Tuesday Reading

If you are leading a change initiative, then you must be an influencer for that initiative to be successful.  Yet studies have shown that only one in five leaders are able to influence positive change in a way that it lasts.  What’s going on? Today’s reading is “The Influencers:  The Top Five Reasons Leaders Lack Influence”.  In this […]

Every time you begin a change endeavor, it’s quite natural to ask “am I prepared and ready?”  Is my team/organization prepared and ready?  Are the stakeholders ready? Answering these questions on an ad hoc basis is not easy.  Several weeks ago in my reading, I came across an instrument to assess transition readiness <http://www.wmbridges.com/articles/assessment_tools.html> on William Bridges’ website.  He […]

Today’s Reading is Preston Cline’s ”Leadership Lessons from Mt. Kilimanjaro“ which appeared in the November-December issue of the Wharton Leadership Digest <http://leadership.wharton.upenn.edu/digest/index.shtml> and is reproduced below by permission. The lesson here is simple and clear:  In life there will always be error, failure.  It is better to fix the error when it is first noticed and small, than […]

Todays reading, Jennifer Kahnweiler’s “Why Introverts Can Make The Best Leaders” comes from Forbes.com.  Kahnweiler is the author of “The Introverted Leader:  Building on Your Quiet Strength” and is president of AboutYOU, an Atlanta based leadership consultancy. Many leaders describe themselves as introverts and somewhere in their leadership journey they have addressed the issues of being disregarded or […]

Welcome to 2010!  I trust that each of you had a wonderful time with family and friends.  Just before Christmas Roger Schwartz published “Giving and Receiving Gifts in Conversation” in his Fundamental Change newsletter.  I found the article so thought provoking that I have published it here as this week’s reading  by permission. Two Decembers ago, I […]

One of my sons acquired a new Flip MinoHD digital camcorder just before Thanksgiving.  This gave all the family ample opportunity to appear in living color and HD.  And, as I watched myself later on the video, I realized that what others were seeing was not what I necessarily expected or, in many cases, wanted them to […]

For over two decades William Bridges has helped organizations and individuals deal more effectively with change.  Today’s Tuesday Reading is a short piece by Bridges – “Reorientation + Renewal = Revitalization” <http://tinyurl.com/yet24s4> (download) – which focuses on how to revitalize a team after it goes through a difficult time of change. Bridges focuses on teams which […]

Having heard a number of people talk about “leading-up, I decided to do a Google search on the words.   This led to far more references than I had time to explore.  However, I found one — “Leading Up”  The Art of Managing Your Boss” a review of Michael Useem’s 2001 book, “Leading Up:  How To […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is the Conversation Starter by Larry Senn “Lead from the Top of the Mood Elevator” from Harvard Business Publishing.  Senn is the founder of Senn Delaney and an authority and practitioner in the field of culture shaping. The key point of this piece is rather straight forward:  Almost everyone experiences mood changes throughout […]

Nancy Lublin, CEO of Do Something, is the author of this week’s Tuesday Reading, “How to Write a Mission Statement That Isn’t Dumb”.  Her article appears in the December 1, 2009 issue of FastCompany. Lublin argues that our mission statements don’t have to be dumb, that is, neither clear nor useful.  They should, she continues, “convey clearly […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is a piece which I reproduce below “Using Curiosity to Create Accountability with Powerful People” by Roger Schwarz of the Skilled Facilitator. In his piece, Schwarz notes that when people are accountable to you, you [should] expect then to explain the key decisions and actions they have taken.  Yet, when we are talking […]

Today’s reading “Lessons from Your Leadership Journey” is a recent entry in Brian McDonald’s blog at the ITLP Leadership Development Community Practice website <http://bit.ly/L7Om>.   Early in every Leadership Program cycle, everyone has an opportunity to reflect on their past experiences as a leader and identify lessons they learned from these experiences.  In doing this, some people […]

Over the past several years, I’ve seen a number of articles about personal branding.  My favorite is a piece Tom Peters wrote some two years ago – “The Brand Called You” – that appeared in FastCompany on December 18, 2007.  Peters’ piece is this week’s Tuesday Reading. Peters begins by noting that today almost everything is branded, including […]

Today, we turn to Business Week’s September 18, 2009 Leadership column for the piece “How Authentic Leaders ‘Walk the Walk’”. In the article, Alan Deutschman, says that being an authentic leader means two things: 1.  You must share the struggle and the risks with your people. 2.  You must make sure that your actions consistently reinforce the […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading takes a look at Higher Ed 2.0.  Our reading is “Who Needs Harvard?” from the September 2009 issue of Fast Company.  The article’s subheading says it all:  “Free online courses, wiki universities, Facebook-style tutoring networks – American higher education is being transformed by a cadre of web-savvy edupunks.”   This piece makes the point that the […]

For today’s Tuesday Reading, we turn to a Harvard Business School Working Knowledge Q&A – “How Team Leaders Show Support – or Not”– with HBS faculty member Teresa Anabile. Though from 2004, the findings remain valid.  Professor Anabile’s research points to two key concepts for leaders who want to gain their staff’s confidence: 1.  Perceptions […]

This week’s Tuesday Reading is an entry –  “Humility as a Leadership Trait”– from John Baldoni’s Harvard Business Publishing blog. Baldoni asserts, and I agree, that leaders who want to inspire followers need to demonstrate both their accomplishments and their character.  Key to demonstrating character is being humble.  And, humility is essential to leadership because […]

This week’s Tuesday Reading is from BusinessWeek’s August 25, 2009 Communications Column:  “How to Give a Lousy Presentation”.  We all make a lot of presentations.  And, I know that you are like me and know that you are able to do better most of the time.  This piece gives you 15 excellent ways to make a lousy presentation.  It […]

Today’s Tuesday Reading is “The Success Trap”, from Jeffrey Pfeffer’s August 25th,  BNET Column, The Corner Officer on August 25, 2009. Pfeffer’s thesis is simple:  When we become successful, it is very easy to drop our guard, to not maintain our standards (much less build on them), and to rest on our laurals. He argues that to […]

The Tuesday Reading for today is Jeffrey Pfeffer’s piece, Stop Working for Technology – Make it Work for You which appeared in BNET’s The Corner Office on July 22, 2009.  Pfeffer is a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Pfeffer’s point in this piece is simple and straight-forward:  For some, maybe most, of us […]