• Gourmet Coffee Stations
• Ping Pong Tables
• Meditation Rooms
• Free Food
• Cubicles
• No Cubicles
• Remote Work
• No Remote Work
• Food Truck Thursday

And I am sure that every reader can name a half-dozen more!

Do any of these work?  Well – maybe some, for a while, in some places.

But now we have new research from Harvard Business Review that tells us of one Office Design Feature that actually makes a difference.  Based on a study of more than 6,000 knowledge workers, the data revealed that the single factor consistently distinguishing elite “superteams” from average ones is a quiet place to do focused work. These teams have access to an environment where they could concentrate without interruption.

Interestingly, the study found that high-performing teams are just as likely to be fully remote as they are hybrid or completely in-person. The physical arrangement itself doesn’t guarantee success because every environment introduces its own unique friction. In-person teams battle spontaneous drop-ins and background noise, while remote teams frequently drown in a flood of constant messaging and video calls.

To replicate the success of these superteams, leaders should shift their focus toward protecting mental bandwidth through three core practices:

• Integrate Independent Thinking: Real collaboration rarely stems from constant interaction. Try “brainwriting”—encouraging team members to generate ideas independently before bringing them to the group for refinement.
• Start Small with Focus Blocks: Dozens of tiny daily interruptions shatter attention span. Experiment by introducing a single 60-minute focus block once or twice a week where employees are explicitly exempt from checking messages or joining other meetings.
• Match Environment to Task: Different responsibilities demand different cognitive conditions. Give professionals the autonomy to select their workspace based on the task—reserving quiet zones or specific hours for deep analytical work.

Ultimately, exceptional teamwork isn’t about maximizing togetherness. It is about designing an environment that empowers every professional to contribute their very best thinking.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Friedman, R.  “The Office Amenity That Actually Improves Teamwork,” Harvard Business Review online, January 9, 2026.

Traditional expertise is becoming decentralized – and accelerated by AI, meaning leaders can no longer rely on sheer authority to add value.  Successful leaders today are facilitators of a collective process in which they can tap into expertise across the organization.  They follow as much as they lead.

Recent research reported in Harvard Business Review tells us more about this.  Strikingly, meta-analyses reveal that the exact traits that make someone a competent follower—such as emotional stability, curiosity, kindness, and learning ability—are identical to those that predict leadership success to today’s environment.

Following are the five key capabilities of exemplary Follower-Leaders:

• Active Listening: Listen to truly understand reality and reduce blind spots, rather than filtering information to protect your ego or validate existing beliefs.
• Prioritizing Purpose Over Credit: Focus on what works best for the collective mission, eliminating performative theatrics and the hunger for individual applause.
• Reliable Execution: Ground your high-level strategy in reality by maintaining a firsthand understanding of how work actually gets done and the constraints your frontline faces.
• Critical Dissent: Welcome constructive pushback and flag risks early, protecting the organization from the dangerous echo chambers of unchallenged authority.
• Coachability: Actively seek feedback to continuously adapt, avoiding the complacency and obsolescence that often accompany a senior title.

Ultimately, outstanding leadership isn’t about commanding from an isolated peak. It is about listening relentlessly, learning constantly, and knowing when to step back to rely on someone else’s specialized knowledge. By learning to follow well, you naturally build the trust and credibility required to lead.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Chamorro-Premuzic, T. & Edmondson, A.  “The Best Leaders Are Great Followers” Harvard Business Review online, January 14, 2026.

A recent article in Harvard Business Review provides some helpful insights into this challenge.  Here are some things we can all do to be empathetic while still driving high performance and holding people accountable.  The authors call this mastering “wise empathy.”  It includes making core shifts to your daily leadership routine:

1.  Sincerely Check-in with Others.  During your regular one-on-one meetings, don’t start out with a casual “Hey, how are you doing?” – to which we all mechanically say “Good.”  Take your time and sincerely ask something like “Good to see you, Chris.  I know you have tons going on here at work and I am sure there are many things going on in your personal life as well.  How are you?  How’s it going?”  You may be surprised how much you can learn if you ask and listen sincerely.

2.  Regulate Your Response, Focus on the Other.  If the other person shares good news, great!  Celebrate with them!  “My partner just got a big promotion!”  If they share something negative that is seriously bothering them, then respond compassionately.  However, don’t get caught up in the negative emotion yourself.  Focus on cognitive empathy (understanding their perspective). versus emotional empathy (feeling someone else’s pain).

