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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Influence Trumps Direction
For leaders, coming to grips with the importance others play in their success requires reflection and experience. Early in their careers, leaders rise on teams and organizations for getting things done and performing at a higher level. Rewarding personal achievement with an opportunity to lead is common in nearly every organization. When those same leaders
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Exploit the Possibilities of Luck
Long-term success is hard-won — usually, the result of deep work, luck, and a strategic view that proves powerful. Successful people always love to point out the hard work involved. Yet, luck plays an essential role, as well. If you had to count on luck or skill, few among us would rely on luck. We control
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No One Is Hanging on Your Every Word
Inexperienced leaders can become fixated on what others think of them. They can become overly concerned with, and influenced by, the anticipated perceptions others might have of their choices, decisions, and messages. Bordering on paranoia, some leaders can be so concerned with such opinions that they can become consumed with attempting to outthink their critics,
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What Metaphor Guides Your Team?
The quality of a team often reflects the metaphor by which the members organize. One powerful but underrated metaphor is the team as a “hive.” Think bees. In a hive, the team always supersedes the individual. What is good for the team is always good for the individual, whether the team member recognizes it or
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Being in the Right Mode
You can always tell if a leader is in “knowing” or “learning” mode. Just look to the questions they ask — or the lack of them. When in knowing mode, leaders are the experts at directing traffic about what others should do about what they know to be true. Because they know, leaders in this
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Delayed Rewards Make Us Better People
Central to any worthy vision is the requirement to appreciate delayed gratification. Almost by definition, the vision a leader creates will require others to invest now in order to reap bigger rewards in the future. The problem is that people are not hardwired to value future pleasures as compared to immediate satisfaction. Postponing immediate gains
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Embrace Tension Not Balance
Balance in life is usually a good thing. We should all strive for balance, not allowing extremes to dictate our tactics and reactions. But the kind of dualities that leaders face every day calls for a better metaphor. When pivoting between agility and consistency, creativity and critical thinking, hands-on and hands-off approaches, among other pairs, the
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Be Wise to Hidden Advocacy
When making decisions with others, the best leaders are acutely aware of the many people who influence the discussion but are not physically present. In many cases, those in the background or absent can have a tremendous influence on what others believe and advocate. Here’s a decision-making fact: There is almost always someone at the table who
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Act Like Champions
Legendary football coach Bill Walsh gives us this gem: “Champions behave like champions before they’re champions. They have a winning standard of performance before they are winners.” It is exceedingly difficult to prioritize the idea of acting like a champion when you’re losing. With successive defeats, just about anything else is easier than behaving the
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Avoid Email Urgency Bias
The next time you send a colleague an email in the wee hours of the morning or in the middle of the weekend, consider the unintended message you are sending. Unbeknownst to most leaders, people who receive your off-hour emails interpret such messages as a directive to drop what they are doing and to respond