Dorrier Underwood

My grandson, Phillip, 16, and I just returned from a vacation in California.    He was the last of the grandchildren to go on “a Nana trip,” and we planned the trip with the redwoods in mind. I was happy he hadn't aged out of spending time with his grandmother.   Around Christmas last year, I wondered to Phillip and his brother Alexander if I would ever become a boring grandmother, if at some point their friends and girls would be more interesting so they wouldn’t want to visit.  “No way,” they said. “We will bring our friends and girls, and oh Nana, you will never be boring.”   So okay, not boring.  Sometimes hard of hearing and not getting the joke, but not boring. And they are happy to repeat themselves and explain the jokes. On the trip to California, Phillip and I saw the redwoods, lots of them. Phillip had his daddy’s drone with him, which he had stayed up late to fix before our early morning flight.  He filmed from the bottom to...

Making transformation last or letting it go and then starting over An opening for love was present in Congress after the shooting at the baseball field where Republican Congress people and staff were practicing for their game against the Democrats.   At the Capitol and at the White House, there was a somber mood, preceded by shock, then condolences and love and a commitment to harmony and affinity in the midst of disagreement about policy. Compromise and coming to decisions for our country--that's the job of leadership. At first I was thinking I could write about making transformation last, but  it   doesn’t,   just like everything else: objects, political parties in the majority, good moods, bad moods, marital bliss. Transformation exists over time by our continuing to create it.   We create it in conversations for a new human being, a new relationship, making new vows and promises. We create it and recreate it.   We apologize for where we...

Doug came out in the hall from the lunch buffet at the fancy hotel where we were leading a program and said, “I have to tell you something.”  He had tears in his eyes.  He had been tearing up already while leading this program for “Acme Manufacturing” executives.  Before we met the participants, we thought they were big-dogs, but then we found out they were people. We always tear up when we start loving people, finding they are no longer strangers. “I need to tell you something. I want you to know that I have never been so taken care of:  lozenges, water, your getting the flip charts up on the wall, managing the hotel personnel. Susie wants to come talk theory on the breaks and instead of talking, you’re listening to what I need, leading from the back. I am so moved. I don’t have to be the only one watching out for my well-being.  You have my back.  I want all of our consultants to have this kind of support from the back of the room. I want ...

Spend time with anyone from Dorrier Underwood and you're sure to hear the word integrity come up quickly. We believe integrity is  central  to empowered, inspiring leadership and are constantly on the lookout for where it might be missing, whether individually or collectively, so we can true ourselves up. Dorrier Underwood president Doug McVadon recently had the opportunity to talk about it on The Sage Advice podcast with Ed Kless. Listen in for an inspiring 10-minute conversation about the link between integrity and success:

As I took the trash out this morning in the dawn mist, I noticed it starting to rain. My first thought, “Great, it’s raining, well isn’t this the perfect way to start the Trump era.” But then I thought, “Hmm, isn't that interesting how I have an automatic view of a rainy day just like I have an automatic view of a Trump presidency.” First that rainy days are bad, even though without them my grass dies and there is no food to eat. And my first thoughts about a Trump presidency are not that optimistic either. He wasn't my choice. And yet, the role of a leader, if I want to be a leader, is not to go with whatever my automatic view is, just grousing and complaining about how things “are”, like a critic talking about a movie that he did not like. Rather, the role of a leader is to be the director of what happens, to start to think about how I can direct the conversations I have with others to have something emerge in the conversations. Something to which I am com...

Allison Perkins, Executive Director of Reynolda House Museum of American Art Dorrier Underwood clients represent a wide range of industries: education, manufacturing, the arts, and more. But one non-negotiable they have in common is the drive to create an extraordinary future .  It's a vision bigger than anything they've ever thought of before and is one around which the leaders can rally. It pulls them forward, causing them to take unprecedented action and, perhaps most importantly, create outcomes together beyond what they ever could have dreamed of individually. Curious about what those results look like in real life, for a real organization?  Take a moment to read  this recent Winston Salem Journal article on Allison Perkins, Executive Director of Reynolda House Museum of American Art in Winston-Salem, NC: http://bit.ly/2bUoiIx   We're proud to be partners with Allison and her team on their strategic journey toward the future. Congratula...

