I have a friend who appraises antiques — assigning a dollar value to the old Chinese vase your grandmother used for storing pencils, telling you how much those silver knickknacks from Aunt Fern are worth. He says the hardest part of his job, the part he dreads the most, is telling people that their treasure is worthless.

I can empathize. I feel like I do that too, every time I tell a prospective HBR author that their ideas, research, or writing just isn’t good enough to make the cut.

Rejection letters aren’t easy for any of us. Whether you’re telling a job candidate that he didn’t make the next round, an entrepreneur that you’re not going to fund her project, or a vendor that you no longer need his services, these are emails most of us dread crafting. Because it’s unpleasant, too many of us put it off or don’t do it at all, essentially letting our silence do the talking. That’s a missed opportunity (and rude). Though painful, rejection has benefits:...

All too often, hiring managers fail to invest sufficiently in recruiting for some of their most important roles — just because they’re not management or leadership jobs. In particular, there are three vital jobs that tend to get overlooked: essential experts, customer experience creators, and critical contractors. These people can make or break your business, almost all of them could probably be making more money elsewhere, and yet there’s almost never a plan for retaining them. To set your organization up for success, you need to figure out which roles will have the greatest impact on your company’s performance — and staff those positions with star players.

Your attention determines the experiences you have, and the experiences you have determine the life you live. Rather than allowing distractions to derail you, choose where you direct your attention at any given moment, based on an understanding of your priorities and goals. To do this, you need to control external factors like technology (turn off that phone!) and the environment (keep those interrupting colleagues away!). But you also need to learn to control internal factors, like your own behavior and thoughts. Learning to practice attention management won’t eliminate all distractions from your day, but it will give you more control over how you spend your time — and your life.

In large organizations, design is moving closer to the center of the enterprise. This shift isn’t about aesthetics and product development, however. It’s about imparting the principles of design—collectively known as design thinking—throughout the organization. The approach is in large part a response to the complexity of many products, services, and processes. People need help—they need their interactions with technologies and other complicated systems to be intuitive and pleasurable.

Design thinking is an essential tool for simplifying and humanizing. The principles include a focus on users’ experiences, especially their emotional ones; the creation of physical models, such as diagrams and sketches, to explore problems; the use of prototypes to experiment with solutions; a tolerance for failure; and thoughtful restraint in product features so that even a complex piece of technology can be easy to use.

Creating a design-centric culture requires...

The future of work looks grim for many people. A recent study estimated that 10% of U.S. jobs would be automated this year, and another estimates that close to half of all U.S. jobs may be automated in the next decade. The jobs that are likely to be automated are repetitive and routine. They range from reading X-rays, to truck driving, to stocking a warehouse. In this context, employers say that they’re seeking candidates who have other sorts of “soft skills,” such as being able to learn adaptively, to make good decisions, and to work well with others. These sought-after abilities, of course, fit perfectly with the sorts of things that people can do well, but are and will continue to be difficult to automate. All of this suggests that our educational systems should concentrate not simply on how people interact with technology (e.g., by teaching students to code), but also how they can do the things that technology will not be doing soon. These are the skills that are...

Raw intelligence is undoubtedly a huge asset, but it isn’t everything. And sometimes, when intellectually gifted people don’t achieve as much as they’d like to, it’s because they’re subtly undermining themselves. Five things smart people tend to struggle with: Smart people sometimes devalue other skills, like relationship building, and over-concentrate on intellect. Teamwork can be frustrating. Smart people often attach a lot of their self-esteem to being smart, which can decrease their resilience and lead to avoidance. They can get bored easily. And smart people sometimes see in-depth thinking and reflection as the solution to every problem. Learning to overcome these habits could be just the thing that gets your career unstuck.

Managers and employees increasingly find themselves stumbling through the workday bombarded by distractions from every direction. Constant updates from digital devices and constant meetings are the main culprits of personal distraction in the workplace. These issues need to be reined in by business leaders if productivity and employee well-being is a priority. The author provides five daily practices to help employees carve out more time for themselves in order to be more productive at work. Themes that tie together all of the practices include having a clear mind, tidy digital and physical surroundings, and the ability to take time to reflect.

When presented with a problem that requires behavior change, we pounce on it with big goals. We’re programmed to “go big or go home,” but big goals are more burdensome than they are motivational; they require daunting effort to accomplish and sustain.Instead, the way to achieve big is to start small — through micro habits. Micro habits are small components of a larger habit. By breaking down an ambitious job into smaller, more achievable ones that you build over long periods of time, micro habits help you complete big goals.To succeed with micro habits, you must be deliberate and choreograph steps to sustain them. First, identify a “ridiculously small” micro habit, and piggyback on a daily task, so it becomes part of your regular routine. Next, track your progress and hold steady for a long time before building on the habit. Finally, find others to hold you accountable and keep you motivated.

