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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Start Your Day With a Compliment
Imagine if your day began with a message from someone you respect describing how pleased they were about something you did. Such a compliment coming from a trusted source might change your entire day. The boost such a compliment provides might reframe how you look at challenges and problems throughout the day. Everything in your…
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Never Mistake a Correlation for a Cause
The best leaders, however, recognize that confusing correlation with causation leads to flawed conclusions and ineffective solutions, so they guard against it. They begin the decision-making process with the assumption that whatever is presented as causal is likely not true. And then work from there.
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Leaders Who Unintentionally Leak That They Don’t Like a Team Member
Not everyone likes or appreciates those they work with. It is inevitable that, on occasion, a leader will find a team member distasteful or stylistically not their cup of tea. Over time, unless the leader finds their way to more connection or affinity with a disapproved team member, they will often unintentionally “leak” their dislike…
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What Advice Would You Give Yourself?
Leaders are, naturally, a great resource of advice, counsel, and guidance for their team members and colleagues. The level of trust and confidence they create through their leadership behaviors determines the types of questions and advice-seeking they receive. Leaders held in the highest regard field questions about more private matters, including counsel about family, careers,
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Giving Feedback by Asking for Help
In yesterday’s Field Note, we outlined how leaders can effectively give feedback indirectly by offering to help. Feedback can reside inside the overture to assist without the potential bite of a more direct expression. For instance, “What can I do to help you better prepare for your upcoming presentation?” delivers the feedback indirectly that the person needs to spend
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Giving Feedback by Offering to Help
Asking others how you might help them can be a highly indirect and effective way of giving feedback. Consider a colleague who is chronically late and deserves the feedback that their performance is suffering as a result. A leader could give this feedback in a more direct fashion by saying something like: “You really need…
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Despicable Listeners That Steal the Ball
Some listeners take over the conversation by interrupting, changing the topic, or focusing on themselves without any intention to understand what the other party has to say. Metaphorically speaking, they steal the ball away from those speaking. And run with it. People quickly get fed up with them. You might recognize this ploy from someone…
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The 5-3-1 Rule and Social Fitness
You probably have a decent idea of what kind of shape you are in physically. But how healthy are you socially? Social fitness reflects the quality of your relationships and how often you connect with others in a meaningful way. As it turns out, how socially fit you are has a tremendous impact on the life
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Anchor the Discussion on Opportunity to Encourage More Risk
Some teams would greatly benefit by taking on more risk. By avoiding worst-case and what-if scenarios, they too often make decisions that fail to seize opportunities or leave gains on the table. As much as pundits think making big bets is what gets teams in trouble, much more often it is risk aversion that undermines…
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Some Strategic Questions Shouldn’t Be Answered
To reduce uncertainty and to inform their thinking, team members often raise questions they believe would add value to the decision-making and strategic planning process. They advocate that the team should invest the time, energy and resources to take a deep dive to generate an answer to an important question. Some examples: Curious team members