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...

Every thinking skill a leader has is only as good as their ability to notice, in the moment, which one they're using and whether it's working. That noticing has a name — metacognition — and it's the capacity that governs all the rest.

Leaders accumulate a lot of thinking tools over a career: framew...

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,...

Self-awareness is usually imagined as an inward act. Reflect. Journal. Sit with your feelings. Examine your motives. The implicit model is that the truth about you is already in you, and awareness is just the work of looking hard enough to find it.

Reflection is essential, but reflection has to hav...

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...