Breakout Session I:  This session paid for the NAMIC registration fee in my book.  The instructor has incorporated dance movement into identifying the various styles of leaders.  She also spends the bulk of her instruction targeting those folks in the trenches that are leading others around them.  You know those folks that have the bosses backside in dealing with the company's customers.  The instructor's work suggests that leaders are not necessarily those at the top of the organization chart.  And though they may warrant the title of leader their are many in middle management that are leading on a daily basis.  Getting the job done.  Trusting your employees is a two-way proposition.  They entrust you and buy-into your leading them but you as a leader need to trust them.  Leadership is a reciprocal proposition.  I'll share the four types of leaders tomorrow.  Left my materials in a colleague's guest room.

This morning's town hall meeting had an impressive speaker's list of cable veterans.  Insight's CEO really felt they hadn't addressed the issue of diversity in the workplace.  Sapan agreed, but acknowledged that the gender diversity was well covered and less of an effort to create in the Rainbow Media culture.  The President of Diversity, Inc. magazine was direct and provided great soundbites.  When you boil down the jargon the bottom line was, "follow the money".  A few other interesting points by the panelists included making diversity central to the company's mission, not a pet project by the current CEO.  As we all know, the lifespan of a CEO is about 5 years and you really don't want diversity to fall by the wayside based on an executive's departure.  Henry Schlieff is always good for bringing humor to any conversation.  His comments around utilizing the Court TV summer intern program as away to employ his relatives was priceless.  No worries, Jennifer Randolph of Court TV enlightened Henry to his ways and move to bring in a more diverse pool of interns.  The interactive remotes were a great way to engage the audience in the town hall discussion.  Surprised to learn that just under half of the audience indicated that they could not go to their boss on matters around diversity.