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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Fredkin’s Paradox of Similar Options
The more similar and equally attractive two alternatives are, the harder it is to choose between them. This is especially true when the outcome or consequence of the choice is insignificant. So, if a leader is choosing between two laptops and both seem great and largely alike, they will spend an inordinate amount of time…
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Creating a Team Glossary of Core Concepts
Teams depend on core concepts to collaborate, game plan, and work together. These concepts create the shared understanding that teams need to get things done. Concepts like “strategy,” “talent,” “transparency,” “potential,” “accountability,” “team,” “teamwork,” and “urgency” get tossed around from person to person with the idea that everyone agrees as to what they mean. That…
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The Uncomfortable Reason Personality Assessments Are So Popular in Leadership Development
Warning: This Field Note will make some people very uncomfortable. Leader discretion is advised. People are naturally curious about who they are and why they do what they do. So, they invest time and energy into learning more about themselves. Tools, like personality assessments — which offer a quick window into deeper understanding — feed…
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Fast Versus Timely
Not every decision, action, or execution needs to happen immediately. While speed occasionally produces better outcomes, there are many times when it destroys value. Acting too quickly can create costly mistakes, force rework, or trigger unintended consequences. But because leaders commonly equate speed with advantage, they default to moving quickly. Before every decision or action, good leaders consider…
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Does Your Organization Track a Proprietary Metric?
To assess the health and productivity of their teams and organizations, leaders create, measure, and rely on key metrics. The scorecards, dashboards, and financial reviews used at most organizations focus on many of the same indicators. Just about every company tracks financial metrics like revenue growth, gross profit margin, cash flow, and debt-to-equity ratio. The…
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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…