FieldNotes
Our daily Field Notes email is just the kind of jumpstart you need. A fast read. Maybe less than a minute. Because sometimes it just takes one insight to change the trajectory of the day.
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What Is Your Favorite Emotion?
During an interview with the rapper 50 Cent, a journalist asked the hip hop performer why he was so prone to singing about violence. 50 Cent replied, “Because anger is my favorite emotion.” What an insightful, if somewhat disconcerting, response.
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Ignore Competitors When Setting Strategy
The job of strategy is to build the future. Everything else, including what competitors are doing, is a distraction.
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What Do You Value in Others?
There’s a subtle difference between what a leader values and what they value in others. When leaders emphasize what qualities are important in others, team members take notice. Whatever leaders value in others, team members produce more of it and value it as well. Most leaders, for example, naturally prize people who produce outcomes and
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Why People Overpromise
Conventional wisdom suggests a leadership weakness is often a strength carried too far. This idea is in line with the popular viewpoint that, “Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness.”
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Are Your Greatest Weaknesses Also Your Greatest Strengths?
Conventional wisdom suggests a leadership weakness is often a strength carried too far. This idea is in line with the popular viewpoint that, “Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness.”
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Open Communication Upward Relies on a Balance of Power
The more leaders fight off status, the more candid those below will become. Great leaders don’t clutch at power and status, they distribute it to others so that honesty can spread its wings.
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Extracting the Promise of Accountability
Leaders too often assume that in handing off work, team members understand that they are now accountable.
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Parallelism and Making Ideas Memorable
Once you understand their simple logic, parallelisms aren’t difficult to compose. We hope you will try a parallelism now and again, we hope they serve you well, but most of all, we hope they make an impact on your audience.
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Doing Your Homework About How the Business Works
Rosalind Brewer is one of two black women currently serving as CEO at a Fortune 500 company. When you know how a business truly works, the ability to lead one takes on a very different perspective. Brewer’s success reaffirms that the most powerful leadership vision is insight.
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We Like Leaders Who Amplify Our Strengths
As leaders build upon the signature capabilities of their team members, they soon learn the weaknesses gradually take care of themselves. Nothing has more improvement power than engaging preexisting strength.