Team

Today’s Tuesday Reading, Life and Leadership are Team Sports, is an essay by Connie Buechele, Director of Information Technology, University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management.  Connie is an alumnus of the MOR Leaders Program.  Her essay first appeared as a program reflection last year.   Some of you may have read this book, All […]

Being accountable is your ticket to earning the right to hold others accountable.     ––  Dan McCarthy In the course of our work, we develop strategies, we make plans, and assign or delegate the resulting tasks to teams (usually, through their team lead) or to individuals.  As we do this, we start the process […]

At the end of October, I returned to my alma mater, Earlham College, for homecoming festivities, Alumni Council meetings, and related events. What really struck me about the extended weekend was how the theme of “connections” was constantly evident. On Thursday evening, dozens of alumni met with students in a networking session. Alumni who attend consistently […]

I am constantly looking for new leadership lessons. When I am a student or trainee, I observe how the instructor structures the class, presents information, and keeps the room engaged. As a sports fan, I pay attention to how a coach organizes the team, creates energy toward a shared goal, and adapts to change. Over […]

My take on an application of a topic from our first session. The Unicorn Meeting Throughout my professional career I’ve always wondered when I would catch a glimpse of the elusive Unicorn Meeting (the one ran with reason, direction, poise and purpose that you can only hope to walk into). Perhaps I would be the […]

We all attend too many meetings.  Some are initiated by others and we attend to contribute.  And some are our meetings, designed to further our team’s work.  Some of them are productive and some are not.  And, everyone I’ve talked to yearns for fewer of them. This week’s Tuesday Reading is drawn from Amy Gallo’s essay […]

July 1, 2013 was the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.  In the course of that three-day battle, the armies of the North and South deployed some 180,000 troops on the field of battle and suffered some 51,000 casualties and the course of American history was forever changed. Much has been written about the […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, “If You Want People to Listen, Stop Talking,” comes from the pen of Peter Bregman and appeared in the Harvard Business Review blog on May 25, 2015.  Bergman is CEO of Bergman Partners, a company that strengthens leadership in people and organizations through programs, consulting, and coaching.  He is also author of […]

Over the past few weeks, a number of articles about performance reviews and performance management have made it to my inbox.  Some of these are listed as references below. Most universities, and most businesses for that matter, have annual employee rating systems that, through a process of evaluating the individual, assign to him or her […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, The Balance of Planning and Spontaneity – What We Can Learn From Bilbo Baggins’s Journey Through Mirkwood, comes from the pen of David Kaplan – writer, software developer, and all around thinker of wacky thoughts.  It was published on medium.com in their Life Hack: Your Story, Experience, etc. blog which shares the […]

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts…” William Shakespeare’s As You Like It – Act II, Scene VII I had the distinct pleasure recently (sarcasm alert) of leading my team through an ERP […]

In a recent Interact/Harris Poll of some 1000 U.S. workers, 91% of the respondents said communication issues prevent leaders from being as effective as they might be.  The most frequent issues noted in the survey were:  1  Not recognizing employee achievements2  Not giving clear directions3  Not having time to meet with employees4  Refusing to talk […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, G–I–V–E Feedback:  A Path to Improvement, is an essay by Mary Therese Durr, Director of Computing Support and Information Technology Service Management at Boston College an ad MOR Leaders Program alumnus.  Her essay provides an additional tool, beyond those in the Tuesday Readings of last June, for formulating and giving feedback. There […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, Be Nice!, is based on Christine Porath’s June 19, 2015, New York Times Sunday Review essay, No Time to Be Nice at Work.  Porath is an associate professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Her research over the past two decades makes it clear that incivility, rudeness and bad behavior have […]

Returning to work after our second session, I felt like I was coming back not just with new tools, but with new lenses and sharper vision.  But would that have an impact?  I think it has.  Here are three mini-reflections focused around new things that happened in my leadership because of lessons and tools I […]

For the past three weeks, the Tuesday Readings have focused on one or another facet of employee engagement.  Today, we shift the focus a bit and turn our attention to “Employee Morale.”  Our author is Vi Bergquist, CIO at St Cloud Technical & community college.  Vi’s essay was a recent weekly reflection in one of […]

The past two Tuesday Readings have focused on employee engagement, first, on February 10, 2015, focusing on what employee engagement is and then on February 17, turning to a set of five expectations that employees have of their supervisors.  The data shows that if these expectations are met, engagement will increase.  And, that’s a good thing.  […]

Last week’s Tuesday Reading, “Employee Engagement – What?” focused on what employee engagement is.   According to Kevin Kruse in Employee Engagement 2.0, “Employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals.  This emotional commitment means engaged employees actually care about their work and their company.  They don’t work just for a […]

The issue of employee engagement has surfaced in several ways over the past few weeks – what is it?, why is it important?, should I be concerned about my team’s engagement?, how would I improve it?, what could/should a team member do to increase his/her engagement?, etc.  This issue and these questions have led to […]

This week, at least in the United States, we celebrate Thanksgiving Day, traditionally a day of giving thanks for the harvest (that provides our food) and for the preceding year. History suggests that this celebration goes back in the United States at least to a 1621 feast in the Plymouth Colony celebrating a good harvest […]