Disagreements on a team aren’t necessarily a bad thing. But you want to watch out for unhealthy conflicts that hijack precious time, trust, and energy. Often this type of animosity develops when there’s a “conflict entrepreneur” on your team — someone who inflames conflict for their own ends. The author suggests several actions you can take to identify these people and mitigate their negative impact, including resisting the urge to demonize them, spending more time with them, redirecting their energy when possible, and encouraging open disagreement and decency from everyone in the organization by establishing good-conflict practices.

The switch from being an individual contributor to a team leader can be challenging, particularly if your new role also includes managing sideways or up. Seasoned managers share lessons about their biggest successes and failures to help those who are less experienced build confidence. Some of their advice has a common thread.

Leaders can’t rely on organizational mission statements to inspire employees. They have to help their people find inner purpose. One way is through action identification theory, exploring levels of meaning attached to any task. Another is through regular check-ins that help employees think about what they’re good at, what they enjoy, what makes them feel useful, what propels them forward, and how they relate to others.

Research on the effect of social class on hiring found that elite law firms’ hiring practices discriminate strongly based on social class but that, surprisingly, an advantaged social background helps only men. In the studies, attorneys viewed higher-class candidates of either gender as better fits with the culture of large law firms, with some attorneys even steering lower-class candidates to less prestigious sectors of legal practice, where positions tend to be more socioeconomically diverse. But even though higher-class women were seen as just as good “fits” as higher-class men, attorneys believed these women were the least committed to working a demanding job of any group (including lower-class women). The findings confirm that the social class people come from greatly shapes the types of jobs they can attain, regardless of their achievements. There are ways to combat this discrimination, however: applicants can ditch the extracurricular activities on their resume,...

Culture is like the wind. It is invisible, yet its effect can be seen and felt. When it is blowing in your direction it makes for smooth sailing. When it is blowing against you, everything is more difficult. For organizations seeking to become more adaptive and innovative, culture change is often the most challenging part of the transformation. But culture change can’t be achieved through top-down mandate. It lives in the collective hearts and habits of people and their shared perception of “how things are done around here.” Culture change needs to happen through a movement, not a mandate. To create a movement in your organization, start by framing the issue in terms that stir emotion and incite action; then mobilize more supporters by demonstrating quick wins. Broadcast these wins to an even wider audience by leveraging employees’ social networks, and using symbolism and pockets of innovation to keep momentum going. It’s important to start with...

Assessing a job candidate is all about the questions you ask during the interview. But too often leaders ask the wrong things, focusing more on what the interviewee has done in the past rather than what they can do in the future. If you need to hire someone to work on an innovation project, make sure you’re asking questions that get to their ability to collaboratively problem solve. For example, you want to know how they would handle particular problem-solving situations rather than whether they’ve done exactly what you’re looking for in the past. You should assess whether they are able and willing to fill in gaps on teams when it becomes clear a particular role isn’t being filled. And, it’s important to understand what they’re passionate about working on. Innovation happens when you bring people with different passions and approaches together to work toward the same goal.

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Failure is a familiar trauma in life, but its effects on people differ widely. Some reel, recover, and move on with their lives; others get bogged down by anxiety, depression, and fear of the future. Seligman, who is known as the father of positive psychology, has spent three decades researching failure, helplessness, and optimism. He created a program at the University of Pennsylvania to help young adults and children overcome anxiety and depression, and has worked with colleagues from around the world to develop a program for teaching resilience. That program is being tested by the U.S. Army, an organization of 1.1 million people where trauma is more common and more severe than in any corporate setting. Nevertheless, businesspeople can draw lessons from resilience training, particularly in times of failure and stagnation.

The program is called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, and it has three components: the Global Assessment Tool, a test...

