Ron's Reflections

Category: Uncategorized

  • Reflecting on Leadership Philosophy and my Learning Journey

    In the last year I have had a number of experiences where I have been asked to share how I lead, my leadership style, or my leadership philosophy. I have always struggled to put a label on my approach; I am not sure I have a particular leadership philosophy or…

  • Art of Asking Smarter Questions

    As a leader, one of the practices I try to follow is using questions to create a safe environment that encourages the sharing of ideas, candid feedback, shared learning, creative thinking, and innovation.  Can’t say I am world class at practicing the art, but it is something I reflect on regularly……

  • HBR Article – Why the most productive people don’t always make the best leaders.

    This Article from HBR identifies critical competencies new leaders require to be successful when jumping from individual contributor to leader. It is also a good guide for existing leaders who are developing high potentials for their first formal leadership role as well as a reminder of the basic skills for…

  • “But” and “However” are Candid Debate Buzzkillers

    I think we can all agree that respectful yet candid debate is critical for high quality decision making as well as in creating robust strategy and plans. As leaders and participants in these discussions we can quickly shut down debate around a topic by using a couple simple phrases when responding…

  • Are Best Practices Best Fit?

    My reflection for the day:  Blindly following best practices without applying critical thinking can result in practices being proposed, developed, and deployed that do not address the true “problem to solve” in the current environment.   When we rely on best practice are we simply looking for the easy button?  Are we avoiding…

  • Ask for Advice AND Be Prepared to Receive It

    (image courtesy DALL-E) Most of the time when we ask for feedback, what we are really looking for is ADVICE on what we could do better. As such, we should specifically ask for forward looking ADVICE, not backward facing FEEDBACK….So, Stop Asking for Feedback (article from HBR) Why is feedback…

  • Thought of the Day – 1/14/24

    It has been an enlightening week this week with a number of conversations and opportunities to reflect.  A couple of items that have been shared with me this week during spontaneous conversations walking between meetings (another topic for another day – value of spontaneity and serendipity enabled by being “in-person”)…