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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That’s Not My Job
You may remember the story Charles Osgood once told about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did
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Become a Serial Congratulator
Offering congratulations tells people who receive the compliment that others celebrate their success.
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Develop People or Deliver Results
We might say that team leaders come in two distinct flavors: those who believe the primary mandate is to develop people and those who view the primary directive as delivering outcomes. Both brands of team leaders believe results sustain the team, but one focuses on producing long-term results by tapping the potential of people, while
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The Push and Pull of Promotion
Too often, leaders believe their role is to advocate for their best people and pull up those team members for opportunities for promotion and new assignments. While leaders certainly have a part to play in deciding who is most deserving of promotion, the best organizations look to the teams that support those team members for the signs
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Cause & Effect Feedback
Offering feedback to those who are steadfastly opposed to receiving it is a challenge every leader faces at some point. We all have team members or colleagues who don’t want to hear the feedback offered by you or anyone else for that matter. Defensiveness and hypersensitivity can prevent even top performers from listening to important
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List the Negatives First
No one expects a strong advocate to admit the many weaknesses in their argument, much less upfront and at the beginning of their advocacy. But this is exactly what some of the most persuasive leaders do to overcome resistance to their most unpopular ideas. Great advocates often inoculate their listeners by getting their objections out
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Leaders Clarify the Criteria of Success
Before sending a team off to solve a problem or delegating a task to a colleague, the best leaders spend the time to clarify the criteria of a successful outcome. By offering the guardrails of what is acceptable, feasible, and expected in an outcome, leaders paint a vivid picture of what needs to go right.
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Asking Questions Others Want to Ask
An unfortunate reality in many teams is the fact that wise and experienced people often speak too little, while their less experienced and less expert counterparts speak too much. Getting those more reticent to make a vocal contribution can be a real challenge for leaders who desire for everyone to be heard. When everyone’s opinion
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Consider a Needs Exchange Instead of Feedback
Some team members are hard-headed. Even after receiving the same feedback on multiple occasions, they still resist making any change. They dig in, preferring their own path, even when it continues to disappoint the team leader and produce less than stellar results. When team members remain highly resistant to feedback, the best leaders reframe the
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Leaders Ask a Better Question
The more status a leader holds in any organization or team, the more the information they receive is filtered. In other words, team members are notoriously reluctant to share their candid views upward. Even when attempting to be frank, team members commonly withhold some information or put a more positive spin on it. Truth has