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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Navigating the “What Happened?” Conversation
When things go wrong or unexpectedly, leaders want to understand what happened. Where was the misstep? What wasn’t anticipated? Why did things go astray? The What Happened? conversation occurs so frequently, it’s a wonder leaders are not more adept at it. Perhaps the conversational skill involved is stunted by the very need for the conversation. When things…
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When the Team Has to Vote
Gaining consensus on controversial or complex decisions is not always possible. After the gyrations of working toward a consensus, sometimes the team reaches an impasse, where one or more colleagues are unwilling to defer to the wisdom of the group. Arguments for and against the decision are viewed differently by team members with competing interests…
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Great Leaders Create Happiness to Make Themselves Happy
Exceptional leaders are happy people for a particular reason. Making others productive, creating the conditions for robust learning, and providing the vision and strategy that excites people — that’s what makes a leader smile. But if you really want to understand why the best leaders are happy people, you need to comprehend how important it…
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A Team That Stares at the Problem Statement
An interesting thing happens when team members grappling with a major decision or opportunity can stare at the problem statement. The many parts or facets of the problem will stand out like flashing lights. Confrontation with a visual of the problem statement serves to keep the team on task and in focus.
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Rate Your Feedback Culture
Team cultures are partly defined by how leaders and team members engage in performance-related feedback. Without the candor and specificity of feedback to do things differently in the future, leaders and team members don’t develop and get better. But more is not always better. How feedback creates the everyday conversation within an organization is what…
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Be Careful Not to Punish Competence
You wouldn’t normally think that being highly effective or competent at core tasks would be a bad thing. But leaders are people, too. They want to go with their best-skilled players. All the time. So when a leader decides that every key assignment needs the attention of a particular team member, they exact an increasingly heavy…
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The Secret to Leading Inexperienced Team Members
Instead of providing inexperienced team members with the context to succeed, they give them small actions to execute. It is through these actions and the relevant feedback that comes from them that novice team members begin to understand how things work. Telling them just creates confusion. Showing them is not yet possible. Directing them in…
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The Reason Not to Have a Team Meeting
Too many leaders set meetings just because they are expected to or take the place of real work. Good leaders don’t use meetings to replace productivity or simply to keep people abreast of what is going on. They challenge and question the need for any new meeting on the calendar and fine-tune existing meetings to…
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Don’t Take a Breath in a Brainstorm
Maybe some leaders believe brainstorming to be hokey or that it produces a less serious start to an important problem. Or perhaps they don’t like the whimsical nature of the exercise. But they need to get over it. Brainstorming is an important piece of work. Most problems and opportunities benefit greatly from an initial session…
