Leadership: Caesar or Machiavelli?

There comes a time in your career when you must decide what sort of role you will occupy in your company or agency. Will you be worker bee, one who focuses on the tasks at hand and keeps the wheels turning? Will you be a bean counter, making sure all the I’s are dotted andRead… Read more »

YGL – Take Control of Your Financial Future

GovLoop will continue to feature the weekly blog from Young Government Leaders. Here’s another great post from Young Government Leaders courtesy of President Kate Walker. Check out the original post and attend their upcoming event. —————————– Numerous studies have found a majority of Americans are not prepared for retirement and face the prospect of havingRead… Read more »

Rule #2: “Honesty is measured by telling the boss what he/she needs to hear not by whether you keep your hand out of the cookie jar”

Rule #2: “Honesty is measured by telling the boss what he/she needs to hear not by whether you keep your hand out of the cookie jar” The vast majority of employees in the workplace can be trusted to deal honestly with money and materials (yes I know everyone has the experience of someone constantly violatingRead… Read more »

A Greener Government

newsletter_ july08.pdf Forest Service Chief Gail Kimbell has mandated that the agency green up its operations. It’s now part of our official mission to make our operations more sustainable — by reducing our carbon footprint, by reducing our waste stream, and by managing the forests to help mitigate climate change. It’s so refreshing to seeRead… Read more »

YGL – Taking Control of Your Federal Career

Starting today, Young Government Leaders will cross-post their weekly blog on GovLoop. This is a great series written by the executive board of YGL with topics ranging from mentoring, leadership, to managing life outside the office. Please check out the original blog at the YGL website We will begin by posting a few of myRead… Read more »

Rule #1: The test of ethical behavior is always “would your mother approve?”

Back in the 1980”s (you remember the 80’s-the “me generation”, big hair, bad rock and roll), institutions began to develop courses on ethical behavior in response to a perceived lack of ethical behavior in the workplace (venerable Harvard Law School placed an ethics course in their curriculum which generated more then a modest amount ofRead… Read more »

Life Outside the Beltway

Looking at the residence listings of GovLoop members made me feel a bit of an outsider; so many are from what I would consider the “DC Area.” It made me wonder how valuable GovLoop would be for me, as a Washington Outsider. But then I got to thinking: what, if any, are the real differences?Read… Read more »

Wisdom From a Retired Fed: A Practical Guide to Management

Management is (to paraphrase Casey Stengal) :”75% art and the other half is science” . To individuals entering the profession, managing can appear to be an endless minefield with potential disasters lurking at each step. Yet veteran managers often appear to subordinates as magicians able to generate optimum performance effortlessly. Over the next several weeksRead… Read more »

Attributes of a leader Through Ownership and not Personal Possession

Whenever we mention ownership we reluctantly scrutinize who actually owns, be it a car, house, organisation, political party or even the country. We tend to limit ourselves to personal possession. Ownership covers a great ideal of setups. It goes beyond an individual; it stretches to family, community, society, district, province, country and the entire globe.Read… Read more »