Goals & Practices

As young children, one of the first things we began to do after we had learned to talk is to ask questions.  Our brains thirst for information, for knowledge, to understand.  Paul Sloane, author of the Innovative Leader, tells us that asking questions is the simplest and most effective way of learning.  So, if as […]

I don’t know of anyone who hasn’t had some difficulty successfully meeting some, or even most, of his or her goals.  Perhaps it is a large, long project and although you were enthusiastic about the project at the beginning, by the mid-point, it seems dull and boring.  Or, perhaps it is a simple task you need […]

Stop it!  It simply isn’t good for you. In last week’s Tuesday Reading, Busyness as a Proxy for Productivity, Shane Anderson, talked about his multitasking in meetings in order to meet deadlines and complete his work.  He discovered, when he stopped multitasking, that there was a lot of important content in the meetings that he simply […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, Busyness as a Proxy for Productivity, is an essay by Shane Anderson, Director, Solution Architecture in the Business Solutions Group at Yale Information Services.  The essay first appeared as a program reflection earlier this year. Before I began the MOR Leaders Program, I was struggling to get important work done.  I was going from […]

Most of us firmly believe that there is a linear relationship between the hours we work and the productive results that we generate, at least to the point of sheer physical exhaustion.  Research has begun to show, however, that it’s more complicated than that.  That, in fact, the stressors that keep us from focusing and […]

Only look back if that is where you want to be. Today’s Tuesday Reading, Don’t Look Back, is an essay by Scott Orr, Manager, Research and Infrastructure Computing, Dean’s Office, School of Science, Indiana University.  The essay first appeared as a program reflection earlier this year. Our last Indiana MOR Leaders Workshop focused on influencing others and […]

I have it, and so do many of you to a more or lesser degree.  Attention Deficit Trait (ADT) is a term used to describe the effects of a persistent state of information overload that can be generated in our digital world.  Psychiatrist Edward Hallowell first used this term in his 2005 Harvard Business Review […]

Over that past two years, the Tuesday Reading has focused twice on difficult conversations, both with others, Managing Difficult Conversations, and in the form of self-talk, Neuroscience – Managing Self-Talk.  Last week we turned again to Difficult Conversations and today, we return to the topic of self-talk.   Last fall when I wrote about self-talk, I quoted […]

Over that past two years, the Tuesday Reading has focused twice on difficult conversations, both with others, Managing Difficult Conversations, and in the form of self-talk, Neuroscience – Managing Self-Talk.      Recently, I reviewed an essay We Have to Talk:  A Step-By-Step Checklist for Difficult Conversations, by Judy Ringer, a conflict and communications skills trainer, black belt in […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, The Measurement of a Leader, is an essay by Jeff Sherrill, Assistant Director for Information Technology, College of Business Administration, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.  The essay first appeared as a program reflection earlier this year. Last year, I read the memoirs of Union General and later President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant.  I was really […]

Practice is a word that is frequently used in leadership development.  For example, we can use practice to indicate engagement in a profession – I have a practice in engineering;  or to indicate development of a skill – I habitually practice my listening skills;  or to signify continual development of a skill – I practice the piano for four […]

“The important thing is not to stop questioning … Never lose a holy curiosity.”                                 – Albert Einstein Young children are incessant askers of questions.  Endless, relentless.  Based on a 2013 Telegraph Media Group Survey of some 1000 mothers in the U.K., kids […]

re·sil·ience    rəˈzilyənsnoun, 
the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties;  toughness. Over the last few days, “resilience” has appeared so many times that it has become the word of the week.  I’ve seen it in leadership articles, it was discussed at recent MOR workshops, and of course, the trait was evident at the NFL’s Superbowl LI on […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, “Don’t Get Gun Shy”, is an essay by Lizz Duke, Senior Systems Analyst and member of the ServiceLink Team at NYU.  The essay first appeared as a program reflection in November 2016.   I got my first job as a teenager at the Pathmark supermarket near my house.  I started there as a […]

Now What? There is lots of advice available on running meetings (for our purpose an intentional gathering of two or more people), two examples of which are the MOR Meeting Jogger and the essay “How to Run a Meeting Like Google,” listed among the references below.  However, I’ve found little organized thought about the steps […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is Nancy Koehn’s Whiteboard Session, The Ingredients of Great Leadership (a 4 minute video).  Professor Koehn, a historian, is the James E. Robinson Chair of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School.  She is a prolific writer currently writing about lessons from the leadership journeys of a group of leaders including Abraham Lincoln and […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, Mastery, is an essay by Josh Lawrence, Manager of Technical Services at Washington University in St. Louis. The essay first appeared as a program reflection last year.   When I returned from my first MOR workshop, my mind was buzzing with concepts and tools.  My excitement was quickly overshadowed by the usual, day-to-day work […]

Resolutions.  Along with the arrival of the New Year come New Year’s Resolutions.  This is neither new nor all that unique.  Babylonians made New Year’s Resolutions 2500 years ago.  And, since then everyone has followed.    In a typical year about 40% of all Americans make resolutions to improve themselves in some way.  Popular past […]

Civility and Respect?  You might be thinking, why a Tuesday Reading on this subject?   I would have thought so too until several essays by Catherine Porath crossed my desk.  Porath has studied civility and respect for over two decades.  Her studies have clearly demonstrated that civility and being respectful pay off.  She writes:  “It […]

In the November 1, 2016 Tuesday Reading, Always on Stage, readers were invited to respond to the question  What’s the most important, or effective, way you lead by example?   Some 39 readers replied with 139 responses.  All of these responses can be found here.  I’ve included a group of responses below that I found to be […]