“The important thing is not to stop questioning … Never lose a holy curiosity.”                                 – Albert Einstein

Today’s Tuesday Reading, “Don’t Get Gun Shy”, is an essay by Lizz Duke, Senior Systems Analyst and member of the ServiceLink Team at NYU.  The essay first appeared as a program reflection in November 2016.
 

Today’s Tuesday Reading is Nancy Koehn’s Whiteboard Session, The Ingredients of Great Leadership (a 4 minute video).  Professor Koehn, a historian, is the James E.

Civility and Respect?  You might be thinking, why a Tuesday Reading on this subject?
 

Always on the Stage

We say over and over again “Leaders are always on the stage.”  Why?  Because someone is always watching.  Someone is always taking the leader’s behavior to inform their impression of her or him and as an example of how to behave.  Good or bad, it’s OK.  We think, if it works for her or him, it’ll work for me;  if he or she can get away with it, so can I.
 

Last week's Tuesday Reading, 

There are informal leaders in every organization.  These are the people in the organization who, without formal title or authority, get things done, and done well, show others how to do them, and have a large network interconnecting many people in a variety of teams and organizations across the entire organization.  Often we do not even know who these people are nor recognize their importance in our organization’s success or understand the breadth of their networks.

What's the difference?

Someone asked the other day, “What do you think?” and I wondered, is this a time to coach or a time to mentor?  In our interactions everyday we may have the choice to adopt one approach over the other.  Yet we need to be able to make the distinction between coaching in contrast to mentoring.  When is coaching the better path;  when would mentoring be a better option?

Yesterday was the 240^th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress meeting at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  This document announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain, regarded themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states, no longer under British rule, and instead in a new nation, the United States of America.
 

… at this year’s commencement exercises

This year’s spring graduation season has come to an end.  About 4,700 degree granting public and private, two and four year institutions awarded some 2.8 million degrees at their commencement exercises.  And, every one of these gatherings had speakers that spoke of not giving into the darkness and despair of the day, of celebrating a major accomplishment, of being resilient, not fearing failure, listening, being generous, being ready, taking risks, focusing clearly, finding your own path, and a long list of