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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The Emotional Impact of Great Customer Experiences
Emotion, not logic, creates the powerful customer experiences.
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The Best Way to Teach Soft Skills
While cognitive and technical skills can be learned in a rule-based way, there are no clear guidelines for how people should work and interact with others. The so-called soft or social skills — such as empathy, listening, advocacy, and conflict resolution — are difficult to teach and nearly impossible to scale across an organization. Despite…
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The Most Important Undiscussable for Your Team to Confront
There is a typical gap between what everyone on a team thinks and what gets discussed. Those topics, issues, or ideas that are too uncomfortable or embarrassing for the team to discuss remain unaddressed and unspoken. While these undiscussables help the team to avoid short-term conflict and awkwardness, they often hold the group back from…
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The Chicken and Egg of Trust and Commitment
Good leaders know that team members who trust them and are loyal to the team go above and beyond to lift themselves and others toward sustainable success. They focus their attention more easily, engage more passionately, overcome setbacks and challenges more comfortably, and behave more consistently. That’s why savvy leaders do their best to amplify…
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Character Is Revealed in Success, Not Just Failure
It is a well-known view that when things get tough, people reveal themselves. Failure can be a profound teacher, forcing people to confront their mistakes and take responsibility for them. Or not. Some people rise to the occasion when failure raises its ugly head, refusing to give up and instead displaying resilience and determination. Conversely,…
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How Do People Know If a Leader Is Sincere?
Authenticity gets all the press, but for leaders, sincerity matters more. Team members and colleagues respond differently to a leader who is sincere and expresses their genuine feelings and views without pretense. Even when they disagree, they come to trust a sincere leader who is heartfelt about what they say and do. Sincere leaders operate
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How Much Fruit Is on Your Coaching Tree?
Charting out the leaders you have developed and learning where they are now can be an illuminating exercise. Visualizing the impact you have had on others can reinforce the importance of developing others. It can even underscore why you do this work in the first place. A leader’s true legacy is in the relationships they…
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The Friction Between Centralized and Decentralized Decision-Making
The tension between making decisions on the ground or in the field as opposed to by a centralized source is a healthy one. Giving those leaders or producers closest to the issues and problems the ability to make decisions that affect them results in more practical and timely solutions. When field leaders feel empowered, they…
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When Performing, Never Tell Yourself What Not to Do
It may seem like a small or trivial matter to some, but the kind of instructions you give yourself during moments of key performance can profoundly impact what transpires. Anytime a performer plants the idea of what not to do in the mind, the brain has a funny way of punishing the thought. Whatever we…
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In Defense of Being Wrong
People don’t like to be wrong. They like to fail even less. This is especially true with big mistakes and faulty predictions. So, after mistakes or failures, they naturally reflect upon what occurred in an attempt to understand what happened and why. But a funny thing happens on the way to drawing a conclusion. People…