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.
Search Field Notes
-
The Leadership Skill of Anticipating Resistance
Team member resistance makes everything harder. It consumes energy, focus, and trust. The friction resistance creates redirects effort away from results and goals and shifts the focus from productivity to managing emotions and reactions. It stalls progress, destroys momentum, disrupts alignment and coordination, feeds uncertainty, and makes execution more complex and less effective. That’s why
-
High-Status Leaders Who Do What They Ask of Others
Jim Fish likes to ride along with trash crews and attend 1 a.m. safety briefings. Which might seem a bit odd for the CEO of the largest waste management company in the United States. But Fish knows something about leadership that is worth remembering. The more status a leader holds, the more important it is…
-
Your Spam Is Hiding Important Messages
But I don’t like Spam!
-
Tune Into the Five Indicators of Team Health
When leaders examine team health, they typically track lag indicators, such as engagement scores, attrition, and missed deadlines.
-
You Have to Show You Care Before Delivering a Tough Message
Saying difficult things in such a way that people like you after the conversation is among the rarest of leadership skills. It isn’t intuitive for leaders to know how to deliver a tough message with sensitivity, nor is it normal for those on the receiving end to feel good about the messenger afterward. Tough messages
-
When Emotions Run Too High in the Workplace
Humans are born with the ability to feel basic emotions. Infants across cultures show similar emotions of fear, joy, anger, sadness, and surprise when exposed to the same stimuli. This proves that many emotions are biologically built in. The human nervous system is hard-wired to produce emotions automatically in response to certain stimuli. While the
-
Are You An Independent Thinker?
Are you an independent thinker? Here’s a simple test. If someone knows your age, leadership position, salary, political party, or zip code, can they predict your beliefs across a variety of personal, social, and organizational topics?
-
Do You Project the Identity You Want To?
Whether a leader wants others to draw inferences about them or not, people interpret everything they do as evidence about who they really are. Their character, personality traits, values, and tendencies are revealed to others with every breath and action. Over time, people draw distinctive conclusions as to what makes a leader tick and who…
-
How to Create More Commitment to Decisions and Tasks
When team members are committed to a decision or task, they become energized. Their performance, judgment, and follow-through all get a boost. Commitment is jet fuel for an increase in team and team member effort and focus. It’s the secret ingredient all leaders want more of. The question is, How? Academic research on increasing commitment
-
Identifying the Levels of Team Member Commitment
Contrary to what many team leaders believe, team member commitment is not binary. Team members aren’t “all in or out” as much as their commitment is relative. Understanding that commitment exists along a continuum is essential for creating more of it. When leaders engage in behaviors that move people along the ladder of commitment, they…