Leadership Dance, Leadership Yoga
Both the Leadership Dance and Leadership Yoga workshops came about in the same way. I was teaching undergraduate courses in leadership at Trinity University and taking ballroom dance lessons or yoga teacher training. (Not at the same time – yoga teacher training came first). But in both situations, I began to see new ways to…
Read MoreBureaucracy ‘R’ Us
Would you be surprised to learn that I haven’t been able to find a single positive quote on the topic of bureaucracy? Probably not. Franz Kafka’s “Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy” may be my favorite. And I certainly have done my share of railing about red tape,…
Read MoreCreating Community
Last week I wrote that creating community is leadership work. This week, I’d like to share some of my experiences as a leader working to create community in organizations. Colleges and universities are complicated places with multiple systems of governance. Divisions have completely different values and reward systems. There are departments with widely varied purposes and…
Read MoreLeading for Community
October is a month of community for me. Two reunions, two very different groups of people, both important to me. Res Life First up was the annual gathering of the group known on Facebook as Walker Tower 9th Floor 1975. One of the unusual elements of this group is its homogeneity. 95% of us are…
Read MoreCuriosity is a Leadership Skill
“How did you get where you are?” It’s a question I have often heard over the course of my career – especially once I became a vice president. There are many ways to answer such a question and a helpful answer depends on what the questioner really wants to explore. Some questions are about credentials.…
Read MoreListening to Learn
“The servant leader seeks to identify the will of a group and helps to clarify that will. He or she listens receptively to what is being said and unsaid. Listening also encompasses hearing one’s own inner voice. Listening, coupled with periods of reflection, is essential to the growth and well-being of the servant leader.” Larry…
Read MoreThe Gifts of Fall
My first fall on campus Based on everything I know now, I can safely say I did everything wrong during my first semester of college. Well, I didn’t go home every weekend since home was 500 miles away. However, since both of my grandmothers lived within an hour’s drive, I did leave campus more than…
Read MoreLeading with Heart
Walter Urban hired me to work at McMurry College (now University). It was my first job right out of law school. Walter was the Dean of Students and I was Associate Dean of Students. It was a great title, and first job and Walter was a wonderful supervisor and teacher. Walter wasn’t a career Student Affairs…
Read MoreImagination as a Leadership Skill
Photo by Thomas Schweighofer on Unsplash My graduate program required us to take nine hours outside of our department. I chose to take a course in the MBA program called “Leadership, Literature, and the Individual.” Professor Floyd Brandt’s syllabus described the course this way: “The course begins with the postulate that novels and plays are…
Read MoreWhat is creativity?
There are so many ways to answer this question, I’ve struggled to even start writing this blog post. Spiritual, neurological, psychological, intellectual, artistic – there are definitions of creativity that are specific to each of these realms. And, as you would expect, some of them contradict each other. There are myths and belief systems built…
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