The sun is shining here in New York City where I’m attending HSM’s World Innovation Forum as a designated blogger.
As readers of my blog know, I focus on the importance of human connection among management, employees and customers. Connection stimulates innovation. And connection is omnipresent at this event.
HSM invited me to the World Innovation Forum next week at the Nokia theater in New York City where I will be joining a group of leading bloggers. In addition to yours truly (www.twitter.com/michaelstallard), Twitter accounts and blogs for the bloggers are as follows:
Rotman, the award-winning magazine of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, just published an interview I did with them on Connection Cultures, leadership and employee engagement. The Spring 2009 issue also features fascinating interviews with Warren Bennis, Prof. Renee Mauborgue of INSEAD and Prof. Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago. You can subscribe to Rotman magazine or purchase the download by clicking here. Following is the text of the interview.
This week I taught a half-day workshop on Connection Cultures, employee engagement, leadership and teams to the graduating seniors of the MBA for Executives program at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business. This is the second year I’ve taught at Darden. After speaking last year, I wrote about my first impression of Darden in a blog post entitled “The Connected Class.”
In my experience as a leader, a board member and an advisor to leaders, I’ve learned that all great leaders are “servant leaders,” a term first used by Robert Greenleaf in his influential essay “The Servant as Leader.” Recently, I hosted several webcasts on the leadership and employee engagement channel at Brighttalk.com that have a link to the servant leadership theme.
Howard Behar, the inspiring and wise former president of Starbucks International, spoke with me about his experiences as a leader and his outstanding book entitled It’s Not About the Coffee. I loved this book.
Here are two new articles I wrote that will appear shortly in publications in India and the US. As with all of the articles I write they relate to leadership and employee engagement. Email me at mstallard [at] epluribuspartners [dot] com if you have any comments or suggestions. Thanks – Michael
The Competitive Advantage of Pixar’s Environment
By Michael Lee Stallard
At the Technical Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood, the Associated Press reported that it wasn’t the host, actress Jessica Beil, who attracted the most attention.
Over the weekend I read Warren Buffett’s letter to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. I admire Buffett. I’ve met him, followed him closely over the years and I own Berkshire stock. I’ve also written about Buffett in The Economic Times and spoke about his leadership style in leadership training workshops I conduct and in this brief training video I recorded for Athenaonline.com (click on the link to see the video).
In his letter to shareholders, Buffett displays some of the attributes I’ve described as being part of his leadership style, namely he loves to praise and give credit to his managers while being humble (or critical) about his own performance. Here are just a few excerpts that provide more evidence that Buffett is as great a leader as he is an investor:
Recently, I hosted a series of webcasts that will help individuals who want to promote virtuous organizational cultures and/or who are interested in organizational storytelling. In the first webcast, Professor Kim Cameron of the University of Michigan talks about Positive Organizational Scholarship and case for virtuous organizational cultures. In a second, Rick Garlick of Maritz Research presents compelling research that virtuous organizational cultures have a economic advantage. In a third webcast, John Timmerman, Corporate VP of Operations at Ritz-Carlton, talks about the Ritz-Carlton’s culture and its practice called the “Daily Line Up” that promotes virtues. In the last webcast, organizational storytelling expert Steve Denning talks about how to tell stories that motivate change, including change in values. I hope you will check out some or all of these webcasts and share your ideas and opinions about how to promote the virtuous organizational cultures we need.
Today I taught about Connection Cultures and employee engagement to leaders at GE’s famed Crotonville Leadership Training Center. In the coming weeks I’ll be working with GE to add material from Fired Up or Burned Out to one of GE’s leadership courses. The Connection Culture will help GE attain its desire to be inclusive. And I’m fired up about helping this great organization become even better.
GE is a company I’ve always admired. Previously I’ve written about Jeff Immelt, GE’s CEO, and how he has made inclusiveness one of GE’s values. More recently, I wrote in a post entitled “Warren Buffett: More Than an Oracle,” that Buffett made a multibillion dollar investment in GE. Although the current economic conditions are challenging, like Buffett, I believe GE’s future is bright.
Last week I joined Marshall Goldsmith and others as one of Success Television’s experts on leadership and employee engagement. Former CNN executive Helen Whelan, Success Television’s founder and CEO, is developing an excellent platform to provide corporate training via online, dvds and videos. Success Television’s website is currently featuring an article I wrote about Truth, Beauty and Goodness in Leadership. You can learn more about it by clicking on Success Television.