Leadership

After my June 1st Tuesday Reading “Drilling for Certainty” – which made the point that our world has become extremely technologically complex and that the possibility for catastrophe is imbedded in the fabric of day-to-day live – I received several emails making the same or similar points. One, today’s reading – “The Real Cause of […]

A couple of months ago, Gary Augustson posted a BLOG at the Leaders Community Site which has a powerful message for all of us:  “Life is full of ‘wins’ and ‘losses’.”  In the end, how you deal with both will be one of the keys to your success as a leader.”  Given the importance of […]

David Brooks’ May 27, 2010 Op-Ed piece in the New York Times was titled “Drilling for Certainity”which is today’s Tuesday Reading.  The piece also appeared in the May 29th Pittsburgh Post Gazette and was seen by Annie Stunden, Former CIO, University of Wisconsin and IT Leaders Presenter and Coach.   Annie wrote pointing me to the […]

In today’s readings “Why Brainstorming Doesn’t Work”and “Better Brainstorming:  4 Ways to Generate Great Ideas“, Margaret Heffernan reminds us of several shortcomings in our brainstorming practices and suggests improvements.  Heffernan is visiting professor of entrepreneurship at Simmons College in Boston, CEO, author, and speaker. Referencing work by Nicholas Kahn and Steven Smith <http://bit.ly/cpRstq>, she notes […]

This Tuesday’s reading is “Communicating Vision”, by John Maxwell, prolific writer and speaker on leadership. In this short article, Maxwell outlines an approach for communicating a clear and compelling organizational vision.  (You will notice many similarities to the SUCCES tool that we have presented in many of the MOR leadership program workshops.) He makes six recommendations: […]

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 […]

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 […]

In today’s reading “Back from a vacation?”, David Rock, founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute and CDO of Results Coaching Systems, reports on research indicating that we are more likely to solve really difficult problems when we have a fresh or quiet mind.  Specifically the research points out that when faced with a new problem we […]

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 […]

Recently Linkage published a short piece by Marshall Goldsmith – “When I Get Better at …” A Simple Exercise for Changing a Behavior to Achieve Results <http://bit.ly/aUrU3M> – which is this week’s reading. In this piece, Goldsmith describes a very simple exercise – select a behavior you want to change, for example listening, and then complete the sentence […]

 Today’s reading is – IT Hiring:  How Thomson Reuters’ CIO Identifies Cultural Fit – a recent piece appearing in the CIO newsletter.  It features an interview of Kelli Crane, senior vice president and CIO of Thomson Reuters by Beth Ehrgott. As we have noted in the Leaders Program workshops, hiring the right people is as important a […]

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 […]

MIT’s Leadership Center <http://mitleadership.mit.edu/> hosted Anne Mulcahy, then Xerox’s Chairman and CEO at the Sloan School’s Dean’s Innovative Leader Series in November 2006.  A synopsis of her remarks will be found at <http://mitleadership.mit.edu/r-mulcahy.php> and a video of the entire presentation is available at MIT World <http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/412/>. Mulcahy assumed the leadership of Xerox in 2001 when many […]

If you are leading a change initiative, then you must be an influencer for that initiative to be successful.  Yet studies have shown that only one in five leaders are able to influence positive change in a way that it lasts.  What’s going on? Today’s reading is “The Influencers:  The Top Five Reasons Leaders Lack Influence”.  In this […]

Today’s Reading is Preston Cline’s ”Leadership Lessons from Mt. Kilimanjaro“ which appeared in the November-December issue of the Wharton Leadership Digest <http://leadership.wharton.upenn.edu/digest/index.shtml> and is reproduced below by permission. The lesson here is simple and clear:  In life there will always be error, failure.  It is better to fix the error when it is first noticed and small, than […]

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 […]

Having heard a number of people talk about “leading-up, I decided to do a Google search on the words.   This led to far more references than I had time to explore.  However, I found one — “Leading Up”  The Art of Managing Your Boss” a review of Michael Useem’s 2001 book, “Leading Up:  How 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 […]

Nancy Lublin, CEO of Do Something, is the author of this week’s Tuesday Reading, “How to Write a Mission Statement That Isn’t Dumb”.  Her article appears in the December 1, 2009 issue of FastCompany. Lublin argues that our mission statements don’t have to be dumb, that is, neither clear nor useful.  They should, she continues, “convey clearly […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is a piece which I reproduce below “Using Curiosity to Create Accountability with Powerful People” by Roger Schwarz of the Skilled Facilitator. In his piece, Schwarz notes that when people are accountable to you, you [should] expect then to explain the key decisions and actions they have taken.  Yet, when we are talking […]