The practice of giving two weeks’ notice when leaving a job is outdated and inefficient, and can be a contentious and expensive problem for companies. While the job-hopping trend may be difficult to stop, there is a less frustrating approach employers can implement that can not only decrease turnover, but also lead to mutually beneficial solutions when an employee decides to leave. It’s called a Mindful Transition, and it entails creating a culture that encourages open and honest discussions between the employer and employee about happiness on the job, without any fear of retribution, reprisal, or of being escorted out the door if someone is forthcoming about being unhappy. Managers are trained to spot and diagnose early signs of unhappiness or disengagement. When someone decides to move on, there is an open transition period that allows the employee to begin the search for their new job while remaining employed. During this time, the employee agrees not to give two...

The holy grail of today’s workplace is high employee engagement. According to Gallup’s research, about one-third of U.S. employees are engaged on the job. That number drops to 13% worldwide, and has held steady for years. But engagement is often an ambiguous term and could represent either job satisfaction, emotional investment, or advocating for the company. While many studies suggest that increased employee engagement leads to improved business results in aggregate, a deeper look at the data suggests that this may not always be true at an individual level. A study of two Fortune 100 companies finds that whether employees’ engagement correlates with the number of hours worked varies by company. Employees can be highly engaged but work relatively few hours, so managers should invest in creating a culture of both engagement and productivity.

When the author agreed to accept the top job at UPS, the global shipping service, in late winter of 2019, she expected to steer the company toward a brighter future. She had no idea that she would have to do it during a global pandemic that made her organization an essential service but kept most people at home and pushed demand for shipped goods to holiday levels year-round.

When she officially took over, in June 2020, she gathered her top team to decide on the principles to which they would hold fast during this crisis—including integrity, efficiency, constant learning and improvement, and a strong focus on both customers and employees. Among their top priorities were maintaining their brand relevance, keeping their balance sheet and credit rating solid, protecting their dual-class ownership structure, and continuing to pay a dividend. The organization divested from some businesses and invested in others, which has led over the past year to impressive growth, a...

It’s not enough for NGOs to simply put assistance, products, and provisions into the hands of beneficiaries. They must also ensure that donated resources suit beneficiaries’ needs and capabilities, so that the resources can and will be used. But the severe budget constraints under which most NGOs operate can make this a daunting challenge. Finding out what diverse recipients want and what works for them — not to mention putting this information into practice via customised offerings — can be prohibitively expensive. One way to achieve impact at scale in the face of these difficulties is to remove info-gathering from the process entirely and provide unfinished products that recipients can complete according to their own tastes and abilities. In essence, this means moving from an off-the-shelf mode of delivery to a partial-DIY paradigm. This article goes further to argue that this strategy is an option worth considering, even when money is no object. As long as...

As you craft your company’s hybrid work plans and policies, be aware of the inequities hybrid work can create or make worse. Designing with five practical dimensions of inclusion in mind is critical for creating an equitable organization. First, create a positive recruitment and onboarding experience by providing new hires with the right technology and support and implement a buddy system to replace the informal learning that typically takes place in the office. Second, bridge physical distance by making smart use of digital tools to keep people connected. Third, increase psychological safety to enable people to speak up when they experience interpersonal conflict. Fourth, break up in-groups by identifying “weak ties.” Finally, monitor who gets promoted and why to identify patterns that favor one group over others.

Disagreements on a team aren’t necessarily a bad thing. But you want to watch out for unhealthy conflicts that hijack precious time, trust, and energy. Often this type of animosity develops when there’s a “conflict entrepreneur” on your team — someone who inflames conflict for their own ends. The author suggests several actions you can take to identify these people and mitigate their negative impact, including resisting the urge to demonize them, spending more time with them, redirecting their energy when possible, and encouraging open disagreement and decency from everyone in the organization by establishing good-conflict practices.

The switch from being an individual contributor to a team leader can be challenging, particularly if your new role also includes managing sideways or up. Seasoned managers share lessons about their biggest successes and failures to help those who are less experienced build confidence. Some of their advice has a common thread.

