Presence

… How are you seen? “All the world’s a stage …  And, one man [or woman] in his [or her] time plays many parts.”                                                                 […]

… Own them, learn from them, don’t repeat them mis•take  noun  an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong.   “The only man [or woman] who never makes a mistake is the man [or woman] who never does anything.”                                     – Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States     We all make mistakes, […]

… Others Most Certainly Are   Some 150 years ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson put it this way “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”     What Emerson was saying is that the way you show up, your presence, can so over power what you say that your words have little […]

Daniela Aivazian is the author of today’s Tuesday Reading.  She is an Organizational Effectiveness Specialist in Stanford University’s University IT organization.  Her essay first appeared as a leadership program reflection earlier this year.  [Dani may be reached at [email protected].]   In my second IT Leaders workshop, my coach said something that stopped me in my tracks. “Words matter,” […]

Thank you to Amy Peters, Business Planning Manager, University of Michigan, Information & Technology Services, and Michael Warden, Sr. Director, Service Management, Health Information Technology & Services, University of Michigan, for sharing this perspective!   Our MOR experiences were transformational, and we hope it’s the same for each of you! Participation is a unique opportunity for you to learn […]

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 […]

So, what do I do now? We all make mistakes.  Sometimes they are small and personal like forgetting to put the trash at the curb to be picked up.  Or, larger and embarrassing, like writing the amount differently in numbers and words on a check.  Or, sending a critical email to the wrong addressee.  Or, […]

Keep that “elevator speech” fresh!    Today’s Tuesday Reading, Missed Opportunity, is an essay by Brent Tuggle, Lead Windows System Administrator, in Technology Services at the University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign. The essay first appeared as a program reflection early this year. I wanted to take a moment to share a recent experience I had and an […]

Overcoming a Bad One The very first exercise we do in the MOR Leaders Programs is one on first impressions.  Sit or stand in a circle, take notes on the first impression you have of the individuals in your circle, add some notes about the first impression that you think you create, and share.  For […]

You can find many lists of leadership competencies.  Some result from a careful examination of the work in a particular job family or from role descriptions.  Some come from discussions about what it takes to be a really good leader in a mid-level position at, say, an education institution.  Other lists are developed based on […]