3.  Move from Commiseration to Compassion.  Commiserating feels supportive in the moment, but it often leaves both parties stuck in a loop of shared frustration. Wise empathy requires a deliberate pivot from simply validating a negative emotion to actively asking, “How can we best support you?  What do you need right now to move forward?”   This shifts the dynamic from a passive emotional echo chamber to a constructive, forward-looking dialogue.

4. Establish Firm Operational Boundaries. Empathy does not mean lowering performance standards or taking on extra workloads to shield your team from accountability. True wise empathy means recognizing when an individual’s challenges require structural adjustments, clear prioritization, or HR support, rather than a manager trying to play the role of an unqualified therapist.  Encourage them to consider talking with a mental health professional if the issue seems to warrant it.

Leadership is no longer just about managing tasks; it is about managing human energy. By upgrading raw emotional instincts into wise empathy, you can protect your own mental bandwidth while building a resilient, psychologically safe culture where your team truly feels supported.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Hobson, N. & Depow, G. J. “How Leaders Can Practice Wise Empathy,” Harvard Business Review online, January 14, 2026.

“Is Execution Where Strategy Goes to Die?”

The article goes on to say: “Execution is an odd word. On the one hand, it means ‘the carrying out of a plan or course of action.’ On the other, it means, ‘the carrying out of a death sentence.’”  Execution is indeed where strategy often goes to die.

But it does not have to be like that!

In a more recent article in Harvard Business Review, the author points out that the breakdown between Strategy and Execution falls into three predictable areas. Here is how to spot them—and get your team back in lockstep:

1. The Arrogance Problem.  Sometimes, strategic vision simply outruns actual human capacity. When senior leaders lack full visibility into daily workflows, they project ambitious roadmaps that overwhelm the team, causing burnout and turnover. Ambitious goals are one thing, but goals that are completely detached from reality are non-starters.  Try involving front line workers in strategy development.

2. The Skills Problem.  When strategies shift, the required skills often shift too. If people are placed in roles that don’t match the demands of the new strategy, execution bogs down and output fails to meet professional standards. Build in time for training that is necessary for the team to deliver on the new strategy.

3. The Information Sharing Problem.  Middle managers are responsible for interpreting strategy and guiding teams. However, if they lack executive visibility into long-term priorities, they get paralyzed. Unsure of what can be safely dropped or delegated, they hold onto everything, which quickly slows down the entire system.  Involve them at the highest levels.

To mend these disconnects, you need more transparency and communication between different levels in the hierarchy.  You must create a trust-based communication loop. When teams feel safe offering clarity upward, operational concerns are treated as valuable data to improve the work rather than as active resistance.

Leadership isn’t just about setting direction or driving results – it’s about strengthening the link between the two. By investing in clearer meaning and deeper trust, you can ensure your organization moves with perfect alignment and purpose.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: McCray, F.  “When Strategy and Execution Fall Out of Sync,” Harvard Business Review online, January 22, 2026.

*Meet Regularly.  You should have developmental conversations with this employee – and every employee – twice a year.

*Show Them the Path.  Once you get the inkling that you have a future “star” on your hands, tell them this.  Outline the knowledge and skills that they will need to develop to ascend to the next level.  Support their development.  Make sure your bosses know early on that you have a developing star.

*Be Proactive.  As the development process moves forward, be proactive with your bosses.  If there are not going to be any promotions available in due time with the current org chart, are there roles you can create that provide additional responsibility, compensation, and a new title?

*Be Honest with Your Star.  Tell your star what you are able to do and what you cannot do.  Try to maximize additional compensation, training, and job responsibility – even if you cannot provide a title change.

*Support Them If They Decide to Leave.  Encourage them to be honest with you.  If they decide they need to look around, encourage them and offer to support them in every way possible.

*The Door Swings Both Ways.  If they leave, make sure that it is on the best of terms.  Keep them in mind when you have future job openings.  If they are a real hotshot, this person could end up being your future boss!

There is no substitute for treating people right.  If you build the kind of culture in which you treat your star this way, word will spread.  Future stars will be attracted to your organization.  You can’t keep them all, but if you attract enough of them – it won’t matter.

A new challenge and a new opportunity.

Regardless of the quality of the relationship you had with your former boss, you are best off assuming that there will be changes – and remaining open-minded about those.

If your new boss is an insider, then maybe you already have a relationship that you can build on.

