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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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…
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Use Checklists to Ask Team Members to Grade Themselves
Leaders would inspire higher performance if they would spend less time evaluating others and more time crafting the checklists that identify the ingredients or steps necessary for performance success.
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Sometimes Leaders Get Tossed From the Game on Purpose
Knowing a leader has your back and is willing to stand by you in difficult moments means the world to team members. We develop deep and loyal bonds with leaders who advocate strongly on our behalf and won’t let others speak poorly of us when we are not present to fight back.
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My Criticism Is the Highest Compliment I Can Pay You
Every leader, parent, and coach needs to make their good intentions known and not leave their desire to help others improve be left to interpretation.
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Why Are Job Titles So Important to People?
In the fewest words possible, job titles allow others to know what you do, what you’re responsible for, and what status you’ve achieved. Job titles can also influence your future career, as they indicate to others where you sit in the organization’s hierarchy, suggesting both the credibility and authority you wield.
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Does Extraordinary Success Require the Ultimate Sacrifice?
Leaders who are driven to create extraordinary outcomes are a different breed. We are told that those who strive for and achieve any semblance of greatness pay a significant price.
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Where Does Self-Confidence Come From?
Confidence wants to have a word with you. It wants to tell you that it springs more from insight than from personality, more from failure than from winning. In fact, the more you fail, the more confidence you build when you struggle through that failure and eventually master the task or performance.
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Working Backwards to Solve a Hard Problem
More than two decades ago, the leaders at Heinz food company tried something new to solve a pricing problem. They created what is now called price-based costing to address the profitability of their 9-Lives cat food brand.
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It’s Not About the Team Dinners
Legendary NBA Coach Gregg Popovich creates highly cohesive teams with star athletes who commonly like to go their own way. His teams are known for players who develop deep and lasting relationships with each other, and rally to support their teammates when times are tough.