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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Pride of Craft is Unequaled Pride
Founded in 1928 by Trafton Cole and Eddie Haan, the shoes made by Cole Haan remain a stable of success in the footwear business. But the company didn’t survive for nearly a century without innovating. When its sales dipped dangerously low in the 1990s, the company reinvented its business by embracing contemporary styles and digital…
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The Sacrifice Every Great Leader Makes
Nothing great comes without costs. To become a truly effective leader, you must be willing to pay the price of leadership success. This means a willingness to sacrifice your own needs for the good of others. Leaders make many sacrifices for those they lead. Chief among them is caring about the well-being of others when…
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The Intangible Quality That Defines the Highest Talent
Stories abound in every organization of team members who outperform their more skillful and experienced colleagues and go on to have stellar careers against the odds. They possess an X factor that allows them to overcome average or below-average backgrounds, pedigrees, and inferior skill development. The talent inherent in these superstars is difficult to discern…
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Praise and Encouragement Are Not the Same Thing
Praise is unquestionably a highly effective leadership strategy. Leaders who praise others offer their explicit approval of what has recently been accomplished.
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Coping With the Loneliness of Leadership
At times, leadership can be a tremendously lonely experience. The emotional fallout of making difficult decisions that negatively affect the lives of some team members, the feeling of rejection when team members leave for other opportunities, and the discomfort of disappointing passionate team members who offer ideas that can’t be executed in the moment, among…
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Say More
While this sounds trivial, asking others to “say more” is a masterful pathway to better listening … and much more. When leaders ask others to expand upon a point, they enhance clarity and buy themselves the time to respond in the most persuasive way. Better yet, they encourage others to be complete and make the…
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What Is the Ideal Team Size for Getting Things Done?
For leaders, the question to ask and answer is: What composition of 4-6 people would give us the best chance to achieve this task with excellence? Weaving the synergies between large and small teams is commonplace for the best leaders. They include more people in the conversation while getting important things done in smaller teams.…
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Not All Good Ideas Can Be Executed
Not All Good Ideas Can Be Executed. We all have that pair of shoes in our closet. We like the look of them. They match our style. They are made with quality. But, unfortunately for us, they don’t fit. Every once in a while, we take them out and try them on, one more time.…
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Leaders Can Always Make a Bad Decision Worse
We often compound mistakes by following them with disastrous choices. Decision-makers who follow a bad decision with an equally bad choice — or worse — usually do so for one of two reasons. They are distracted by the earlier misstep and are not thinking clearly, or they are attempting to recover by making a risky…
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Having the Hardest Conversations Requires the Deepest Caring
With a fresh start and a new set of colleagues who are not tainted by past underperformance, good things can happen. Suggesting they find a role that matches their skills is yet another hard conversation to have. But that’s what truly caring leaders do. They want what is best for people and sometimes what is…