Goals & Practices

Everyone who has participated in the ITLP has had the opportunity to look back on their career and note the leadership lessons they have learned.  Today’s Tuesday Reading is a leadership journey in the form of an interview.  Recently, Richard Anderson, chief executive of Delta Airlines, was interviewed for the New York Time’s April 26, […]

This week’s Tuesday Reading is a piece “Anxiety for Fun and Profit” which I found on a recent flight in the April 2009 issue of United’s Hemisphere magazine. The article’s key thesis is “We need just the right amount of worry to achieve our goals in life.”  Too much anxiety, you succumb to perpetual negative thinking;  […]

Recently, Adam Bryant, writer for the New York Times’ Coner Office column, interviewed John Donahoe, president and chief executive of eBay for the past year.  The condensed interview is today’s Turesday Reading – “There’s No Need to Bat .900”. Donahoe has a lot of good advice: •  You can’t change people.  …  Allyou can do is help them help […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is “Stay Out of the Bunker”from the New York Times Under New Management column.  There Kelly Holland says that even though this may be a very challenging time for managers, employees still need leadership if they are to function effectively.  She suggests seven behaviors for leaders: 1.  Treat employees as responsible adults, […]

Recently, in reading through the goals of participants in the Leaders Program, I noticed a number of goals of the form “reduce my stress,” “learn to control the stress I encounter day after day,“ ”reduce the hours I work to help control my stress,“ etc.  And, then I came across a piece, ”Grownups Need Recess, […]

For today’s Tuesday Reading, we turn to Dan and Chip Heath’s Made to Stick column in Fast Company for a piece about goals:  “Time to Aim Lower”. In this piece the focus is on those ambitious goals that we often set for ourselves.  Sometimes these goals, instead of energizing and empowering the goal-setter, do just […]

How often have you laid out for your team, perhaps in a presentation followed by a clearly written document, a future state for the team as well as the strategies for getting there.  And, you wait, and wait, and nothing happens. This is the situation that Marshall Goldsmith addresses in “Don’t Just Check the Box”.  Though […]

This week’s Tuesday Reading “Taking Control of Your Work Life Balance and Gaining Personal Fulfillment” takes a hard look at work life balance.  In her review of clinical psychologist Henry Cloud’s new book “The One Life Solution,” Meridith Levinson, a CIO staff writer, wrote: ” Work will consume as much time as we allow it.  It will take […]

Today’s reading, “Degrees of Giving” by Bruna Martinuzzi, comes from the MindTools November 25th, 2008 newsletter.   Last week we celebrated Thanksgiving and were with our families and thought about all the reasons we have to be thankful.  We may have thought about giving — giving thanks, giving of our time, giving material gifts, etc.  Such gifts […]

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 […]

This week’s Tuesday Reading is “Six Tips for Fessing Up to Your Mistakes” by Deborah Brown-Volkman, president of Surpass Your Dreams, a career, life, and mentor coaching company. If you haven’t made a mistake you can pass this week’s reading.  But, somehow, I think you may find the column interesting.  We all mistakes and it is […]

A number of you are fans of David Allen and follow many of the recommendations in his book, “Getting Things Done.”  Our reading this week is “The Curse Of The Eternally Urgent” which you will find at <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-allen/the-curse-of-the-eternall_b_96512.html>. In this piece Allen argues that many of the fires and crises that we find on our desk […]

In my reading not long ago I found a pointer to a short piece by Sean Silverthorne – “The Power of the Humble Checklist“.  As the author points out, and as I will confirm, having a standard checklist for complex, but nevertheless, routine tasks – e.g., the pilot’s pre-flight checklist or the hospital’s safe-surgery checklist – […]

Dan and Chip Heath, who wrote “Made to Stick:  Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die,” are two of my favorite authors.  Recently, they wrote a column titled “Make Goals not Resolutions” which appeared in the February 2008 issue of Fast Company. The Heaths note that we often make resolutions;  like New Year’s resolutions, like the […]

Too often, we take people for granted.  In this week’s Tuesday Reading “Staff Retention:  The Power of Appreciation at Work”, Mike Robbins quotes the U.S. Department of Labor as noting that 64% of Americans who leave their jobs say they do so because they don’t feel appreciated.  And, Gallup reports that 70% of people in the U.S. say […]

Here’s the “Tuesday Reading” I sent out today to everyone who has been in the IT Leaders Program over the past several years.  Based upon the discussion Saturday, I’m sending it along to you as well. As society has become more and more connected with technology, we feel compelled to be always on – 24/7/365.  […]

John Baldoni  is one of my favorite writers.  In today’s reading “Saying Something Important?  Three Questions to Ask Yourself First” which you will find at      <http://www.cio.com/article/104802/Saying_Something_Important_Three_Questions_to_Ask_Yourself_First>  he reminds us that “its not what you say, it’s what people hear.”  In the piece, he quotes Frank Luntz, pollster, commentator, and author:  “The onus of understanding falls […]

Today’s reading the “The ‘Pull Leadership’ Manifesto” by Stever Robbins, founder and president of LeadershipDecisionworks.  This piece from the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge Archives caught my eye because of its thesis:  “We need leaders who inspire others to follow, who engender loyalty.”  Robbins calls this “pull” leadership and then goes on to identify twelve key […]

Happy New Year!  I trust that you successfully rang out the old and in the new, perhaps made some resolutions (or goals) for the year, and are now ready to address what is before you with new energy and excitement.  Today’s reading comes from Rick Brenner of Chaco Canyon Consulting.  Rick notes that throughout the […]

Many people have observed that journaling will change the way that you go about your work and your life.  In today’s reading, Rick Brenner of Chaco Canyon Consulting observes that you record what you did and why you did it.  And, you record what you didn’t do and why you didn’t do it.  You record […]