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Today’s reading is a short essay, reproduced below, by Roger Schwartz in his newsletter Fundamental Change.  He makes two significant points that caught my attention:  First, accountability is a two-way street.  Not only do your staff have accountability to their manager, but the manager, you, have accountability to them.  And, second, all feedback needs to be timely.  Said differently, it […]

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 […]

A few weeks ago Angela Bell from the University of Iowa shared Dan Bobinski’s article “Is your leadership developing or diminishing?” with her cohort and now I’d like to share it with everyone. As Bobinski, a training specialist, author, and president of Associates at Leadership Development, indicates, too many leaders easily get caught up in the […]

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 […]

For today’s Tuesday Reading, we turn to a Harvard Business School Working Knowledge Q&A – “How Team Leaders Show Support – or Not”– with HBS faculty member Teresa Anabile. Though from 2004, the findings remain valid.  Professor Anabile’s research points to two key concepts for leaders who want to gain their staff’s confidence: 1.  Perceptions […]

This week we turn our attention to Generation Y, those individuals with ages 21-31, the youngest members of our staff.  The reading is “Leadership Lessons We Can Learn from Generation Y” which appeared in the July 9, 2008 issue of Fast Company. Bea Fields, author of this piece and Executive Coach, Speaker and Author as well […]

One of the topics we discuss in the IT Leaders Program is giving and receiving both positive and negative feedback.  In today’s reading “Learning to Accept Criticism“, John Baldoni reinforces the importance of giving and receiving  criticism noting that they are essential leadership capabilities.  He then gives several helpful suggestions:   –  Know your facts […]

One of the things that is becoming more important to all of us is “virtual communication,” whether one-on-one or with teams.  Some of us are old hands at this, others are still learning.  I’ve copied below three recent columns on the subject from Point Lookout, a free weekly email newsletter produced by Chaco Canyon Consulting. […]