But a new boss from the outside is a special situation.  While a boss transition brings undeniable disruption, it also delivers a rare gift: a completely clean slate. Here are some ideas from a recent article in Harvard Business Review on how to grab the steering wheel and make the transition work for you:

1. Your First Impression.  A new manager has no history with your past mistakes, old patterns, or previous workplace struggles. Because people form lasting judgments within seconds—a psychological phenomenon known as “thin-slicing” – you must be intentional about your visible behaviors from day one. Decide what you want to be known for moving forward.

2. Provide an Executive Briefing.  Your new boss is likely drinking from a firehose, navigating enormous complexity while trying to evaluate their new team. Help them orient faster by sending a concise, well-crafted briefing before your first meeting.

3. Decode Their Working Style Fast.  Don’t wait for your new boss to volunteer their operating preferences. Proactively initiate a conversation early on to align your workflows. Ask targeted questions to clear up any ambiguity:

• What are your top priorities in the short and medium term?
• How often do you want to meet and what would you like me to prepare for each meeting?
• How would you like us to communicate – email, text, phone, Slack?

4. Choose Cohesion Over Competition.  Leadership transitions often trigger a survival instinct among colleagues, leading to political jockeying for position and resources. Resist this pull. Reach out to your peers proactively to resolve overlapping responsibilities before your manager walks into them. Standing out as a unifying, mature team player builds immediate executive trust.

Taking a passive “wait-and-see” approach during a transition is a major risk. By actively managing up, you can successfully turn leadership uncertainty into a powerful launchpad for your career.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Smith, D. D.  “The Keys to Succeeding Under a New Manager,” Harvard Business Review online, May 18, 2026.

In fact, high performing teams are subject to overwhelm even more than an “average” team since they have such high aspirations.

Even the best teams need to pace themselves.

Overwhelm can sneak up on us and be hidden.  One team member who was interviewed for a recent article in Harvard Business Review said:

“I was holding it together on the outside, yet inside, I felt like I was screaming.  I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate, and even small tasks felt impossible.  I was overwhelmed.”

As a leader, it is hard to see when things have gone too far.  Some stress is stimulating and good.  But it can go too far and produce burnout: “Burnout is an outcome of unmanaged chronic stress that develops over time. (Meister & Dael, 2025, p. 2).”

Identifying overwhelm can be difficult to spot.  It emerges when the three core pillars sustaining employee productivity fracture:

• Lack of Predictability: Overwhelm surges when people feel powerless to influence their environment or cannot see what challenges are coming next, reducing their sense of agency.
• Changes in Work Standards and Expectations: Employees feel crushed by unrealistic external demands or toxic, self-imposed perfectionism. This triggers a harsh inner dialogue where they assume they are “not good enough” because they are struggling.
• No Time for Recovery: The system breaks down when employees lack time, staffing, or support. Over one-third of participants cited severe time pressure as their central trigger.

Because we – as leaders – are often part of the problem, we must actively redesign the conditions of work to become the solution. The HBR article outlines five specific actions leaders can take:

1. Spot Both the Silence and the Strain: Do not assume a quiet employee is a thriving one. Look for subtle behavioral shifts such as decision paralysis, withdrawal, or frantic, break-less working.
2. Engineer Micro-Control: While leaders cannot remove macro corporate uncertainty, they can help teams break overwhelming backlogs down into small, clear priorities.
3. Recalibrate Performance Standards: Actively disrupt perfectionist cultures by explicitly defining what “good enough” looks like.
4. Create Psychological Permission to Say “I’m at Capacity”: Establish a social environment where setting boundaries carries no professional stigma or risk of reprisal: “What would you need to adjust to make this task manageable?”
5. Design Work for Recovery, Not Endurance: Normalize micro-breaks, mental detachment after hours, and rest as legitimate performance practices.

In the modern workplace, overwhelm is no longer an occasional hurdle – it is a defining feature of work life. By recognizing the subtle warning signs early and fostering cultures that value recovery alongside results, leaders can transform operational strain into long-term, sustainable performance.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Meister, A. & Dael, N. “Do You Know If Your Team Is Overwhelmed?,” Harvard Business Review online, December 8, 2025.

A slow but steady shift has taken place in organizations over the past several years.  The result is that managers are leading larger teams than ever, often with significantly less administrative or organizational support.

Responsibilities continue to multiply, but the resources do not.

