Girl's Best Friend Foundation (GBF) closed November 2007. 
GBF’s records are archived with Special Collections of the University
of Illinois, Chicago.  In fall 2008, they will be made public: www.uic.edu/depts/lib/specialcoll.

The Leadership & Innovation Group Reading List

by Kristin R. Lindsey, Intersector Consulting

Leading People

Great groups – or how to you take a crew of smart, individualistic, eccentric strong minds and help guide and leadership that helps the sum to be way greater than the parts. This is the topic of Warren Bennis’ great insights and 10 principles in his article “The Secrets of Great Groups”.

Oh, if only putting the information, vision, strategy, direction out into the world made it so. What happens between “I say” and “They do”? Marshall Goldsmith’s article “Don’t Just Check the Box” describes what leaders need to think about beyond setting direction and the price of not following up.

Get Out of My Face! Hardly a title you’d expect for a leadership article, but this Marshall Goldsmith article talks about letting go of the work, making sure your staff doesn’t depend on you too much or for the wrong things and when too much access is a bad idea.

Can a vacation also be a chance to test the boundaries of your authority, invite staff to stretch their skills, learn what you really think about how things are going (and yet, still have a good time away?) “Short Term Absences as Learning Opportunities or…Put that vacation to work for you!” is a great short piece by Center for Applied Research.

10 guidelines for Effectively Influencing Up – your board and other bosses….

What’s does an empowering leader do? They discover the way. Encourage the way. Enable the way. Light the way. Smooth the way. This excellent article talks about all of the ways leaders serve as conduits, facilitators and often, the heart and moral compass of the organization. This ‘must-read’ article, "The Empowering Leader: Unrealized Opportunities" by Ann Howard, defines leaders for this collaborative era.

Equity, achievement, camaraderie – the 3 keys to what everyone needs to get out of work. I don’t believe that anyone can “motivate” anyone else, and I hate the “my” staff/employee phrase, but David Sirota, Louis A. Mischkind, and Michael Irwin Meltzer’s Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation offers great practical insight. (Alice Cottingham)

Are there situations when it’s best to tell someone what to do? To let them figure it out? To figure it out together? How do I know what approach to use when? Lucky for us, Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey gave this question some thought and came up with a useful framework called Situational Leadership, summarized at this web site.

What are you reading??  Share innovation and leadership focused books, articles, reports, websites, etc. with us!!