Pessimism can be like a death spiral and leaders often have difficulty pulling out of it.

Even after the worst of a corporate restructuring, market downturn, or project crisis has passed, teams often remain stuck in a rut—flat in meetings, silent with new ideas, and constantly “bracing for impact.“ This lingering pessimism isn’t an operational issue; it is a psychological one.

In a new article in Harvard Business Review, positive psychology researcher Michelle Gielan explains that human brains are naturally wired with a negativity bias. In fact, a study Gielan conducted showed that just three minutes of negative news in the morning makes people 27% more likely to describe their entire workday as a bad one.

When negativity hardens, employees enter what psychologists call “learned helplessness”—the toxic belief that their individual actions no longer affect outcomes. But trying to fix pessimism with forced cheerfulness or “good-vibes-only” speeches backfires, leading to even higher burnout.

Instead, leaders and professionals must cultivate resilient optimism: the ability to see challenges clearly while maintaining a firm belief that action still matters. Gielan’s research across 25,000 professionals found that optimistic employees are 31% more productive, 40% more likely to be promoted, and five times less likely to burn out.

To build resilient optimism on your team, Gielan recommends three core strategies:

• Model Constructive Behavior: Attitudes are contagious through our brain’s mirror systems. Offer genuine, specific appreciation—studies show a simple “thank you” can boost output by 50%. Additionally, model healthy boundaries by stepping out of low-impact commitments and genuinely disconnecting during time off.
• Reframe Workplace Stress: Shift from viewing stress as a threat to seeing it as a signal that sharpens focus. Practice “Yes, and…” communication: acknowledge difficult realities (“Yes, we lost a key client…”), but immediately pivot to constructive action (“…and here is how we will adapt our strategy”).
• Highlight “Positive Dots”: In noisy environments, our minds string negative events into a discouraging narrative. Counteract this by intentionally supplying positive dots: send direct praise for quiet wins, remove small operational friction points for a colleague, and solicit good news during hallway catch-ups.

Countering workplace pessimism isn’t about ignoring hard facts or papering over real difficulties. It is about restoring agency. By modeling constructive habits, reframing daily pressure, and consistently highlighting progress, you can replace learned helplessness with an empowered, problem-solving mindset across your entire team.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Gielan, M.  “How Leaders Counter Pessimism in Trying Times,” Harvard Business Review, November-December, 2026.

Maybe you need to say “no” more often.  I learned this the hard way when I had so much stress that I believe it contributed to a cancer diagnosis.  That was 43 years ago – I am happy to be alive and that I learned to start saying “no” more often.

Here is an interesting list from Matt Rutherford on ten ways to politely say “no.”

1. “Thank you for thinking of me, but I’m unable to take this on right now.”
   This response is polite and acknowledges the request while firmly stating your availability.
2. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m focusing on other priorities at the moment.”
   Here, you’re letting the other person know that you have other commitments that take precedence.
3. “I’d love to help, but my schedule is already full.”
   This acknowledges the request while making it clear that your plate is full.
4. “Unfortunately, I have to decline, but I hope it goes well.”
   This response is direct, but offers a positive sentiment, showing that you wish them success.
5. “I’m afraid I can’t commit to this at the moment.”
   A straightforward yet polite way to decline without needing to go into too much detail.
6. “This isn’t something I can take on right now, but thank you for thinking of me.”
   A gentle way of turning down the request while expressing gratitude for being considered.
7. “I’m honored you asked, but I need to pass this time.”
   This response shows that you value the offer but still places your boundary clearly.
8. “I’d rather not, but thank you for asking!”
   Sometimes a brief, honest response is the best way to say no, without over-explaining.
9. “I’m flattered by the offer, but I don’t have the capacity to help at this time.”
   You show appreciation for being considered, but also make it clear you can’t take on any more.
10. “I have to decline, but please let me know if there’s another way I can support you.”
    This is a great way to maintain the relationship by offering help in a different capacity, while still setting your limits.