Chances are you will have at least one boss in your career who won’t like or trust you. If you don’t act early to correct their negative perception of you, it is almost impossible to make a comeback. So make sure to look for any warning signs that the boss thinks you’re a poor fit for the team — such as if they become very prescriptive in their guidance, start interrupting you in meetings, or give you negative performance reviews. Act quickly to regain their trust by asking what you did wrong and what you should do differently next time. Then take time to reflect on what triggered them in the first place. Often, it’s a case of not understanding your boss’s priorities or how they like getting work done. Ask your boss directly and also observe their nonverbal cues to see what they value and what irritates them.

Some executives thrive under pressure. Others wilt. Is the reason all in their heads? Hardly. Sustained high achievement demands physical and emotional strength as well as a sharp intellect. To bring mind, body, and spirit to peak condition, executives need to learn what world-class athletes already know: recovering energy is as important as expending it.

The actions you take during your first few months in a new job have a major impact on your success or failure. The biggest challenge leaders face during these periods is staying focused on the right things. So it helps to have a set of questions to guide you. Here are the five most important ones to ask…and to keep on asking on a regular basis: How will I create value? How am I expected to behave? Whose support is critical? How will I get some early wins? What skills do I need to develop to excel in this role? Set aside 30 minutes at the end of each week to reflect on these questions and whether the answers are still clear or have changed in any way.

Creating a unifying vision for an organization is a fundamental skill for leaders. A simple, bold, inspirational vision can feel almost magical: it brings people throughout the company together around a common goal and provides a focal point for developing strategies to achieve a better future. Unfortunately, however, building a vision has become more associated with a company’s top-level leadership than the managers in the rest of the organization. But even as an aspiring leader there are three vision-creation opportunities that you can grasp now: contributing to senior leaders’ vision work, translating the company’s vision for your team, and developing a new front-line team vision that can be cascaded up through the company. Each of these can propel your professional development, leading to bigger responsibilities over time.

The best way to develop proficiency in leadership is not just through reading books and going to training courses, but even more through real experience and continual practice. Six areas of practice are of particular importance to developing leaders: building a unifying vision, developing strategy, getting the right people hired and motivated, focusing on results, innovation, and leading themselves.

Perfectionism is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can motivate you to perform at a high level and deliver top-quality work. On the other, it can cause you unnecessary anxiety and sometimes annoy your colleagues. How can you harness the positives of your perfectionism while mitigating the negatives? Start by recognizing the opportunity cost of your behavior. Sure, you can spend an additional five hours making that PowerPoint presentation perfect, but is that a productive use of your time? Will it make a material difference to your boss or client? Focus on maximizing the impact of your effort so you can concentrate on what’s important. Similarly, learn to calibrate your standards. Of course, as a perfectionist you’re never going to aim for merely adequate — nor should you. But the next time you find yourself nitpicking niggling details, ask a trusted colleague for feedback. You may discover that your first draft is already good enough.

Almost everyone’s work has ebbs and flows. Most people focus on how to stay productive during the busiest stretches. But doing the same in slower periods can have a dramatic impact on your output and well-being. There are five key ways to manage these slower times. First, make a plan to help you turn a potentially boring day into a series of mini-sprints. Next, focus on your professional development; this could mean brushing up your LinkedIn profile or taking an online class. You can also use the time to get ahead on work you know is coming down the road and  to build relationships with coworkers. And don’t forget to give yourself a break, too. This is an ideal time to take a vacation.

Global estimates indicate that most employees are not fully engaged at work. One of the main drivers of employee disengagement is bad leadership. But leaders are often unaware of this, as it’s very unusual for employees to feel that they can honestly and openly criticize their bosses without paying the consequences. If you want to give your employer a chance before considering other jobs, you need to try to communicate your dissatisfaction. One tactic is to tell your manager that you need help reaching your full potential, or that you need a new challenge. Alternatively, you can say that your role is not the right fit for you. Another option is to say that you find your work exhausting and that you’re looking for help. Granted, these approaches are not guaranteed to work, so it’s always good to have a Plan B in mind before you address the issue head-on.