MOR Insight

“Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.”

Most of us have experienced team members taking the discussion at a meeting off-track.  It could be to a topic not on the team leader’s agenda, either the written one or the one in only the lead’s head.  Or, it could be to an aspect of a topic on the agenda that has already been addressed, etc. The Tuesday Reading today, ”Dealing with Team Members Who Are ‘Off-Track’“ <

"Your life doesn’t get better by chance. It gets better by choice." 

                                              - Author Unknown

• Do you hold resentments from your past?
• Do you tend to blame others for positions that you find yourself in?
• How did you respond to those events?  What choices did you make?
• Try the mantra "If it is to be it is up to me" and choose your present and future!

It’s hard to be a good judge of people.  Because it’s hard we often, almost exclusively, depend on extrinsic markers academic scores, results in previous jobs, job titles, salary, etc.  We can also add extrinsic measures from social media – how many friends of Facebook, followers on Twitter, or who we know in common on LinkedIn.

From the desks of Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman comes an article sharing the importance of like-ability in a leader.  Zenger is CEO and Folkman is President at Zenger – Folkman, a consultancy focusing on strength based leadership development located in Orem, Utah.

Justin Rhodes, associate professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, tells us that excercise can be the answer.  The essay appeared in the Scientific American.

This essay first appeared in the Harvard Business Review blog and comes from the pens of Deborah Gruenfeld, Maghadam Family Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Lauren Zander is Founder of the Handel Group.

Colin Shaw,  CEO, Beyond Philosophy, a customer experience consultancy, shares insight on how to be sucessful. 

Shaw notes that in his work life he has had some “great managers and some real idiots” and that he could learn from both.  The good managers he copied and he did just the opposite of what the idiots did.

In his essay he provides six pieces of advice:

In “Forget The Mission Statement:  What’s Your Mission Question?”,  Warren Berger challenges us to consider responding to a set of mission questions instead of writing a mission statement that is so general it can apply to almost anything.  He argues that mission questions provide a reality check on whether you are staying true to what you stand for and aspire to achieve.