Hey Everyday Leader,What Pervades Your Identity?

[I am going to write about Martin Luther King, Jr. next week.] My friend Berke’ Brown shared some psychological research that stuck with me. It showed how having multiple identities strengthens a person’s psychological resilience. So, for example, if one identities as an athlete, a lesbian and a humanitarian; and also identifies as a Detroiter, … Continued

Fuel and Nutrition for Leadership

Two weeks ago, Ashton wrote on values, reminding us to ground ourselves in what we hold most dear. Then, Dan spoke to the importance of allowing space to rest and recover, especially as many of us – including parents with children at home full time – continue to try to juggle more than we can … Continued

Leading Through Scary Season – Part 2 – Hit the Bullseye

Since I wrote last week, Scary Season has gotten even scarier, with the fires and horrific air quality in the Bay Area. Today, one impactful idea, based on one of Stephen Covey’s best lessons from his timeless classic 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  Covey’s first habit is “be proactive.” Within it, he illustrates it: … Continued

Are You Leading or Are You Led?

Last week, I wrote about how in-your-face Covid has been for all of us. Not equally, of course. Some of your families may be right now threatened by the disease itself. Yet it confronts us all. Last week,  I invited you to hear Anne Zehren our Thursday resilience speaker.  Anne has dealt for a decade … Continued

Leading with reverence for time

  Recently, I had the honor of interviewing a friend of mine, Niket Desai, for a leadership course at Berkeley. I invited him to speak on what can be a mundane topic – objectives and key results, or one common format of organizational goal setting – because of his particular focus within it: deep reverence … Continued

Do Black Voices Matter To You?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HnDONDvJVE”

I was old enough to experience the civil rights movement in the 60s and can’t help but wonder: What’s different? And: How important is the difference? One of the answers to the first question is that white people like me are increasingly willing to really listen to Black Voices, not interpreting everything, not telling Black movement … Continued

WearyResilient – BothAnd

  Wow, what a time we are in. Our upcoming Zoomcast series on Resilience could not come at a better moment.  “I feel tired,” a friend said. And: “No offense, professor,” a student of African descent said to her 40 Zoom-mates and me in class on Monday, “but I really don’t want to be here. … Continued

A Different Leadership Lens on the Presidential Election

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWn1CkIU_rc”

[If you are fed up with politics, I think you, especially, should read this, but I certainly understand if you don’t. For my part, I think we need to keep speaking and listening, and not falling into all the same divisive traps. If we are connected, you may have read an earlier version of this … Continued

Leaders Don’t Need Self-Esteem

One of the enormous joys of teaching at a university is that students appear with passion to learn, grow, and become. I can sense it in my classroom of 65 and in the mega-class that holds 700.  But I especially feel it during office hours or my weekly lunches with students. They are wisdom seekers, … Continued

Every Good Supervisor of Others . . .

Students come back to me or write to me: “Professor Mulhern (or usually, Dan), my manager clearly never took your class!” And they explain.  Many of these alums quit within 18, 12, even less than 6 months. Yes, they are “millennials,” but believe me, the supervisor tales they tell are unbelievably sad.  And the scary … Continued

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