E. A. Morris - Fellowship for Emerging Leaders

On Tuesday, May 6 Morris Fellow Jeff Katz will be the Republican commentator for coverage of the NC primaries on News 14. Jeff also recently appeared on MSNBC and Fox News to discuss the NC primaries.

Dion Terry, 2007 Morris Fellow, has recently been accepted to NCSU to begin coursework in the Doctor of Education in Higher Education Administration program. Dion is particulary interested in studying student retention, organizational development, and leadership in higher education. She begins classes this summer. Congratulations and best of luck, Dion.

Karen Palasek, Director of the E.A. Morris Fellowship Program, writes about leadership in Hood’s Daily Journal. She highlights the top five best points taught in our Fellowship sessions.

Here’s the general information. Go to http://www.ncrtl.org/gala.htm for more details.

- Joey

You are cordially invited to attend the

North Carolina Right to Life

35^th Anniversary Banquet

Featuring Wanda Franz, Ph. D.

(President of National Right to Life)

and

Honoring Senator Elizabeth Dole

on Saturday, April 26, 2008

6:30 Dinner

Embassy Suites

I-40 and HWY 68 (airport exit)

Greensboro, NC

The first retreat of the E.A. Morris Fellowship year was held from March 7-9, 2008 in Pinehurst, NC. See photos from the retreat below.

John Walker, Joey Stansbury, Traci Brown, and Nathan Snow use their ’strengths’ in a group exercise.

Laurie Onorio and Joey Stansbury discuss their past leadership experience.

Kim Cotten, Tom Murry, and Gideon Moore tackle a community issue in a group exercise.

Jeff Katz and John Walker describe their leadership history.

Morris Fellows and JLF staff listen to John Hood’s presentation on leadership.

Gideon Moore and Jenny Eues in Pinehurst.

Morris Fellows participate in a team effort to make a difference in their community.

Today’s N & O features an op-ed written by 2007 Morris Fellow Dallas Woodhouse. He addresses an issue supported by Democratic gubernatorial candidates Richard Moore and Beverly Perdue. Both candidates support plans that would create funds to finance elections for governor at the expense of the taxpayers.

“Just like taxpayer-funded judicial elections, the money for a gubernatorial election endowment would in fact, eventually come from the taxpayer. You can bet the rules would make it difficult for serious candidates to decline to participate. The likelihood is that taxpayers would be forced to provide “welfare for politicians” who choose to run for governor.”

Read more of the article here.

For some reason I was not allowed to respond directly to Karen’s post.  It may be one of those “slow on the uptake” moments for me again.  So, although this is a new post, it is actually a response to Karen’s. 

I had a great weekend in Pinehurst.  I certainly enjoyed getting to know everyone a little better.  The portion on “managers vs. leaders” was particularly useful to me.  It has been on my mind this week while I’ve been at work.  I’ve been looking at the way my office is run and trying to figure out where people’s strengths are and where they are not.  I also really enjoyed the interviews that we had for both days (thanks to Kim and Jeff). 

I found the group exercise to be a little challenging.  I’m not particulary good at conceptualzing things like that.  I got a little frustrated because I did not feel like I was being effective in the group scenerio.  I had a great group (Traci, Joey and Nathan) but I had a hard time contributing.  That may be in part because my signature themes would not come into play until implementation of the program.  My Communication, Competition and Woo (all you woo-ers feel me on this) themes are often not helpful during the design stages of a project.  However, one thing about the group discussion that I found to be helpful was watching the other members of my group use their signature themes well.  That was proof to me that the information we studied was not a bunch of garbage.

I also discovered that although we all seem to share some common ground of thought, we all certainly have our differences.  That is a good thing in my opinion.  It has forced me already to think in different ways and process information a little differently.

I’m not sure what the discussion about the interviews is all about.  Now I’m trying to figure out if I had the easier or harder set of interview questions…haha. 

Thanks again to Karen, Jana and John for all the hard work that went into the weekend.  It is greatly appreciated!  Sound off group…

-John

Thanks to all for your participation and enthusiasm during this past weekend’s E.A. Morris Fellowship retreat in Pinehurst. Obviously, the surroundings were beautiful and the accommodations were comfortable, once everyone got settled in.

I am interested in your thoughts on the StrengthsFinder results that you received, and how well you thought your fellow Fellows’ strengths seemed to match up. If you found some aspect of the presentations noteworthy, please share your thoughts. This can be an extension of the Sat. evening discussion, or a new thread entirely.

Also, Jana did relay your comments on the interview process. You should normally assume that everything we do is carefully planned and calculated to the very last, but lo, not really so, here. Aside from guideline questions that are pretty much identical for each pair of interviewers, I think we assumed about the same interview experience on either side of the wall. Now that we know differently, I would be happy to even things up by running everyone through the gauntlet again. We’ll just switch around who gets the softballs vs. who gets the bats. (That was for you ’sports’ people) Not expecting volunteers on this one.

Finally—I did enjoy talking with all of you. I especially enjoyed the opportunity to meet for the paired conversations. My thanks to both conversation partners, Jonathan and Charlton. I’m hoping you all had similar experiences.

Hello to the other 2008 Fellows and Administrators of the Program,

 Hope everybody is doing well.  It was a pleasure to meet all of you and I’m looking forward to getting to know each of you through out the year.  I’ve already learned a lot just by being around you folks, and I imagine I’ll learn quite a bit more as the year goes on.

Has anyone had any success signing into the “strength finder” program? I haven’t been able to get into the site for the test for some reason.  Jana said that they couldn’t get into it either.  I was just wondering if anyone has had any success yet with it. 

Hope everyone has a good weekend, look forward to seeing everybody before too long.

 -John Walker