Team

…  the right of every person to be valued and respected Last December’s first Tuesday Reading was Let’s Choose to Be Civil.1 There I used Georgetown University professor Christine Porath’s definition of “incivility” – disrespect or rudeness including mocking or belittling someone, teasing in ways that hurt, offensive jokes, arriving late to meetings, focusing on your smart device […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is an essay by Theresa Bamrick, CIO at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory operated by Stanford University. Her essay first appeared as a leaders program reflection last fall. [Theresa may be reached at <[email protected]>.]    I come from a cranberry and fishing town near Cape Cod, MA. My parents were born in the Greatest […]

Two weeks ago, on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I wrote about gratitude – the importance of expressing gratitude, how to cultivate a practice of showing gratitude, and about the impact our showing gratitude has on others.  After completing that essay, I watched the CBS Friday (November 15) Evening News. The last of the evening’s news items was […]

Eric Abrams is the author of today’s Tuesday Reading.  He is Chief Inclusion Officer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. His essay first appeared as a leadership program reflection earlier this year. [Eric may be reached at [email protected].]   The MOR Tuesday Reading of October 23, 2018 focused on curiosity. Given my role at the Stanford Graduate […]

Day after tomorrow, the fourth Thursday of November, will be celebrated as Thanksgiving Day in the United States.   A day set apart for giving thanks in the United States, has been celebrated most years since the first colonization of our country. Beginning in 1941, Thanksgiving has been celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. […]

… a technique that allows people to iterate on ideas without using harsh or judgmental language. While used typically in teams and on the ideas of others, plussing works equally well on one’s own ideas – when one’s self critic can be particularly vocal. You may never have previously encountered the word “plussing.” Neither had […]

… a strong desire to know or learn something Previous Tuesday Readings have focused on curiosity,1,2,3 on the very related topic of asking questions,4,5 and the further related topic of psychological safety6 on numerous occasions. Given these six examples along with a larger number of additional Tuesday Readings focused on aspects of this topic I’ve not listed as References, […]

Today, most organizations, including a university’s IT organization, structure their work through a set of teams. Other examples include professional sports teams with their structure, their practice day-after-day of plays they may execute in the game, and a surgical team that performs the same procedure, for example, hip replacement, under tightly controlled conditions, perhaps multiple […]

… How do I respond?   Compliments are a good thing, right? Everyone likes to be recognized for a job well done. Especially from someone whose work you admire. They are a special form of positive feedback. However, many of us find accepting a compliment with grace to be a major challenge. Too often, our […]

The MOR Leaders Program employs a leadership model which calls for leaders to focus on providing direction – establishing vision, developing strategies, and coping with change; aligning people – communicating direction, engaging people in implementation, and building commitment; and motivating them to do the work – “holding up the banner,” coaching and empowering, and recognizing and rewarding success. This […]

. . .  Ask for it! On any given day we will each need help from others in one or more of our life-circles – our work, our families, our church, and our social and community activities, etc.  And, we also will have opportunities to extend our help to others.  So, why then, do we […]

Steven Westlund is the author of today’s Tuesday Reading.  He is the Director of Enterprise Applications Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis.  His essay first appeared as a leadership program reflection earlier this year.  [Steve may be reached at [email protected].]   A few weekends ago, my wife and I watched Alexandra Dean’s documentary, Bombshell: the Hedy Lamarr […]

… When Hiring Staff Last week’s Tuesday Reading focused on cognitive biases, forces that can influence an “individual’s personal construction of his or her social reality.” This personal construction and not the objective input received from your senses may dictate your behavior in the social world.  As a result, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual […]

… my team is a safe place for interpersonal risk taking   Early this decade Google was focused on building the perfect team.  Even earlier, the company had endeavored to capture large quantities of data about employees and how they worked.  They knew, for example, how frequently particular people ate together (more productive people had larger […]

… men and women can both be “victims” and “perpetrators”   Turn on the radio or television, read a magazine or newspaper, surf the web.  You’ll likely hear or see a story about sexual harassment or assault or mischief on the part of someone in power – a broadcast personage, a media executive, a politician, […]

Brian McDonald is the author of today’s Tuesday Reading. He is the president of MOR Associates an organization he founded in 1983 based on the belief that many organizations do not maximize the contribution most people want to make at work. More recently, he has led the development of the MOR family of leadership programs.   During […]

Who me?  Never! Most of us would disavow being a micromanager.  Yet, I’m sure that most of us (dare I say, all of us?) have micromanaged to some extent at some points in our lives.  I know that I have.  And, most of us at some point have had a micromanager as our manager.  David Allen, […]

Last week, during the closing session’s CIO Panel at one of the MOR Leaders Programs, every CIO on the panel commented on the importance of trust.  Earlier in the session in a similar vein, I had noted that followers want leaders who are credible, trustworthy, leaders who do what they say they will do.  Max […]

… Hunting, Fishing, Trawling Every organization has hidden leaders.  They’re everywhere.  They consistently step up to deal with client problems, with intractable issues, with extra effort to meet an unusual request from a key client, etc.  We often don’t think of such individuals as leaders, after all they don’t have a positional title that would […]

Ingredients:  A challenging topic, participants, rules and processes for conducting the conversation, (if the number of participants is large), and a “container.” Today, we live in an age where the “art” and “practice” of having a conversation, a discourse, on a challenging, perhaps very complicated and controversial, subject has become dim.  We don’t take the time for face-to-face interactions on either […]