Goals & Practices

Today’s Tuesday Reading, “If You Want People to Listen, Stop Talking,” comes from the pen of Peter Bregman and appeared in the Harvard Business Review blog on May 25, 2015.  Bergman is CEO of Bergman Partners, a company that strengthens leadership in people and organizations through programs, consulting, and coaching.  He is also author of […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, Life Balance, is an essay by Jenn Stringer, Associate CIO, Academic Engagement and Director of Educational Technology Services at the University of California Berkeley.  Jenn is also a recent MOR Leaders Program alumnus.  Her essay first appeared as a program reflection last winter. We gave quite a bit of time and lip […]

In a recent Interact/Harris Poll of some 1000 U.S. workers, 91% of the respondents said communication issues prevent leaders from being as effective as they might be.  The most frequent issues noted in the survey were:  1  Not recognizing employee achievements2  Not giving clear directions3  Not having time to meet with employees4  Refusing to talk […]

Marshall Goldsmith, one of the best known executive coaches in the U.S., has just published a new book, Triggers:  Creating Behavior That Lasts, Becoming the Person You want to Be.  One of the things that caught my eye in one of the book’s reviews that I read, was a practice Goldsmith has to bring significant […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, Be Nice!, is based on Christine Porath’s June 19, 2015, New York Times Sunday Review essay, No Time to Be Nice at Work.  Porath is an associate professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Her research over the past two decades makes it clear that incivility, rudeness and bad behavior have […]

In the Harvard Business School 2015 winter term, Frances Frei, UPS Foundation Professor of Service Management at HBS, and Amy Schulman, Senior Lecturer in Technology and Operations Management, also at HBS, taught a new course “Why You Should Care:  Creating the Conditions for Excellence” to a group with equal numbers of law and management students.  […]

I hope that everyone is taking advantage of the summer weather. My reflection for this week has to do with taking actual vacations from work in just as meaningful and purposeful a way as tackling a major project or presentation. This is a new approach to vacations for me because recently I have become rather […]

Last week we began a series of Tuesday Readings on the subject of feedback:  Feedback in the workplace is the sharing of information between co-workers about the impact that their behavior is having on the team’s results, its processes, and/or its relationships.  It can be positive in the form of affirmation of specific good work a […]

“We all live in the world with only the vaguest notion of our impact, and sometimes that matters.  Clearly, when we’re effective or helpful, we ought to know it.  And when our actions are working against us or others, we ought to know that too.  Given how most of us put our heads down and […]

 In addition to all of the things you have to do in your job is the important responsibility of managing the relationship with your boss.  It takes time and energy.  And, managing it is as important as any of your work, and doing it well can simplify your job by eliminating future problems. Stop for a […]

“Character is the tree.  Reputation is the shadow.”  —  Abraham Lincoln Earlier this month, Fred Kiel’s new book, Return on Character, caught my attention. Kiel is co-founder and principal at the KRW Research Institute which focuses on creating character-driven leadership cultures.  The book is the result of a seven-year study involving 121 CEOs and their senior teams.  […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading focuses on managing difficult conversations.  Most likely each of us will have at least one difficult conversation today.  We’ve all had difficult conversations that have gone badly and we instinctly fear that the one on the horizon will do so as well.  Today’s reading is actually a video produced by Fred Kofman.  […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, Gratitude, is a reflection written earlier this year by Jaime Thompson.  Jaime supports IT in the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota and is a participant in the Emerging Leaders Program (ELP) there. What I am feeling this week is gratitude and how I identified it was through a […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, More About Questions, continues our discussion from the past two weeks.  As we’ve noted there, being able to ask good, well-formed questions is as important to a leader as being able to listen well.  Today, we’ll focus on crafting our questions, on asking questions, and finally on those terrible questions we should […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading begins a short series of readings on the subject of asking questions.  It was Voltaire who said, “It is easier to judge the mind of a man by his questions rather than his answers.” Mark Suster, entrepreneur turned venture capitalist said it this way:  “The ability to ask questions effectively is one of […]

Last week Mary Jordan’s post on the Linkage Leadership Blog showed up in my Inbox.  She is a Principle Consultant and Co-Leader of the Change and Transition Leadership Practice at Linkage, an international consulting practice focusing on developing organizations. We have all heard this admonition to “be still” at various times in our lives.  Usually, at […]

I suspect that we all have heard enough about Secretary Clinton’s decisions, first to use a non-government email server for both her government-related email as well as her personal email, and subsequently about the processes followed to preserve or delete emails.  And, that you like me want to be done with it.  Even with that as […]

“Humble listening” is among the top four characteristics of leaders.     – Jeff Immelt, Chairman and CEO, GE “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.”     – Henry Ford “To be able […]

We began the Tuesday Readings for 2015 with a focus on being intentional, and followed that with an essay on practices and then, last week, on the art of saying “no.”  Today we want to take a next step and turn to your calendar and being intentional about it.  It’s been noted that you have a […]

Almost everyone I run into bemoans their busyness, the large number of To Do’s that are in front of them, and the seeming inability to make headway in reducing the length of the list.  Author and consultant David Allen suggests that the typical mid-level manager, at any one time, spanning all aspects of his or […]