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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Good Leaders Presume Team Members Feel Undervalued & Underappreciated
The status, influence, and authority of leaders come with many responsibilities. On the upside, leaders have broader opportunities to promote change and shape the team’s goals and priorities.
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Knowing Yourself is Not the Same Thing as Changing Yourself
Here’s a controversial fact: Despite their popularity as leadership development tools, personality assessments fail to make leaders better. That’s because personality assessments — like DISC, Hogan, Enneagram, and others — describe who someone is rather than what they can or should do. While assessments can identify blind spots and increase self-awareness, they lack the transformational impact of building a new habit or…
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Do My Teammates Trust Me?
Here is a question worth pondering: Do your colleagues truly trust you? How much, and to what degree? Trust is one of the most powerful and elusive forces in any workplace. Without it, not much gets done. With more of it, great things happen. Because trust sits at the foundation of every successful relationship, collaboration,…
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The Leadership Perception Gap
How well a leader believes they are performing is often at odds with how the team experiences their leadership. Leaders and team members typically look at the same actions from very different vantage points. A leader has direct access to their own intentions, constraints, and reasoning. They know exactly what they are trying to accomplish,…
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Leaders Who Listen to Disagree
A surprising number of leaders don’t listen to understand. They listen to disagree. This approach to listening allows leaders to stand out for their expertise, intelligence, and conviction. Unfortunately, it also robs them of their ability to connect with and learn from others, making them susceptible to poor decisions, false assumptions, and untested viewpoints. Simply…
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The Silent Career Derailer of Defensiveness
As leaders and team members rise in organizations and take on expanding responsibilities, one factor has an outsized influence on their promotability: how defensive they are. Highly defensive people overreact when others disagree with them or when they receive unfavorable news and feedback. This can be a career killer.
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In the Face of Adversity, Leaders Must Redefine Success
When the headwinds are strong and the organization’s goals can no longer be met, leaders must remember to redefine success for the team. It is not enough to simply lower the bar or to set new and achievable goals.
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The Philosophy of Breaking People Down Before Building Them Up
Military training in much of the world relies on a philosophy of breaking old habits, reshaping identity, and instilling discipline to prepare soldiers for the rigors of combat. Military academies describe the process as “tearing down to build up.”
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Team Members Who Wait to be Told What to Do.
Common wisdom would suggest that team members who wait to be told what to do lack initiative or are less engaged than they should be. But while some team members do prefer to “clock in” and receive instructions, the leader is usually to blame for their lack of drive and resourcefulness.
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Do You Ask and Answer Your Own Questions?
To guide an audience’s reasoning about an issue, leaders sometimes ask and answer their own questions. The ancient Greeks coined the term hypophora to describe the device speakers and writers use to ask a question and then immediately answer it themselves. Some examples: “Why do we need to change? Because if we don’t, our competitors…