Avoid this mistake when giving feedback:

Assuming you know Why...
- You can't read minds
- You put them on defense
- You often favor your biases

Instead, try this: When you ___.
-> This is what the camera saw. Only facts.

I experienced ___.
-> This is where your POV comes in.

Which resulted in ___.
-> Tie this to team outcomes.

Burnout is not caused by working too much.

Burnout happens when our work doesn't matter.

And meaningless work is the manager's fault.

Let's fix it: Meaningless work happens when your manager:
- Can't separate important from unimportant
- Can't drive unimportant work out of the system

The former is a synthesis problem.
The latter is a storytelling issue.

But one element can help either cause: Data

Your boss is a coward and it's killing your career.

Here's the honest feedback you need to hear: You have plenty of time.

What you lack is conviction, creativity, or courage.

Conviction: to choose what's important
Creativity: to see more efficient paths
Courage: to reject all distractions

Leading an effective team is hard but not complicated.

The only goal is to maximize our team's impact.

There are only 5 ways to move the needle:

(full playbook detailed in the thread) Clear Goal

Call it a mission, a purpose, or a goal.
It needs to be clear and compelling.
People want a purpose, not just a paycheck.

Tip: You cannot repeat this often enough.

I asked 837 leaders to share their biggest mistakes.

These 7 mistakes came up over and over.

Here's how you can avoid them: They Try To Do It All

High-performing teams get rewarded with more: More projects, more customers, more problems.

Tip: Do less work better. Ask: What work can I... Eliminate? Automate? Streamline? Delegate?

Great leaders are ruthless optimizers.

I've trained 1000s of managers.

The 60% who fail make one mistake:

They refuse to delegate

Here are 11 tactics to win more by doing less🧵 Delegate Everything

This is not a joke. You need to design yourself completely out of your old job. Set your sights lower than that and you'll delegate WAY less than you should.

But exhale: Delegating that much will take months.

15 counterintuitive lessons for building a winning business:

1. Every new hire creates more complexity than capacity. 2. The acute pain in your business today demands you hire for skills. The long-term health of the company requires you hire for character.

At Bridgewater, I trained 100s of leaders on how to diagnose problems to their root cause.

Give me 2 minutes, and I'll show you how to solve the real problems on your team: The 5 Whys?

It's a diagnostic problem-solving technique popularized by Sakichi Toyoda, the Japanese industrialist & Toyota founder.

I honed my application of it at Bridgewater where it was the critical inflection point for improvement in Ray Dalio's 5-step process.

I use ChatGPT daily to help leaders save time.

I use the 3-4-5 method to get my optimal output on the first try.

Steal it and tell me how it works for you. 3 - The Useful Use Cases

While I'm sure this will evolve, there are three common leadership use cases that ChatGPT 4 excels at:
- Drafting
- Summarizing
- Brainstorming

Be clear about which use case you're using it for.

Nearly every leader we work with is overwhelmed.

What if an hour a day was all it took to lead more effectively while getting your life back in order?

Here's how I optimize my leadership calendar: 📆 Monday's Focus: Commit
- Review my team's commitments (15 min)
- Time block my calendar with must-dos (45 min)

The 7 Deadly Sins of Mediocre Managers (and tips to avoid them): 1. Don't Set Expectations

You probably did the job you now manage, and you take for granted the 100 lessons you have learned over time.

Hold secret expectations: your habits = their heartache.

Tip: Align on Goals (the what) & Approach (the how)

Painful lessons every leader eventually learns: The time to fire a toxic employee is the first time you utter the phrase "toxic employee."

Avoid these 5 common 1:1 meeting mistakes: ❌ Canceling on your best people

There's more to do than hours in a day, so we triage to focus on what's urgent. Our best people have it covered, so their 1:1 is the first to go.

But nothing says "you're not important," quite like removing the one meeting about them.

The atomic element of business: 1 on 1 meetings.

Powerful fuel if done well.
Utterly destructive when done poorly.

5 tactics to enrich your most critical meetings: 1. Why are you meeting?

Most people think it’s to check in on work. It’s actually to build trust, show you care, and develop your team.

The work is the vehicle. Your relationship is the engine.

Tip: Be explicit about these goals.

Only 5% of business owners will earn 1 million dollars.

I ran a leadership workshop with 400 of them.

Here are 10 insights I walked away with: "If you think hiring a professional is expensive, try hiring an amateur."

- If the advice is good, it won't be cheap.
- If the advice is cheap, it won't be good.

Many founders lamented overpaying in the long run because they shopped for short-term bargains.

Leaders know:

There are no hacks. Only habits.

Here are 9 daily actions that help your team win: Make Meaningful Connections

Hire well and your team knows more than you. Amplify their knowledge with connections:

- Sponsor them for network groups & conferences
- Introduce them to key leaders at the company
- Connect their ideas & larger company forces

Worried about getting fired, prepare now: Firing people sucks.

The only thing worse is being fired.

It is easiest to push the idea from your mind. Ignore it. But in each life, there are moments that matter 100x more than others. Those are worth being prepared for.

This is one of those moments.

Here's how:

Here's a harsh truth:

Adding another person will only make your problems worse. Much worse.

What's better? When something breaks, our first instinct is to add. 

- Add a step
- Add a check
- Add more process
- Add another person

But 95% of the time, that's lazy thinking.

Unclear expectations cause 95% of problems at work.

Here's my simple playbook for managers and employees to get on the same page fast: If you're the manager:

Setting expectations is your only job.

If your team doesn't know what you expect, you're failing them. And despite great effort, chances are they're letting you down.

The vicious cycle of frustration builds.

The biggest career cheat code:

Only work with exceptional managers.

7 simple questions to ask when you're interviewing them: 1. Who have you recently promoted (and Why)?

What I'm looking for:
- Are promotions merit-based?
- Can they get people promoted?

The Introverted Leaders Handbook

5 tips for leading loudly when you prefer quiet: Let's dispel some Introvert myths.

They are bad communicators:
-> Listening is half of communication.

They don't like to collaborate:
-> 89% said they enjoyed collaboration.

They don't make good leaders:
-> Bill Gates, Tim Cook & Barack Obama all self-identify as Introverts.