Condescension is speaking from an assumed superiority that quietly erases the other person's mind, and it happens most easily to people who actually know a lot.

Condescension usually starts from a position of assumed superiority. I understand this better than you. I know what you need. I can see wh...

Criticism is rarely just criticism. It carries information about the person receiving it and information about the person delivering it. The skill is reading both without using either to escape the other.

When someone criticizes us, we tend to ask one question. Are they right? Sometimes they are....

Success gets attributed to intelligence, discipline, confidence, or strategy. But all of those depend on something more basic: your ability to accurately perceive what's happening — inside you, around you, and between you and other people — and to adjust when the information changes.

Some of the mo...

When a people situation at work becomes a challenge, the reflex is to react quickly and resolve the problem. The more effective skill is to read the situation, including what it is stirring in you, and choose deliberately.

Every leader experiences this regularly: someone on the team becomes a probl...

The most interesting person in the room is rarely the one trying hardest to be interesting. More often it's the person paying unusually close attention.

Curious people notice things. They ask the question after the obvious question, catch the contradiction, follow the unexpected answer rather than ...

Every interaction gives you two sources of information: the person in front of you and your own reaction to them. Understanding people requires learning to read both.

Most advice about working with difficult colleagues offers a list of tactics: set boundaries, listen actively, address the behavior,...

We teach professionals to communicate, influence, negotiate, and lead. We run trainings on feedback, on difficult conversations, on conflict, on executive presence. These skills matter. But underneath all of them sits a single capacity that determines whether any of the others actually work.

It's t...

Politics. Climate. Aging parents. Death. The economy. Social injustice. Animal suffering. The future of civilization. The cruelty of people. The fragility of life. Any one of these concerns are real problems. That is what makes the pattern difficult to see.

The problem is not that the person cares....

Someone Is Always Unhappy. You Can't Make Them Happy (And That's Not the Goal).

Most leaders feel it at some point. You make the decision, fund the raise, fix the process, send the thoughtful message — and someone is still frustrated. It is easy, in those moments, to conclude that people are irrati...

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...