Is decentralized social media the future?

In the initial stages of your career, one of the most important things you can do is build relationships that will have a significant impact on your life over time. These five relationships can accelerate your path to a promotion, increase your visibility within an organization, and stretch you beyond your comfort zone into to the leader you aspire to be. Mentor: A mentor can help you broaden your functional expertise, grow your emotional intelligence, and learn your company’s unwritten rules. Sponsor: While mentors give you advice and perspective, sponsors advocate on your behalf and in some cases, directly present you with career advancement opportunities. Partner: A partner is an ally or peer who can serve as a sounding board to broaden your perspective. This relationship is fueled by trust, a shared drive to succeed, and the recognition that you can do better together. Competitor: Competition between peers is inevitable. And, when used correctly, it leads to improved performance, breakthrough ideas, and greater drive to get things done. Mentee: Becoming a mentor will teach you how to bring out the best in others, recognize their strength, give feedback, and coach. In turn, it will push you to be better and to strive for more.

As a manager, a central part of your job is to develop people. But when you delegate a task to someone — with no prior training — simply because you are unavailable to do it, their chances of succeeding are slim. Managers need to stop thinking of passing off responsibilities as delegating, and start taking on the mindset of a trainer. If you do, you will naturally look for ways to give a little more responsibility to the people who work for you. Start by gauging who on your team genuinely wants to move up in the organization, and identify their main areas of interest. Create a development plan for them and write down the skills they will need in order to reach their goals. Then, focus on giving them assignments that require those skills. Help them work their way up to a challenging task by starting with a series of practice sessions. The first time you introduce a task to someone, let them shadow you while you explain some of the key points. Then, give them a piece to do on their own with your supervision. Only let them carry the full load when you sense that they are ready. By doing this, you are helping your supervisees reach their career goals, and creating a team of trusted associates who can step in when you are overwhelmed or out of the office.

Can't stop thinking mean thoughts about yourself? Researchers and psychologists share how to break the cycle.

The ability to work remotely has become more valued than ever before, and that’s not going away, particularly among younger workers. Even in organizations that remain committed to offering employees significant remote or hybrid work, there is often a desire among leaders to foster togetherness with a return to in-person learning events. But as learning professionals, the authors hear many myths when it comes to what in-person learning — or in-person experiences more generally — can actually achieve. Here, they’ll dispel the ones they hear most often and show you how to maximize connection from in-person learning events.

Negotiation experts have long confirmed the intuition that that being warm and friendly pays off at the bargaining table. Recent research finds that people also tend to believe niceness will buy them better deals — but when put to the test, this prediction turns out to be wrong. It appears that being firm can sometimes lead to better deals, at least in a distributive or single-issue negotiation, than being warm.

Emotional, sensitive, intuitive leaders will be vital to any organization that hopes to achieve success in the next decade.

Collaborative bosses can use curiosity to escape the echo chamber of their own ideas

Two years of remote work has brought more meetings, but no solutions to making them more effective. A new study reveals the eye-opening costs.

We all have to deal with irrational people. How can we bring them back to sanity and have fewer arguments? Here's what experts advise...

Our work is ever-changing. But the way we collect feedback is stuck in the past.

A secure attachment style can help people initiate and maintain friendships.

Being seen at work still matters for your career, but there’s a smarter way to boost your profile than pretending you live at your desk

Renewals -- but no new sales -- of the passes have begun, with a few changes and price increases.

Sure, you could just argue with them. But if you have to work together, here are more productive ways for everyone to win. 00:00 Let me guess: you argue with...

A leader causing upset among her people is given a coach. They examine what might be triggering people to be upset with her. Learn more.

An inclusion expert explains why women of color are held back.

The new work calendar isn’t about office or home, it’s about three meeting types and the conditions that serve them best. Transactional gatherings move work forward; relational gatherings strengthen connections; and adaptive gatherings help us address complex or sensitive topics. As transactional gatherings are easier to conduct online, relational and adaptive gatherings have become relatively scarce. Now is a great time to reintroduce and redesign these gatherings, as all had flaws even before the pandemic. The author outlines the best conditions for all three and explains why each needs to have its own space and place.

New research suggests that the highest-performing teams have found subtle ways of leveraging social connections during the pandemic to fuel their success. The findings offer important clues on ways any organization can foster greater connectedness — even within a remote or hybrid work setting — to engineer higher-performing teams. Doing so takes more than simply hiring the right people and arming them with the right tools to do their work. It requires creating opportunities for genuine, authentic relationships to develop. The authors present five key characteristics of high-performing teams, all of which highlight the vital role of close connection among colleagues as a driver of team performance.

Recognizing employees for the good work they do is a critical leadership skill – and has an impact on morale, productivity, performance, retention, and even customer satisfaction. Yet, there are a frightening number of leaders who fail to do it frequently or skillfully. Based on an analysis of thousands of 360-degree leadership assessments, the authors show there is a strong connection between employee recognition and engagement. Managers who are rated in the top 10% for giving recognition are much more likely to have employees who report feeling engaged, confident they’ll be treated fairly, and willing to put in higher levels of discretionary effort. The authors also share tips on improving both the substance and delivery of the recognition.

Do you find yourself avoiding conversations on disabilities? Worried you'll offend a disabled friend? A disability rights activist shares ways to be a better ally and to destigmatize disability in America.

When you’re at your wit’s end with a challenging colleague and it feels like you’ve tried everything, well-meaning friends and coworkers may tell you to “just ignore it” or to “suck it up” and move on with your life. But suppressing our emotions rarely helps. In this piece, the author outlines four tactics that are tempting to try — but often backfire — when dealing with a difficult colleague. Another one to avoid: waiting to see if your difficult colleague will just leave on their own. Your dream that they’ll walk out the door may come true, but there’s no guarantee that the culture will shift or that you’ll get along with their replacement. Ultimately you’re better off trying to create a workable situation with your colleague now. And remember: even small improvements can make a big difference.

Working in a coffee bar means working in close quarters with your fellow baristas, managers, and owners. In this daily work we will eventually begin to feel the tension and start to wonder about how we can set boundaries for ourselves so we can…

“venture-backed CEOs after laying off half the company”

Many companies suspended reviews during Covid. Now they are paying renewed attention to worker performance—much to the chagrin of some employees.

Being a perfectionist does not mean that you are doomed as a manager. Organizational research on perfectionism is starting to provide new insights and practical evidence-based steps for managers and their network to breaking free from their perfectionistic compulsions. Fortunately, perfectionists are likely to be goal-focused and action-oriented and these strategies are aimed at helping them recalibrate their expectations.

*They might not actually make you go.

Everyone from your dentist to your delivery guy is now popping up in your texts. New email-like tools, including Mark as Unread and filters, can help.