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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Why Everything Depends on Setting the Right Priorities
Priorities are never the leader’s “day job” or what they are expected to do. Instead, they are the highest and best use of time right now. As such, they change frequently, sometimes not lasting for more than a few hours or a day or two. Despite how important they are, many leaders lack the discipline…
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Hand Signs Between Trusted Colleagues
Watch a professional baseball game and you’ll see the managers and coaches engaged in some very strange hand movements. They might touch their nose, swipe the bill of a cap, and then tug on their ear. To the uninitiated, coaches can appear to be swatting flies or scratching a hard-to-reach itch. But what is really
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Are You My Fan?
Everyone knows what it means to be a fan because they are one. We all have a team, athlete, or performer for whom we think so highly that we relish cheering them on to success. So, what happens when a leader becomes a whole-hearted fan of their team members? What occurs when a team feels…
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Saving Up Criticism
The best leaders give team members constant feedback, positive and negative, in a particular order. Telling people what they did well before describing what they could do better gives feedback the critical balance necessary for others to act on it. If a leader can’t find positives to emphasize, it is a sign they lack objectivity…
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30 Million Words
Why do some children in kindergarten seem to have a leg up academically and socially? Studies since the 1980s have shown that one difference maker is how many words they have been exposed to during the first three years of their lives. Children with a decided intellectual edge have heard as many as 30 million…
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The Rotten Apple
One of the biggest challenges faced by leaders is what to do about a rotten apple on the team. Rotten apples come disguised in different clothes but they share some common qualities. They are typically poor performers who blame everyone and everything for their weak performance. Their negativity and disrespect for others make them a…
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Do Less With Excellence
All leaders and team members must decide for themselves what is achievable with the highest excellence. When they deliver excellence on a smaller set of initiatives without completely ignoring the other projects, they are hailed as top performers. When those same leaders deliver everything asked of them with mediocrity, they are viewed as average performers…
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Ask Your Leader to Reach Down With Praise
It only takes a few minutes to update a more senior leader about the great work or accomplishment completed by someone on your team. Asking them to engage this person directly with some added praise is an easy do. Too often leaders overlook this advantage because they forget just how easy this is or the…
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Burned by People Too Many Times
The obligation of every leader is to presume the best of people and to act accordingly. Anything less makes the job of leadership untenable for everyone involved. Without feeling and experiencing the leader’s trust and confidence, the best team members can’t reach their highest potential. They depend on their leader to forget the negative relationships…
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The Five Languages of Praise
When author Gary Chapman described how intimates prefer to show and experience love, people finally understood why their affections sometimes missed the mark. In his 1992 book The Five Love Languages, he outlined the different ways intimates prefer to give and receive love: acts of service, gift dgiving, physical touch, quality time, and words of…