A boss who doesn’t advocate for you can stunt your growth and block your career opportunities. And you might not even know that you have an unsupportive boss. Most advocacy happens behind the scenes. When you found out you have one, the knee-jerk reaction is to self-promote. But that can backfire in the workplace. You need to start by understanding why your boss isn’t advocating for you. Proactively solicit the gift of your boss’s feedback. Consider getting a coach. You just might not have earned your boss’s advocacy yet. Assuming your performance is strong, here are three steps you can take. First, release your boss from your unmet expectations. You can’t shame someone into being your advocate. Second, find another advocate. The ideal sponsor is a powerful, high-ranking ally within your organization. Third, build your network inside and outside of the organization. We all need champions.

Dealing effectively with emotions is a key leadership skill. And naming our emotions — what psychologists call labeling — is an important first step in dealing with them effectively. But it’s harder than it sounds; many of us struggle to identify what exactly we are feeling, and often times the most obvious label isn’t actually the most accurate.

There are a variety of reasons why this is so difficult: We’ve been trained to believe that strong emotions should be suppressed. We have certain (sometimes unspoken) societal and organizational rules against expressing them. Or we’ve never learned a language to accurately describe our emotions. Consider these two examples:

For the past 20 years, the theory of disruptive innovation has been enormously influential in business circles and a powerful tool for predicting which industry entrants will succeed. Unfortunately, the theory has also been widely misunderstood, and the “disruptive” label has been applied too carelessly anytime a market newcomer shakes up well-established incumbents.

In this article, the architect of disruption theory, Clayton M. Christensen, and his coauthors correct some of the misinformation, describe how the thinking on the subject has evolved, and discuss the utility of the theory.

They start by clarifying what classic disruption entails—a small enterprise targeting overlooked customers with a novel but modest offering and gradually moving upmarket to challenge the industry leaders. They point out that Uber, commonly hailed as a disrupter, doesn’t actually fit the mold, and they explain that if managers don’t understand the nuances of...

Pay inequality is common in most workplaces. You get paid significantly more than your subordinates, your boss gets paid more than you, and your boss’s boss gets even more. At some point your employees have wondered about your salary – and their peers’. Should you be worried about that? Recent research sheds some light on this question. Researchers conducted an experiment with a sample of 2,060 employees from all rungs of a large commercial bank in Asia. They found that employees tended to underestimate the pay of their managers, but learning the actual amount led them to work harder. However, while people seemed to be fine with vertical inequality, they had more of a problem with horizontal inequality. Finding out peers get paid more had a negative effect on employees’ effort and performance.

Leaders want teams that work hard and persevere in the face of challenges. But it’s not enough to nurture grit among your employees. You also need to encourage grace – decency, respect, and generosity, all of which mark a person as someone with whom others want to cooperate. Managers can foster grace by cultivating three specific emotions: gratitude, compassion, and pride. Research has shown that employees who feel these emotions at work demonstrate more patience and perseverance, but also stronger social bonds because these feelings make us more willing to cooperate with and invest in others – and encourage others to see us in a positive light.

Many strategic plans aren’t strategic, or even plans. To fix that, try a six step process: first, identify key stakeholders. Second, identify a specific, very important key stakeholder: your target customer. Third, figure out what these stakeholders want from you. Fourth, figure out what you want from them. Fifth, design your strategy around these requirements. Sixth, focus on continuously improving this plan.

During the interview process, you had a singular goal: to get an offer. Now that you have one, you must determine whether the job and organization are a good fit for you. Your first port of call: prospective colleagues. Ask to spend a few hours with your potential team for a group meeting or brainstorming session. Observe how the team members interact with each other. Ask them questions like: What are you working on at the moment? And what gets in your way? You also need to get to know your new boss. Quiz your prospective manager about their vision for the organization. Behind-the-scenes research is necessary too. Reach out to your network to identify people who know the company. Ask, What is this organization like to work with? Finally, reflect on whether the organization is a place where you will thrive. You’re never going have perfect data, and beware analysis paralysis. Trust your judgment.

Dr. James is a leading ophthalmologist at a major medical clinic. Passionate about medicine, he wanted to hire someone to run the business operations of his practice. He carefully reviewed over 200 resumes and conducted background checks, finally deciding to hire Mike, a highly credentialed MBA who seemed to check off all the boxes Dr. James was looking for in the new hire.

But within weeks, Dr. James realized that he’d made a big hiring mistake. Despite a stellar performance in the interview, Mike disrupted the office within his first month on the job. He communicated with the staff mostly by email or spreadsheet assignments, and when he attended meetings he seemed absorbed with his smartphone and would roll his eyes when the staff didn’t understand certain accounting or finance terms.

“During the interview, I was wowed by Mike’s credentials and financial knowledge. He was supremely confident and came from a great school,” Dr. James told...

