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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Relax by Doing Something Intense
Without occasionally pushing yourself to the limit, you will never know how far you can go or what you might achieve. We often surprise ourselves when we push beyond our expectations to a place we didn’t think we could go. Working with intensity and urgency past the point of exhaustion sometimes produces extraordinary outcomes. So,
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When People Lie
Once a colleague has engaged in a significant lie, it is difficult for those around them to fully believe anything they say or do. As the saying goes, no one believes a liar — even when they’re telling the truth. Maybe you have noticed this: We never refer to people as recovered liars. We don’t
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Sharing a Risk Together Builds Trust
Leaders and team members depend on each other for financial security and social stability. The stakes are big, and so is the risk associated with failure. It is actually this risk that fosters trust between colleagues. When people share a risk together, they come to depend on each other even when they don’t want to.
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That’s Not My Job
You may remember the story Charles Osgood once told about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did
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Become a Serial Congratulator
Offering congratulations tells people who receive the compliment that others celebrate their success.
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Develop People or Deliver Results
We might say that team leaders come in two distinct flavors: those who believe the primary mandate is to develop people and those who view the primary directive as delivering outcomes. Both brands of team leaders believe results sustain the team, but one focuses on producing long-term results by tapping the potential of people, while
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The Push and Pull of Promotion
Too often, leaders believe their role is to advocate for their best people and pull up those team members for opportunities for promotion and new assignments. While leaders certainly have a part to play in deciding who is most deserving of promotion, the best organizations look to the teams that support those team members for the signs
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Cause & Effect Feedback
Offering feedback to those who are steadfastly opposed to receiving it is a challenge every leader faces at some point. We all have team members or colleagues who don’t want to hear the feedback offered by you or anyone else for that matter. Defensiveness and hypersensitivity can prevent even top performers from listening to important
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List the Negatives First
No one expects a strong advocate to admit the many weaknesses in their argument, much less upfront and at the beginning of their advocacy. But this is exactly what some of the most persuasive leaders do to overcome resistance to their most unpopular ideas. Great advocates often inoculate their listeners by getting their objections out
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Leaders Clarify the Criteria of Success
Before sending a team off to solve a problem or delegating a task to a colleague, the best leaders spend the time to clarify the criteria of a successful outcome. By offering the guardrails of what is acceptable, feasible, and expected in an outcome, leaders paint a vivid picture of what needs to go right.