WACD Reading List

How to be a caring and thoughtful leader while holding your team to high standards.

Nonprofit organizations are more vulnerable than ever to fraud or errors in the organization’s financial statements. With employees, management, and board members focused on helping people in the communities the nonprofit serves, time and attention to key financial internal controls has more than likely been refocused to the organization’s mission and purpose.

“I’m the most tenured person on my team,” my friend Joyce, a senior marketing manager, told me. “But I feel like a new hire.”

How do those rejected employees respond? They respond poorly, at least in the short term. After all, no one wants to be turned down for a job, and the sting is often greater when you are told “no” by your current employer. Studies have shown that internal rejection leads to reduced job satisfaction and reduced commitment to the organization. Rejection can also engender feelings of envy toward the workers who “beat them out” for the job or lead employees to engage in counterproductive work behaviors, such as stealing from their companies. If employees stick around a few months after rejection, however, these negative attitudinal effects tend to fade away.

The 25/5 rule is an emotionally intelligent way to avoid distraction, achieve more focus, and get more done.

The science of hope and wonder can help us reinvent our post-pandemic future.

Have you ever attended a meeting that wasn’t the meeting? Everyone was pleasant and agreeable in the room, but then filed off to engage in back-channel conversations and hold kangaroo courts. This kind of charade is one of the many symptoms of a “nice” culture. But what’s touted as niceness is often nothing more than the veneer of civility, a cute nod to psychological safety, a hologram that falsely signals inclusion, collaboration, and high performance.

So, as a leader, how do you keep your team motivated and engaged during your company’s transition? Of course, some of that will be determined by factors outside of your control, like the degree of flexibility your organization is offering. But the more say employees have over their work structure, the less resistance they’ll feel to the transition. Setting aside the things that are out of your hands, here are a few things you can do to ease everyone’s transition to whatever your company’s version of “next” looks like.

“You can learn more from speaking to someone in 15 minutes than spending your life doing something. I learned a lot about what to do and what not to do by watching other people,” he said.

Our natural tendency to add rather than subtract stems, in part, from it being much harder to “demonstrate competence by subtracting,” Klotz explains. Monumental feats of architecture, like the Great Pyramids and Great Wall of China, stick in our minds because of their grand scale, and are integral to how towering civilizations demonstrated their superiority.

Labor and Industries is responsible for keeping the workplace safe. Their guidelines say employers must confirm the vaccination status of employees before allowing them to take off their masks and no longer socially distance. While the employer doesn’t need to keep a copy of the vaccination card or an attestation letter, they do need to keep a record that it was checked, and use the same method for all employees.

"...people whose narcissism leads them to manipulate and exploit others may have difficulties in distinguishing themselves from others. They see your goals as the same as theirs, so why wouldn’t you want to throw your personal interests by the wayside to satisfy theirs? Aren’t you willing to be that tool they need to succeed."

And today, we’re excited to share our list of nominees for Summer 2021. Neither our staff nor our curators have read each and every title below, but we believe that the two best nonfiction books of the season are among them. So if you’re looking for summer reading, the nominees are…

In PwC's latest US Remote Work Survey, PwC surveyed 133 US executives and 1,200 US office workers between November 24 and December 5, 2020, to determine how effective remote work has been. According to their findings, 80% of organizations are planning a hybrid work environment for the long term. PwC's Digital Products Leader, Tom Puthiyamadam, an expert who coaches teams on how to bring the best ideas to life, shared with me three best practices for navigating this transition to a hybrid model.

The 60-30-10 Rule was developed by leading teams researchers, Ruth Wageman and the late Harvard Professor, Richard Hackman. The rule explains variance in team performance, specifically it says that: 60 percent of the variance in team performance is attributed to the way a team is designed. 30 percent of the variance in team performance is attributed to the quality of team launches. And only 10 percent is attributed to how well the leader coaches the team.

What would be best for most office workers—and what’s most likely to happen for many of them—is something between the extremes of old-school office work and digital nomadism. What’s right for you might end up being a little further in either direction, depending on how social or siloed your job is, or if you’re a particularly extreme introvert or extrovert. But I’m here to argue for a particular baseline: three days in the office, and two at home.

We recently spoke to a CEO who was feeling anxious about public speaking in the hybrid office. “When I give presentations now, it’s simple. Everyone’s on Zoom,” he told us. “What happens when some people go back while others still work from home?”

Over the past year, many of us have found things to love about working from home like flexibility, the ability to focus, and no commute. Now that offices are starting re-open, you might start to remember that there is a lot to love about the office, too: social interaction, the joys of collaboration, and of course, that endless pot of coffee. Many companies intend to give us the best of both worlds by allowing employees to split their time between home and the workplace. But it will only give you the best of both worlds if you figure out how to combine home and office time in a way that maximizes your productivity and personal wellbeing. That means figuring out which days to spend at home, which days to spend at the office, and just as crucial, how to sell your boss on that plan.

Pensions are a type of “defined benefit” plan. Typically, you’d pay into it (or technically your employer would pay into it on your behalf) during your working years, and once you retired, you’d have a guaranteed income stream for life...“Defined contribution” plans like 401(k)s encourage employees to save on their own while offering tax-deferred savings features. Plus, employers often match a percentage of their employees’ contributions, which both encourages them to save more and provides an added benefit in the form of additional money from the employer in excess of a salary.

Once you know something, it can be difficult to take the perspective of someone who doesn't. This phenomenon, known as the curse of knowledge, can lead to miscommunication, conflict, and professional stumbles. To avoid this pitfall, one should slow down, think about what their audience needs to know, and try to catch themselves making assumptions.

Residents of rural areas think working from home is temporary and as soon as the threat of the pandemic ends, everyone will return to the office.

As organizations grow, they progress through somewhat predictable patterns of culture change. This happens because culture is an expression of how a group of people works together to solve collective problems...

Are robots coming for your job? New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose says companies and governments are increasingly using automation and artificial intelligence to cut costs, transform workplaces and eliminate jobs — and more changes are coming.