Saying “no” is good role modeling for others.  So many people do not realize that “no” is actually an option.  Share this with your team and friends.  Say “no” and excel at the things you say “yes” to!

*Ideas for this blog taken with permission from Matt Rutherford’s post: “The Art of Setting Boundaries: Why Saying ‘No” is Key to Your Success,” October 13, 2024.

In reality, burnout looks different depending on where a person is in their career.  A recent Harvard Business Review article demonstrates how we can address issues of burnout at different career stages.

When organizations view burnout as a universal experience, they default to generic solutions like wellness apps or broad mandates. In reality, burnout manifests uniquely depending on your role, your proximity to decision-making, and your level of authority. Preventing burnout requires leaders to recognize these distinct pressure points across the org chart and redesign how work gets structured.

To effectively stop burnout before it starts, leaders must address its root causes at every organizational level:

• Early-Career Professionals (Invisible Overload): At this stage, burnout is driven less by sheer hours and more by a lack of clarity and low control. Junior employees burn out trying to decode unspoken expectations. The Fix: Limit weekly priorities to three or fewer, make decision-making workflows explicit, and grant permission to ask questions without penalty.
• Mid-Career Managers (Structural Compression): Managers face high responsibility with limited authority, trapped between executive demands and team needs. Flexibility often degrades into constant availability. The Fix: Reduce meeting bloat, clarify decision rights, and establish strict norms around off-hours communication.
• Executives (Moral Injury): For senior leaders, burnout stems from decision fatigue, isolation, and value conflicts when business demands clash with personal ethics. The Fix: Build trusted peer forums for confidential reflection and establish clear decision cadences to prevent constant firefighting.
• Founders & Mission-Driven Leaders (Identity Collapse): When a leader’s personal identity merges completely with their organization, rest feels like betrayal. The Fix: Structure governance so the mission does not rely on individual overextension, and maintain explicit “stop doing” lists.

Burnout is not solved by asking employees to tough it out or rely on productivity hacks. Real prevention requires evaluating systemic friction: Where has constant availability replaced actual performance? Which delayed decisions are creating unnecessary urgency? When we fix the underlying system design, we protect both human well being and organizational performance.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Auger-Dominguez, D.  “Burnout Looks Different Across the Org Chart.  Watch for These Signs.”  Harvard Business Review online, April 3, 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.

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.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the [person] who points out how the strong [person] stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the [person] who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spend [themselves] in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if [they] fail, at least fails while daring greatly, so that [their] place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

One of my Board members was giving me a pep talk once and told me: “No one ever built a statue to a critic.”  How true!

Many of you reading this – regardless of your level of responsibility in your organization – are “The Person in the Arena.”  Have courage!  Have faith in your mission and vision!  There are many of us cheering you on as you “dare greatly!”

But it’s not Happy for everyone.

Many of us are very fortunate to take part in a lot of extra celebratory activities during the holidays.  There are parties and gifts and family gatherings.  Very fun!

But it’s not Fun for everyone.

There are many different reasons why people may be “blue” at the holidays.

• The loss of a loved one in recent years is always more pronounced around the holidays
• If someone is lonely, they are often even more lonely at this time of year
• Financial stress is amplified during these gift giving times
• Festive TV specials and commercials can make people feel even more left out than usual

It is easy for the fortunate ones among us to get very busy at this time of the year and overlook friends and co-workers who are having a tough time.

*Slow down and pay extra special attention to everyone you regularly interact with.

*Turn up the volume on your empathy awareness – if you see something, say something: “Hey, how’s it going?  Want to get together for a coffee?”

*Treat everyone with an extra portion of care.  It is very easy for people to disguise what they are going through.

Of course, the shorter days and colder weather in most of the US does not help.  Some churches even have special “Longest Night” services on Winter Solstice to provide hopeful, caring spaces for people.

