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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Servant Leadership Is a Great Idea That Doesn’t Really Work
With some notable workplace exceptions, servant leadership works better in theory than in practice. The idea of selflessly leading others by putting their needs first sounds like a masterful approach to creating a positive workplace replete with motivated team members and collaborative processes. Until reality gets in the way.
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Break the Spell of the Tell
Initiative is in short supply on some teams. Team leaders push, prod, and cajole people to get them to act. Yet, people wait for instructions. When capable team members wait to be told what to do, leaders often comply, compounding an already frustrating situation.
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Recommitting to the Fundamental Practice of Listening
In every discipline, mastering fundamental skills and actions allows performers to leapfrog to new heights and prowess. The fundamentals serve as the core and foundational routines from which more complex tactics can be perfected. Without a firm grasp of the fundamentals, success is fleeting, as performers have nothing to fall back upon when execution unexplainably…
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Fight Bureaucracy Wherever You Find It
Centralizing power in the workplace in order to minimize risk and enhance consistency comes at a price. Bureaucracy thrives whenever organizations create too many processes and checkpoints to elevate decision-making to ensure uniformity from those on the field of action.
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Creating Extraordinary Followership
When combined with the quality of producing extraordinary results through others, leaders with followership skills become deeply admired and exert a tremendous influence on those around them. Developing the behaviors and routines that produce followership is something every leader can and should work on. The result might be relationally spectacular.
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Does the Candidate Fit?
When selecting talent to join the team, the quality that carries the most weight for leaders is whether the candidate fits the organization and team. More than skill, judgment, track record or experience, fit is often the defining assessment that determines if a job offer is made. To learn months later that a new colleague doesn’t fit
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The Power of the Reset Button
Recovering from the issues raised during a relationship conflict can be difficult. The weight of it tends to linger and invade the thoughts and feelings of both parties.
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Meet People Where They Are
Coaching others to success demands leaders accept the current reality. This means the reality of others, not the leader’s sense of things. Understanding what people know and are ready to hear and learn is the key. The best leaders accept where others are first and start the race from there.
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When Making Excuses Becomes a Problem
Excuses rob people of personal growth. Leaders make excuse-making uncomfortable for those who offer them incessantly. When people refrain from making excuses, they learn to deliver.
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Play With Energy Not Emotion
Watching athletes and stage performers play at their best, it is easy to conclude that emotion during performance is an asset. To the casual observer, top performers motivate themselves with emotion, allowing anger, frustration, and even self-contempt to light a fire and push them to new heights. If you have reached that same conclusion, you…