Team

. . .  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 […]