven’t even perceived. In this piece, Peter Bergman, speaker, writer, and consultant on leadership, says that to take such surprise criticism productively, you need a game plan.  He […]

Today’s reading is “The Four Capacities Every Great Leader Needs (and Very Few Have)” <http://bit.ly/beWaWF> by Tony Schwartz, CEO of The Energy Project, a company that helps individuals and organizations fuel energy, engagement, focus, and productivity by harnessing the science of high performance.  This entry appeared in FastCompany’s Expert Blog on October 15, 2010.  (It […]

Today’s reading, “Introverts:  The best Leaders for Proactive Employees“, is a piece by Carmen Nobel that appeared in a recent issue of the HBS Working Knowledge newsletter.  The article reports on the research of Francesca Gino, associate professor in the negotiations, organizations, and markets unit at the Harvard Business School. The key takeaway from Professor […]

Today’s reading “If You Mess Up, Fess Up!” comes to us from Fast Company’s Expert Blog.  It’s author is Paul Glover, who founded the Glover Group, a management consulting firm focusing on improving workplace performance, after a long career as a labor/employment law attorney. Glover’s bottom line is very straight forward:  “Everyone makes mistakes.  It is how we deal […]

I found today’s Tuesday Reading in yesterday’s New York Times.  Matt Richtel had a wonderful piece “Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain” that reports on a five day trip by five neuroscientists plus Richtel, and a guide, rafting, hiking, and camping along the San Juan River in the Glen Canyon National Recreational Area […]

Today’s reading “How to Stop the Blame Game” is by Nathanael Fast, assistant professor of Management and Organization at USC’s Marshall School of Business.  It appeared in the May research blog of the Harvard Business Review. Fast points back to the recent “grilling” of three oil company executives by U.S. Senate committees.  He noted that the executives […]

Today’s reading is Marshall Goldsmith’s article “The Mark of a Great Leader.”  In the article, Goldsmith says that the key trait of today’s leader is self-awareness.  He goes on to say that self-awareness entails “having a heightened understanding of one’s own behavior, motivators, and competencies – and having ‘emotional intelligence’ – to monitor and manage one’s emotional […]

Today’s reading is alternately titled “Five Lessons We Can Learn from Toyota”.  In this piece Roberta Chinsky Matuson, founder of Human Resource Solutions, reflects on how you rebuild trust after you’ve made huge mistakes.  She provides five lessons that can be learned from Toyota’s current problems:  1.  When you make a mistake, own it the […]

Terry Gray, IT Leaders Program alumnus from the University of Washington, suggested today’s reading, “How To Rise Fast At Work:  A True Story”.  Terry thought that the piece might be of interest to the leaders community.  And, I agree. In this Forbes.com piece, its author Avril David talks about two acquaintances – whom he calls Mike and Ted […]

Today’s reading, “The Power of Trust:  A Steel Cable”, comes to us from the Mindtools Newsletter.  The author is Bruna Martinuzzi, the founder and president of a Canadian consulting company that focuses on emotional intelligence, leadership, and presentation skills training. Martinuzzi got my attention when she said:  “Trust is largely an emotional act, based on an anticipation of […]

Todays reading, Jennifer Kahnweiler’s “Why Introverts Can Make The Best Leaders” comes from Forbes.com.  Kahnweiler is the author of “The Introverted Leader:  Building on Your Quiet Strength” and is president of AboutYOU, an Atlanta based leadership consultancy. Many leaders describe themselves as introverts and somewhere in their leadership journey they have addressed the issues of being disregarded or […]

Welcome to 2010!  I trust that each of you had a wonderful time with family and friends.  Just before Christmas Roger Schwartz published “Giving and Receiving Gifts in Conversation” in his Fundamental Change newsletter.  I found the article so thought provoking that I have published it here as this week’s reading  by permission. Two Decembers ago, I […]

One of my sons acquired a new Flip MinoHD digital camcorder just before Thanksgiving.  This gave all the family ample opportunity to appear in living color and HD.  And, as I watched myself later on the video, I realized that what others were seeing was not what I necessarily expected or, in many cases, wanted them to […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is the Conversation Starter by Larry Senn “Lead from the Top of the Mood Elevator” from Harvard Business Publishing.  Senn is the founder of Senn Delaney and an authority and practitioner in the field of culture shaping. The key point of this piece is rather straight forward:  Almost everyone experiences mood changes throughout […]

Over the past several years, I’ve seen a number of articles about personal branding.  My favorite is a piece Tom Peters wrote some two years ago – “The Brand Called You” – that appeared in FastCompany on December 18, 2007.  Peters’ piece is this week’s Tuesday Reading. Peters begins by noting that today almost everything is branded, including […]

This week’s Tuesday Reading is an entry –  “Humility as a Leadership Trait”– from John Baldoni’s Harvard Business Publishing blog. Baldoni asserts, and I agree, that leaders who want to inspire followers need to demonstrate both their accomplishments and their character.  Key to demonstrating character is being humble.  And, humility is essential to leadership because […]

For this week’s Tuesday Reading, we turn to the Career Strategies Column in the Wall Street Journal for a short piece “You’re a Success, Now Get Down to work”. Near the end of this piece, its author Alexandra Levit writes:  “Just because you’re skilled or talented in a particular area doesn’t mean you should simply pass […]

Much of a leader’s time is spent, formally or informally, working to influence decision makers, typically peers, cross-organizational colleagues, or those higher up in the organization.  The Tuesday Reading this week – Effectively Influencing Decision Makers:  Ensuring That Your Knowledge Makes a Difference – focuses on just this subject. To begin the article, Marshall Goldsmith quotes […]