But according to recent research featured in Harvard Business Review, traditional metrics miss nearly half the equation.  Findings reveal a powerful hidden dynamic: training frontline staff doesn’t just elevate their own output—it dramatically boosts the productivity of their managers.

The research study revealed a very impactful “upward ripple effect.”  It tracked frontline employees who completed a variety of different training programs and the results were striking:

• Frontline Growth & Retention: Trainees increased their goal achievement by 10%. They were also more likely to stay with the organization over three years and twice as likely to earn promotions.
• Managerial Time Unlocked: Supervisors working closely with trained employees saw an 8% boost in their own productivity, completing more strategic goals.
• Fewer Constant Escalations: Analysis of email data revealed that frontline workers sent fewer help-seeking messages to supervisors. Employees gained the knowledge and confidence to handle tasks independently.

Traditionally, organizations treat manager intervention as a necessary routine. When workers lack training, supervisors spend valuable hours solving basic problems and answering routine questions.

As someone who has spent – literally his entire career – in the education and training space, this is no surprise to me.  Whether it has been college students or Executive MBAs, the impact of quality education and training is a big double-win for organizations.

The study revealed that these managerial “spillover effects” accounted for nearly 45% of the training program’s total benefits. Without factoring in managerial time saved, an organization would need to train nearly twice as many frontline workers to achieve the exact same overall output.

As AI tools make upskilling more scalable, training should no longer be viewed as a mere expense. Equipping your team with practical skills liberates leadership from tactical firefighting, allowing managers to focus on high-impact strategic priorities. When you invest in your workforce, you aren’t just training employees—you are buying back valuable leadership bandwidth.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Rand, B.  “Why Training Employees Pays Off Twice,”  Harvard Business Review online, January 16, 2026.

Leaders may be tempted to assure people that nothing much will change.  But – that may or may not be true.  During moments of rapid technological upheaval, you cannot promise that roles, tasks, or organizational structures will remain unchanged.  But you can offer transparency and support.

A recent article in Harvard Business Review provides some suggestions for leaders whose teams may be feeling anxious about AI.  The most important thing we can do is to empower our team members to shift from being “AI passengers” – just watching from the sidelines – to becoming “AI pilots” who are engaged with and using these tools.

Following are four key strategies you can use to make this change:

• Acknowledge Fear and Uncertainty: Research shows that leaders who candidly admit what they do and do not know build deep trust and shared resilience. Normalizing AI anxiety signals to your team that it is perfectly okay to feel uncertain while choosing to move forward together.
• Create a Safe Space for Honest Dialogue: Establish dedicated, judgment-free environments to address the vulnerable questions behind AI adoption, such as individual purpose, value, and job security. Frame these conversations around constructive exploration rather than rushing to create immediate to-do lists.
• Take Committed Action and Set Guardrails: Counter workplace anxiety by empowering employees through hands-on learning and proactive reskilling opportunities. Crucially, establish explicit team norms ensuring that humans remain accountable and make all final decisions.
• Take Your Time: AI integration cannot be solved in a single meeting. Leaders must intentionally slow down and make continuous space for reflection, strategic thinking, and ongoing dialogue as technology evolves.

Ultimately, integrating AI into your daily work is far more than an IT upgrade—it is a human journey. By fostering an environment where employees feel heard, equipped, and supported, you can transform anxiety into shared purpose, helping your team navigate ongoing technological disruption with confidence.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Aarons-Mele, M.  “Your Team is Anxious About AI.  Here is How to Talk to Them About It,” Harvard Business Review online, January 20, 2026.

Whether it is financial modeling, software engineering, or complex project management, hard skills are what get you noticed and promoted. But as you climb the ladder, a surprising shift occurs: technical competence becomes table stakes, and your ultimate success hinges on something else entirely.

Research in a recent Harvard Business Review article highlights a growing leadership gap. Too many managers rely on hard skills that no longer match executive demands, viewing interpersonal abilities as optional “soft skills.”  In reality, abilities like active listening, empathy, and building trust are core people power skills—the fundamental drivers that move a leader from merely managing performance to inspiring and mobilizing people.

When leaders lack people power skills, organizational friction quickly follows. Hybrid teams misread tone, feedback turns defensive, and employees hesitate to voice new ideas. In meetings, a leader’s casual “Any thoughts?” is often met with complete silence—mistaken for agreement when it actually signals an erosion of psychological safety. Innovation stalls because the best ideas never make it into the room.

Fortunately, people power skills are learnable and trainable habits. Here are three practical strategies to develop yours:

• Conduct Leadership Listening Tours: Meet employees where their daily work actually happens: through small group conversations or informal one-on-ones. Listen with a deliberate focus on understanding friction points, rather than rushing in to solve them immediately.
• Practice Empathy Shadowing: Go beyond surveys by experiencing workplace processes firsthand. Shadowing front-line team members or observing customer touchpoints reveals systemic hurdles, tech glitches, and human workarounds that reports completely miss.
• Engage in Reverse Mentoring: Intentionally flip the dynamic by asking junior team members or colleagues with different lived experiences to mentor you. Pioneered by executives looking to understand emerging technology or diverse workplace perspectives, reverse mentoring uncovers blind spots outside your natural view.

Ultimately, technical expertise may earn you a promotion into leadership, but people power skills determine how effectively you sustain that impact. Don’t outsource humanity—lead with it.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Gotian, R.  “Why Leaders Need “Power” Skills,” Harvard Business Review online, April 15, 2026.

Most managers believe that being direct with negative feedback is essential for helping employees improve. But when constructive input crosses the line into destructive criticism, it does far more harm than good.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, researchers revealed that 81% of surveyed employees have experienced destructive feedback, with over 78% carrying those vivid, humiliating memories for years.

Destructive criticism rarely stems from malice. Instead, it is typically driven by high workplace stress, a lack of proper management training, emotional leakage, or the mistaken belief that “hard truths” build resilience. Regardless of intent, the damage to organizational culture is severe.

Whether it takes the form of feedback without actionable guidance, unfair assumptions, condescending tones, character attacks, or public shaming, destructive critique shuts people down. It erodes trust, stifles innovation, and often pushes high-performing talent straight out the door.

To ensure performance input actually helps employees grow rather than leaving lasting emotional scars, leaders must adopt five essential practices:

• Establish Explicit Guardrails: Set firm boundaries for workplace communication. Make it clear across your team that feedback must never humiliate, shame, or attack an individual’s personality or character.
• Use a 3-Part Structure: Ground every critique in three components: state the specific observable behavior, explain its operational impact, and outline concrete, actionable next steps. Without clear guidance, criticism feels like pure judgment.
• Pause Before Speaking: Destructive comments frequently happen during moments of pressure or frustration. Taking a quick pause helps leaders respond constructively to work behaviors rather than reacting to personal emotions.
• Repair Sideways Interactions: If a feedback conversation lands poorly or causes unintended harm, follow up quickly to acknowledge the impact, clarify your helpful intent, and actively restore psychological safety.
• Guard Against Hidden Bias: Studies show destructive criticism disproportionately targets women, younger staff, and underrepresented groups. Anchor all performance conversations in objective, job-relevant standards rather than subjective impressions.

Ultimately, effective feedback should serve as a launchpad for continuous learning rather than a source of workplace anxiety. When leaders learn to critique the work instead of attacking the worker, employees don’t just perform better—they stay, grow, and build thriving, high-trust organizations.

*Ideas for this blog taken from: Zhao, B., et.al.  “When Feedback Crosses the Line,” Harvard Business Review online, March 2, 2026.

• 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.

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.