How do you coach a leader who others think is a hopeless case? Sometimes you can’t. The person may well turn out to be a jerk who won’t change their toxic ways. But oftentimes the leader is being misunderstood and their behavior misdiagnosed. To make sure you aren’t unfairly pigeon-holing a struggling leader, be sure to manage your assumptions and judgements. Is it possible you are projecting your own issues or previous experiences on this person? Look beyond the presenting symptoms to understand what lies beneath the seemingly destructive behavior. Observe patterns and notice when there are breaks in those patterns. Understanding where people deviate from predictable habits can provide important clues. Are there people this person works especially well or poorly with? Specific circumstances in which they shine or falter? Lastly, have a broad repertoire of solutions. When you have a narrow set of tools, you’re more likely to assume people are suffering from similar...

Most diversity training programs are a waste of money, says Iris Bohnet. Companies often conduct programs without ever measuring their impact. And unfortunately, research on their effectiveness shows they seldom change attitudes, let alone behavior.

The solution? Focus on processes, not people. Behavioral science tells us that it’s very hard to eliminate our biases, but we can redesign organizations to circumvent them. Behavioral design makes it easier to do the unbiased thing by either preventing biased choices or changing people’s beliefs.

Companies can start by collecting data on their current diversity training. Then they must bring the same rigor to people management that they apply to financial and marketing decisions. This means defining the desired change, implementing new programs, collecting hard data, and evaluating the results.

Even simple changes can be effective. For example, hiring managers can use software that allows them to...

To succeed professionally, employees at all levels must learn to identify their weaknesses, uncover their blind spots, and strengthen their skills. In this piece, the author offer six strategies to take control of your career and learning: First, understand what you’re evaluated on. Second, get feedback, especially on areas that might be blind spots for you. Third, give yourself a grade for each skill you need to do your job well, and focus your time and energy on the areas where you can most improve. Fourth, increase your visibility with senior leaders so that your work can get noticed. Fifth, become the expert in your department on an emerging issue that’s important to the company. Finally, find a good mentor who can help you along the way. There aren’t any shortcuts, but with hard work and perseverance, you can develop the skills, experiences, and relationships you’ll need to thrive in the workplace.

In the old days, if you were a white-collar worker, the deal was that you worked as hard as you could at the start of your career to earn the right to be rewarded later on, with security of tenure and a series of increasingly senior positions. This is no longer true. Today, many senior leaders work longer and harder than ever. At the heart of it is insecurity, and indeed, elite professional organizations deliberately set out to identify and recruit “insecure overachievers.” Insecure overachievers are exceptionally capable and fiercely ambitious, yet are driven by a profound sense of their own inadequacy. If this sounds familiar, you should try to work exceptionally long hours when you need to or want to — but do it consciously, for specified time periods, and to achieve specific goals. Don’t let it become a habit because you have forgotten how to work or live any other way.

It’s widely believed that the most successful entrepreneurs are young. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg were in their early twenties when they launched what would become world-changing companies. Do these famous cases reflect a generalizable pattern? In fact, the average age of entrepreneurs at the time they founded their companies is 42. But what about the most successful startups? Is it possible that companies started by younger entrepreneurs are particularly successful? Research shows that among the top 0.1% of startups based on growth in their first five years, the founders started their companies, on average, when they were 45 years old.

You can’t go more than five minutes these days without hearing about stress: stress tests, stress management, how everyone’s eventual cause of death will probably be — you guessed it — stress. We humblebrag about stress, we complain about it, we take yoga classes and meditate to get rid of it. We’re obsessed.

But I’m about to propose something that might sound crazy: You don’t need to get rid of stress to live a happy, fulfilling life.

Many self-help models suggest that a satisfying life can only be found when you get rid of negative thoughts and feelings. But in my work on “emotional agility,” I’ve found that attempting to get rid of stress can actually make you more stressed. It’s better to acknowledge the power of emotion and ride the waves, so to speak, coming out stronger on the other side so you can make decisions that aren’t stress-based.

Think of your stress as a radio station you want to turn off. You wouldn’t try to drown out the...

Change is an unavoidable constant in our work lives. Sometimes it’s within our control, but most often it’s not. Our jobs or roles change — and not always for the better. Our organizations undergo reorgs and revamp their strategies, and we need to adjust.

Fortunately, there are ways to adapt to change, and even to take advantage of it.

Find the humor in the situation. Trying to find a funny moment during an otherwise unfunny situation can be a fantastic way to create the levity needed to see a vexing problem from a new perspective. It can help others feel better as well.

Pioneering humor researcher Rod A. Martin, who has studied the effects of different styles of humor, has found that witty banter, or “affiliative humor,” can lighten the mood and improve social interaction. Just make sure it’s inclusive and respectful. A good rule of thumb is that other people’s strife is no laughing matter, but your own struggles can be a source of...