Field Notes · by Kristen Tolbert

Most leadership books are written for managers inside well-resourced organizations. The assumption is that leaders operate with a buffer — budgets, teams, established process, institutional support. Even when things get hard, the system absorbs some of the strain. O...

Why indirect communication is a form of control and why "just be direct" isn't the fix.

We mistake passive behavior for harmless behavior. But avoiding conflict is not the same as avoiding control. It is frequently a subtler and more corrosive version of it.

Indirect communication is what happens ...

Everyone says growth is uncomfortable. Almost nobody explains why it's specifically hard for people who are already good at things — or why being good at things is, past a certain point, an obstacle to getting better.

The explanation is not motivational. It comes from learning science, and it is mo...

What the research actually says and why the label becomes the obstacle

The sentence is everywhere now. I'm anxiously attached. He's avoidant. Said with the confidence of a diagnosis, and treated like one — a fixed fact about a person, explaining everything and excusing most of it.

It is a misreadi...

Leadership gets sold as charisma — presence, vision, the ability to make a room lean in. It's a durable story because charismatic leaders are the ones we remember. It is also, as a theory of effectiveness, mostly wrong.

When researchers measured charismatic personality against leader effectiveness ...

Field Notes · by Kristen Tolbert

If we're not creating anything original, are we really thinking at all?

Someone says something fluent, well-organized, and entirely borrowed, and everyone in the room — including them — treats it as thinking. Is it though? They've read the thing, they can restate t...

People love to say they want a partner. It sounds collaborative, empowering, even noble. Most of them have no idea what they're asking for.

Partnership isn't showing up when it's convenient or when the vision is already clear. It's co-owning the hard parts, the messy middle, and the unseen labor th...

What actually happens when someone relates to you as if you were someone else? A new report treats you with a wariness you haven't earned. A client keeps asking you to decide things they are perfectly capable of deciding. A colleague's irritation with you is calibrated to some offense you did not co...

Field Notes · by Kristen Tolbert

People study entrepreneurs like they're zoo animals. Something to be observed, analyzed, maybe even envied. A curiosity. A puzzle to solve. What makes someone choose this life?

It's true, we're wired differently. Our drivers, our non-negotiables, our definitions of...

Finding your exact dimensions

Humility is often misunderstood as the act of shrinking oneself — staying quiet, deflecting recognition, taking up less room. But authentic humility, as illuminated by the Mussar tradition, a Jewish practice of ethical and spiritual growth, is not about self-erasure at...