Parent Category for Leadership Learning Moments
By Michael Holland - Bobby Jones was a very honest man. Extremely honest. Tons and tons of integrity. He didn’t have to tell people he was honest or that he had integrity. Because he behaved in ways that revealed his integrity. Long story short, Bobby Jones was playing in a critical golf tournament. [...]
by Michael Holland - In 1994 I made a classic management mistake. It involved a very stressful job, a struggling team, and two bags of marshmallows. The short version of the story is that a consistently tardy team member to critical team meetings received a barrage of marshmallows when he arrived late, yet [...]
By Michael Holland - When a leader delegates they can picture very clearly what it is they want done. So they believe that they are communicating clearly to their employee. But there’s a villain of natural psychology that limits our capability to communicate clearly and that villain is the curse of knowledge*. The [...]
By Michael Holland - "Yes, and. . . ." Our youngest son took to stage performance like a fish to water. His journey into theatre brought us to new realms of learning in many ways. Interestingly when he was chatting me up regarding an improv class he took while in college, I learned [...]
by Michael Holland - A toddler is amazed by the sound of their voice echoing off the walls of a large, empty room. I’m amazed by the echo heard down a valley from a high cliff. The sound reverberates, seeming to go on forever. The leadership voice of a good leader is heard [...]
by Michael Holland - This morning, I brewed a fresh cup of coffee on our Keurig brewer, as I have done many times before. As I watched the coffee trickle into my cup, I began to think about the many different flavors of coffee that are available. In many offices today, you have [...]
By Michael Holland - I was tired. It was late in the afternoon. The sound and feel of my car running over the rumble strips on the side of the road jerked me completely awake and focused. I immediately guided my car back into the lane. My reaction could've been a casual drift back [...]
By Michael Holland - Every day, there they are, these 3-minute slices of time. Some days there might be four of them, the next there could be seven. These tiny slices of time come about when walking down a hallway, waiting for a video meeting to start, during a break in a long [...]
By Michael Holland - During a summer evening on the Magothy River, one of the large rivers feeding the famous Chesapeake Bay, I witnessed a beautiful sailing race: 40 or 50 sailboats tacked back and forth along the river, each one maneuvering to catch the wind perfectly and take advantage of a competitor. [...]
By Michael Holland - A few years ago, I got caught up in trying to get in better shape to lose weight. I focused my energy on the goal of losing weight which, unfortunately, was the wrong problem to solve. To be successful, I needed to look at habits that could enable me [...]
