Tuesday Reading

In a recent coaching session, my client began by saying “I feel like I’m an impostor.”  What that means is that the individual felt that any successes experienced – admission to a prestigious school, a special job, a promotion, recognition, good fortune of any kind, etc. – was a mistake.  Any evidence of success is […]

Two weeks ago, the Tuesday Reading focused on Mindset – a habit of thinking that determines how we interpret and respond to situations.  There we introduced the concept of “fixed” and “growth” mindsets and how a child’s mindset impacts her or his approach to learning.  (Carol Dweck’s RSI ANNIMATE presentation on the subject is listed in the […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, Setting Priorities, is an essay by Gretchen Kopmanis, Office Manager and Mac Team Lead in a regional group of IT for the College of Literature, Science, and Arts at the University of Michigan.  Gretchen is a member of the current University of Michigan MOR Leaders Program cohort.  Her essay first appeared as […]

mindset  ––  a habit or way of thinking that determines how you will interpret and respond to situations. Carol Dweck, the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, has focused her research on motivation, personality, and development for over three decades and is best known for her research on intelligence and how […]

In a recent Linkage Blog post – “Got 20 Minutes?  Try the 6-question approach to coaching” – Sarah Briegle points to a Marshall Goldsmith video clip where Goldsmith describes a six-question coaching approach that a leader can use with each of a his or her direct reports.  (Linkage is an international leadership development consultancy, Sarah […]

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 […]

…face-to-face.  Amy Cuddy, Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and author of Presence:  Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges, recently wrote that there are lots of reasons to put your smartphones down – constantly checking and then responding to them takes us out of the present moment disrupting whatever you are focusing on:  for […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, I Met A Leader Today, is an essay by Mary Fuller, originally written as a reflection early in the University of Nebraska on-campus leaders program.  Mary is a member of the Data Warehouse Team of the University of Nebraska Computing Services Network.   I left our first 2-day session of the MOR Leaders […]

What did I do and learn?   What do I plan to do? A few days ago, we turned over the last page of our 2015 calendars to find the first day of 2016.  And, for many of us, soon after our New Year’s celebrations were over, we began to think about our resolutions for 2016.  […]

In previous Tuesday Readings we have focused on the importance of planning, on being intentional about how we use our time, and on the importance of regularly moving items from our one To Do list to our calendar. As good as a deliberate planning practice is, it can often leave us frustrated at the end of the day […]

In a recent essay, “Beyond Bias,” which is today’s Tuesday Reading, Heidi Grant Halvorson and David Rock wrote:   “Biases are nonconscious drivers – cognitive quirks – that influence how people see the world.  They appear to be universal in most of humanity, perhaps hardwired into the brain as part of our genetic or cultural heritage, […]

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

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 […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, I Sit Too Much, should actually be titled “I Sit Too Much and So Do You.” Researchers agree that we all sit far too much, about 10 hours per day – hours at the desk, focused on the computer screen, reading and writing emails, working on reports, eating lunch, in meetings, in […]

Who hasn’t had one?  No milk for the cereal.  A tanker truck cut you off as you were driving to work.  Joe wasn’t prepared for the meeting.  Sam’s presentation wasn’t aligned to the audience.  Stuff happens, and it usually leads to a foul mood. And, as I’ve been told many times, you have to learn […]

I’ve attempted to maintain and effectively use a To Do list for much of my professional life.  At the moment, I have an application (Things) on my laptop, my iPhone, and my iPad that keeps the list synchronized.  This is really helpful, and would be even more helpful if I was good at keeping the […]

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 […]

Our Tuesday Reading today is drawn from Robert Steven Kaplan’s new book, What You Really Need to Lead.  Kaplan was recently named President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.  Previously he was the Martin Marshall Professor of Management Practice and a Senior Associate Dean at the Harvard Business School. In a review of […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading, The Five Leadership Lessons of Frank Underwood, is an essay written by Dustin Atkins last June.  Dustin is the Director of IT, Sponsored Research & Strategic Communications at Clemson University and is an alumnus of the MOR Leaders Program. In the spirit of bringing you all to South Carolina, I thought I […]

Adam Grant, in a recent blog post, 5 Myths About Introverts and Extroverts, debunks five strongly held beliefs about introverts.  Grant has been recognized as Wharton’s top-rated teacher for four straight years, as one of the world’s top 40 business professors under 40, and as one of HR’s most influential international thinkers.  He is the author […]