If you find yourself trapped in a daily cycle of firefighting rather than thinking strategically, you are experiencing a common modern plight: your team has simply grown too big for traditional management models.

While you may not have the power to change your company’s organizational chart, you can change how your team operates. Based on insights from research reported in Harvard Business Review, here are four strategies to regain control when your span of control feels unmanageable:

1.  Shift from Individuals to Small Groups.  Running traditional one-on-one meetings with a large team will completely devour your calendar. Instead, cluster your employees into small groups of three or four based on project alignment or operational specialty. Meet with these small cohorts collectively to facilitate collaborative problem-solving.  Hold one-on-one meetings much less frequently.

2.  Learn to Say No to Good Ideas.  Knowledge work accumulation is notoriously invisible, making it easy to say yes to “just one more thing” until the team is completely buried. Highly competent teams naturally generate a steady stream of great initiatives, but as a leader, you must ruthlessly prioritize and say no to good ideas to protect execution capacity.

3.  Flip Your Meetings.  Many leaders use communication channels backward: they use face-to-face meetings for simple project updates and turn to Slack or email for complex problem-solving. This fills your inbox with exhausting threads of clarifying questions. Flip this dynamic by handling routine status updates via text or email and dedicating valuable synchronous meeting time exclusively to real-time problem-solving.

4.  Protect Your Calendar and Be Transparent.  Stop attending every meeting. Trust your instincts on where your presence is mandatory, and view skipping non-essential sessions as a development opportunity to send a direct report in your place. Concurrently, be entirely transparent with your team about your bandwidth constraints. Explicitly invite them to follow up or “bug” you if an email slips through the cracks, removing the guesswork from their workflow.

You need to protect your time so that you use your work time effectively and have a life outside of work.  Leading a large team requires abandoning the desire to do everything yourself. By restructuring your communication and establishing firm boundaries, you can lead effectively without burning out.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Knight, R. “When Managing Your Team Becomes Too Much,” Harvard Business Review online, October 3, 2025.

And yet, so many leaders do this very poorly.

Some of the implications for lack of accountability include:

• Below average performance of the team and organization
• Resentment builds among team members
• Lack of accountability becomes a part of the culture and spreads
• Lose high performers who leave the company

Here is what you need to do to become better at holding others accountable:

1.  Make sure that you set the standard by following through with every commitment.  You set the tone.  Learn more here.

2.  Establish specific outcomes for every job.  Hold people accountable for the results they need to produce, not progress on their to do list.

3.  Make sure you are clear on the specific expectations of every team member.

4.  Communicate commitments made by each team member in writing after every team meeting.

5.  When people miss deadlines, contact them and ask for an update.  Discipline yourself to do this every time.  Don’t play favorites.  And, you don’t have to be a jerk about it.  Just ask.

6.  Encourage your team to hold one another accountable.

This is a good start.  If you do these things consistently, then you will build a culture of accountability.  In time, this culture will reinforce itself.  High performers will be drawn to your team.

I was not interested!  I didn’t need to “win” friends.  I was already good at “making” friends.  And the “winning friends” part made me suspicious that the “influencing people” part was about “how to manipulate” people.  Not interested.

Finally, enough people kept recommending it that I broke down and read it.  And I became a fan!  That was many years ago.  I have recommended the book and/or given it to many people over the years.  This little blog is my recommendation for you to read it as well!

The most important part of the book is Carnegie’s recommendation: “Become genuinely interested in other people.”

As you know, some people are “genuinely” interested in others – and some are not.  Some are way more interested in themselves.  I am guessing that since you are reading this, you are someone who IS genuinely interested in others – you care about them.  And if that is true, then this book will help you understand how to show people that you really care.

Here are just some of the nuggets from the book that may help you decide to read it:

• Remember names: A person’s name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
• Be a good listener: Encourage others to talk about themselves.
• Show respect for opinions: Never say, “You’re wrong.”
• If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
• Give honest and sincere appreciation
• Smile: It is a messenger of your goodwill.
• As a leader, praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement.
• By controlling your ego and prioritizing the dignity of others, you naturally gain influence.

If you care about people, then using these behaviors will help people see it and feel it.

IMPORTANT: These are not tricks!  If you don’t care about people and use these behaviors, people will realize that you are full of it!

In a world that often rewards selfishness and in which many people don’t feel cared about, these are important behaviors to consider – if you really do care about others.  And, of course, if you don’t care, people will figure you out.  You cannot fake sincerity.