It is great to celebrate the holidays.  But let’s do our best to bring everyone along with us.

Following are some ideas on how we can create strategic harmony and integration with these various life goals, based on new research reported in Harvard Business Review.

One of the first things we need to do to create Goal Harmony is to change our mindset from “either/or” thinking to an “and/both” approach.  Research shows that this mindset is a habit that can be developed over time – so give it a try and keep working at it.

Creating Goal Harmony begins by listing all of our major life goals and the essential activities associated with them.  Then we want to look for connections between them.  For example:

• Taking care of your health – working out, eating right, getting your rest – will make you more productive at work and feel better about yourself.
• Invite work colleagues to go with you to your favorite sporting event. You will enjoy the game and deepen relationships with colleagues.
• Take your kids with you to community volunteer activities. You all “do good,” they learn the importance of contributing to community and you build your relationship with them. They “might” even stay off their phones for a while.
• You can also create Goal Harmony for sub-goals within the same broad goal, such as health. The less alcohol you drink and earlier you go to bed, the better sleep you get, and the better chance you have of getting up in time to work out the next morning.

Creating Goal Harmony can provide us with more fulfillment from the achievement of our various goals.  No longer do we need to feel “guilty” about sacrificing one goal for another.  Harmony among our goals also increases the chances that we will really stick to a goal commitment.

Not paying attention to an area of our life that is important to us is like losing a part of ourselves.  We don’t need to do that.  We can create strategic harmony that integrates our life goals and truly gives us a full, thriving life.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Wang, J. & Fischbach, A.   “How to Create Harmony Between Your Personal and Professional Goals,” Harvard Business Review online, September 19, 2025.

Will the annual audit ever be critical of you for not trying to seize that new opportunity that you decided was too risky?  No.

Audits are critical of acts of “commission” vs “omission.”  You don’t want the financial report to show a big expense on a project that did not work out.  But the audit will never fault you for missing that investment in a new idea.

Just ask Kodak.  Remember them?  They once had 90% share of the film market in the US.  When the idea of digital photography came along, they said “pass.”  They only realized many years too late that this new technology – which they invented – was the future.

Sometimes we become so successful that the idea of taking a risk and failing is unthinkable.  And yet, that risk could lead to even more success.

How do we overcome our fear of failure?  Here are some ideas from an article in Harvard Business Review.

1. Redefine Failure. Fear of failure often stems from a fear of looking foolish or not meeting expectations. Instead of viewing failure as a sign of personal inadequacy, reframe it as a learning opportunity. Successful professionals are not those who avoid mistakes, but those who learn from them and move forward. Entrepreneurs like to say: “Fail fast and fail forward.”
2. Acknowledge the Fear. Rather than pretending the fear isn’t there, take a moment to acknowledge it. Giving your fear a voice can lessen its power over you. Respond to the fear by saying: “This is a calculated risk that I am willing to take. The potential upside is worth this risk.”  Keep a picture of success at the forefront of your mind.
3. Test Your Assumptions. Our fears are often based on worst-case scenarios that are unlikely to happen. Test your fear by asking yourself, “What is the worst that can happen if I fail?” Often, the answer is not as dire as we imagine. In the professional world, setbacks can lead to new opportunities, new skills, and even new professional relationships.
4. Get Comfortable with Discomfort. Feeling fearful is a normal part of stepping outside of your comfort zone. If you don’t feel a little apprehension, it might be a sign that you aren’t challenging yourself enough to grow and achieve your most important goals.

You will absolutely fail sometimes.  Fine.  Own it.  Learn.  And be proud you were willing to take a risk on something you believed in.  The alternative is that you would never know if you could have been successful.  Use these four steps so you can start to see fear not as an obstacle, but as a guide that helps you move forward and achieve your full potential.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Peppercorn, S.  “How to Overcome Your Fear of Failure,” Harvard Business Review, July-August 2022, pp. 135-139.