Field notes
Field Notes
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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How team meetings begin sets the tone for the engagement, positivity, and energy shared by the group.
How team meetings end shapes what the team will remember and solidifies team member commitment to next steps and actions. Yet, most leaders don’t think very strategically about these important time-bound bookends. As such, they miss a crucial element in designing a great meeting.
Advocacy-based discussions dominate in team interactions.
Team members propose ideas, advocate for positions, and try to persuade others to accept their viewpoints.
Our need to influence others and to make our convictions known runs deep. So much so that it is exceedingly rare for a team to engage in any conversation that is not advocacy-based.
Advocacy dominates for a good reason. To reach decisions and to explore the best options, advocacy gets the job done both effectively and expediently.
Leaders who make a change and expect to see differences quickly reflected in performance reviews or manager appraisals will be sorely disappointed. It takes a long time to convince others that you operate differently, and they won’t reward you for that change until they see the behavior dozens of times and in different situations. Are you patient enough to wait for others to confirm the change? Are you committed enough to make the change when others expect you to revert to your old ways? Are you driven enough to sustain the change when others ignore or resist it? No wonder so many leaders stick with old behaviors and never escape the jail cell of their current approach and style. Making a behavior change is hard enough, especially when the applause is delayed by months.
Imagine if your day began with a message from someone you respect describing how pleased they were about something you did.
Such a compliment coming from a trusted source might change your entire day. The boost such a compliment provides might reframe how you look at challenges and problems throughout the day. Everything in your world might seem a little bit brighter, all because someone you admire started your day with a compliment. Now what if you were the giver and not the receiver of such a recognition?
The best leaders, however, recognize that confusing correlation with causation leads to flawed conclusions and ineffective solutions, so they guard against it.
They begin the decision-making process with the assumption that whatever is presented as causal is likely not true. And then work from there.