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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The Secret Sauce for Promotion Decisions
Leaders focus on many qualities when selecting, developing, and promoting colleagues in an organization. Core competencies, such as setting a clear strategy and vision, understanding and navigating the organization, and making quality decisions, allow leaders to differentiate between worthy colleagues. By assessing the skills and behaviors that contribute to superior performance, leaders discern the gap…
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Getting Others to Ask for Help When They Need It
Leveraging the skills and talents of others is why we organize and work in teams. Asking for help when we need it is both smart and imperative to produce the best work product possible. Yet, many team members become overwhelmed or disoriented during tasks and are reluctant to ask for assistance. They falter and deliver…
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Excuse Me, But I Wasn’t Finished Speaking
Perhaps nothing is as annoying to people as being interrupted when they are talking. Equally irritating, if not more so, is when others talk over us while we are speaking.
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Build the Plane While Flying It
Leaders attempting to reenergize an enterprise always face a choice: fix problems before embarking on a new path forward, or forge ahead and do both concurrently. Thanks to the software companies in Silicon Valley that long ago decided to ship imperfect software and then fix it, the choice to do both at the same time…
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Expand Your Crystallized Experience
When you ride a bike, you’re depending on crystallized intelligence to keep you upright. The facts and skills acquired over a lifetime represent the crystallization of what you know. Crystallized knowledge differs from what we call fluid intelligence, which is the ability to reason and think through a problem. Crystallized intelligence is the capacity to learn new things,…
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Knowing What Really Matters
Some leaders make an issue when office supplies are not in their proper places, and some leaders don’t. For some leaders, a colleague who sits at the head of the conference table at every meeting is a matter worth confronting, and for others it is merely an annoyance and nothing more. The question leaders face…
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Reading People When You Have Limited Information
Have you compared notes with a colleague and realized you had an entirely different take on how a meeting went or how someone responded to a situation? Reading people is a superpower skill and one leaders can never be too good at.
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When an Audience Makes Matters Worse
People play to an audience, especially in conflict situations. Because identity issues important to protecting and saving face are so pervasive in conflict, the presence of others during an exchange will often intensify feelings of ridicule, embarrassment, and humiliation when even the slightest provocation exists.
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Too Far Is Just as Bad as Too Close
When we are too close to an issue, we can’t see the forest for the trees. Leaders who normally know exactly what to do about an issue can be blinded when the problem involves them or people they care deeply about.
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Learning to Agree to Disagree
Disagreeing with others is both natural and necessary. We advance our ideas by struggling through our disagreements with others and by learning how they see things differently. We gain clarity by advocating for what we believe in and hearing the arguments and reasons others offer, in both support and opposition. This is how leaders learn.