Leadership Program Reflection

It’s been a couple of weeks since we were all together in Bloomington and my how the time has flown by.  Having had some time to digest all that we shared and learned, I still have a sense of inspiration and motivation that I hope will continue to carry on into the coming months.  I […]

A couple of years ago I had my kitchen remodeled.  During the process, I, along with my young boys, reveled in the tools the contractors had at their disposal, and their skill in using them.  They had so many tools – some for general use (hammer) and others more specialized (router) – their truck looked like an […]

Stop Getting in Your Own Way My big takeaway from our first set of meetings has to be to “get on the balcony.”  Related to getting on the balcony, I recognized through our reading and activities that I need to delegate more, give work back, and say no more.  Once I condition myself to make […]

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 […]

When discussing leadership we tend to focus on good leadership practices. While this is important, I personally have learned a lot over the years by observing bad leadership practices which I then actively avoid. The recent MOR Tuesday Readings on asking questions made me remember one of these examples of bad leadership, which I call: […]

Hi everyone!   As I think about what to reflect on this past week, I keep coming back to thoughts of scuba diving as I took my regulator in to get serviced this past weekend. Scuba divers are, most often, over-prepared in the planning and execution of a dive.    Below is a little bit […]

I have come to enjoy and value the weekly reflections as well as Jim Bruce’s Tuesday readings.  A few weeks ago in the Tuesday reading, Be Still, I was struck by the truth and simplicity of what was written in that piece.  I thought to myself, why not use “being still” as the foundation for everything that […]

I thought this would get easier as time went on, but had been feeling the opposite.  When I got back from Session 1, I was jazzed.  Before my flight back to CT, I wrote my boss a genuine note of thanks for the opportunity to participate in the MOR program and told her about the […]

As I reflected on what has transpired over the past several weeks, I wanted to revisit the essay that I had prepared in hopes of being selected for this wonderful leadership opportunity.  Here is my original objective from that essay: “My ultimate objective is to improve the impact of my team on the customers they […]

One of the things that I have been working on since our session in February is using the three lenses – strategic, political, and cultural – to get a multidimensional perspective on changes and projects which I am leading at the School of Music, Theater, and Dance (SMTD).  As I think about perspective in this […]

I have read the pages in our binders on Neuroscience and Leadership many times in the last few months.  It comforts me to know why it’s so difficult to change my old habits.  On some level I realize that making changes to behaviors will cause a certain amount of pain or unpleasant feeling.  My instinct […]

A reflection shared by MOR Leaders alum, Jim Hall from UMN. Jim writes, “We only have so much time in a given week. How you divide your time is up to you. But where should you provide focus? Lead, manage, or do? The “lead-manage-do” concept helps us to understand the focus we need to put […]