Elbows off the table, don’t talk with food in your mouth, don’t spit on the floor. Level one, but then level 20 might be, don’t stand up to leave until everyone has eaten, don’t interrupt others, don’t say “every time” and “never,” don’t always defend yourself when you are given feedback. As a parent, I try to teach my kids manners, as I was taught by my parents, and I always saw this through a moral lens, like “You ought to do this, because it is right.” More and more now as a parent I see it differently, that manners are not just “it is right” but they make it easier for me to produce what I am out to produce. Kids mostly don’t produce anything on a vacation. My wife and I pack, I drive, we make sure they get three meals, somewhere to sleep, somewhere to go to the restroom. Mostly their job is to do nothing. But if they employ their best manners, it makes our jobs easier: I don’t have to attend to their fighting with each other, with their whining about what they don’t ...

Most people think that a leader is the one with a particular title or someone who has at least been anointed by a person with a title.  That may not be true. This is the biggest dilemma I have always faced in my work life, how to TAKE leadership from the one who HAS leadership because of their position or circumstance, and I hear it from others in the companies with which we work. This week one of my clients brought up the leadership question. He wanted to talk about what he has been seeing about his team, and then himself. We have been talking about what his team needs to really be a team. And they aren’t a team so much as a group of individuals who get together with concerns of their own, that they need to have and the organization needs them to have.   And the ones who lead do so only when the issue is in their area. They easily take leadership when they have the most knowledge, not because leadership is needed and wanted. My client told me about his own leadership ...

"I think I finally got it, McVadon," he said on his typical early morning call to me during what he calls "windshield time." What's that? "Getting it to come out of THEIR mouths, by shutting mine for long enough!" It had been a long time coming, this moving of Adam's understanding of the concept, which came quickly, into being able to produce the phenomenon in reality. It had sounded simple enough, something like "shut up for longer, don't overwhelm them with your facts and spreadsheets and irrefutable logic, and listen and ask strategic questions based on what you hear." But nothing was simple in the six-person partner group of the newly-merged accounting firm. Each person was easily threatened and vying to show their value, so their strengths frequently showed up in the extreme, and became their weaknesses. In Adam's case, his ability to synthesize a lot of material into a cogent argument supporting a clearly stated propo...

Hi Jane, I w anted to share this with you and thank you for the ability to inspire others. YOU are the one who made this possible for me and I will be forever be grateful.  Don Such was the note that arrived from Don Holzworth, Executive in Residence at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, earlier this week, sharing a message from a young woman who is committed to living a life that matters. Dear Don, I trust you are well and surviving the very cold winter you are having in NC. Perhaps you recall that we met about a month ago when you presented to my UNC DrPH cohort (9) on leadership. We spoke briefly after your dynamic session that left us all spinning (in a good way!), and then again at your home for the DrPH gathering. First of all, thank you for your investment of time that week to deliver what I felt to be timely wisdom. I was most intrigued by your focus on imagination and how to best cultivate this amid an often chaotic and demanding environmen...

The rule of Alexander the Great, at his death, extended over more than two million square miles. Not all of those lands had been conquered. Apparently, when some little countries saw him coming, they just gave up and asked him to dinner. Setting aside his military prowess, one can see Alexander as a master of Mergers and Acquisitions. It’s the part that comes after each “takeover” that points to his genius at holding on to what he had won, whether in battle or by concession. He didn’t need to leave more than a small administrative contingent in one conquered land before moving on to the next. Once conquered, they stayed conquered, until his death at 32. Dave Logan, one of the authors of Tribal Leadership, credits much of Alexander’s success to his tutelage in rhetoric under Aristotle. This is not the corrupted view of rhetoric as some flowery manipulation. Rhetoric for Aristotle encompassed ethos in language (wisdom, virtue and good will) as well as pathos. Alexander went into cou...

Everyone else followed the same protocol: stand behind the lectern; look at your notes below the mike. But she didn’t stay safe behind the big block of wood on the stage. Even as the applause continued for her famous name, she started messing with the microphone, taking it off the stand and unwrapping the cord from around it. Then she stepped out in front of the lectern, in her professional-looking black patterned dress just above the knee, put her hand on her hip, and unleashed that Kennedy magic. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend definitely has the family poise, charisma, humor and intelligence, not to mention the ability to play a crowd like a musical instrument. I found myself wondering what it would take for politics to become thought of as an honorable profession again in America – FDR, Adlai Stevenson, George McGovern, Howard Baker, Sam Ervin, Sam Nunn, Leon Panetta – we admired their character beyond their political positions. And then I looked at the crinkles around her eyes and...