When leaders have misconceptions of what empathy entails, they don’t know how to practice it—or they practice it badly. Many don’t bother to intentionally lead with empathy at all, and the stakes are high for those who don’t: low morale, poor retention, and burnout among employees, and failure to connect, inability to gather information, or being perceived as inaccessible for leaders. Empathy is a requisite to mobilize, connect with, and engage others. To better lead with this non-neg...| Harvard Business Review
Learning how to delegate well is a skill every first-time manager needs to learn from the very start. Many people are promoted into management for doing their previous job well. But once you’re promoted into a leadership role, you must accept that you can’t do everything on your own — nor should you. Though it may seem counterintuitive, the more senior you become in an organization, the less you’ll be involved in doing the day-to-day work. You’ll need to have a sense of what’s hap...| Harvard Business Review
Social belonging is a fundamental human need, hardwired into our DNA. And yet, 40% of people say that they feel isolated at work, and the result has been lower organizational commitment and engagement. U.S. businesses spend nearly $8 billion each year on diversity and inclusion (D&I) trainings that miss the mark because they neglect our need to feel included. Recent research from Betterup shows that if workers feel like they belong, companies reap substantial bottom-line benefits: better job ...| Harvard Business Review
As a first-time manager, you may have been given the advice “You are as good as your team.” Team members play a significant role in your success and that of the organization’s, so you want to choose the right people. Though you’ll have a limited time with each candidate during the interview process, you can maximize that time by asking strategic questions to gain insights into their strengths and weaknesses. Here are five things to look for: Entrepreneurial mindset: Employees who are ...| Harvard Business Review
Despite a surge in generative AI use across workplaces, most companies are seeing little measurable ROI. One possible reason is because AI tools are being used to produce “workslop”—content that appears polished but lacks real substance, offloading cognitive labor onto coworkers. Research from BetterUp Labs and Stanford found that 41% of workers have encountered such AI-generated output, costing nearly two hours of rework per instance and creating downstream productivity, trust, and col...| Harvard Business Review
The highest-performing teams have one thing in common: psychological safety — the belief that you won’t be punished when you make a mistake. Studies show that psychological safety allows for taking moderate risks, speaking your mind, being creative, and sticking your neck out without fear of having it cut off — just the types of behavior that lead to market breakthroughs. So how can you increase psychological safety on your own team? First, approach conflict as a collaborator, not an ad...| Harvard Business Review
In today’s fast-paced, fiercely competitive world of commercial new product development, speed and flexibility are essential. Companies are increasingly realizing that the old, sequential approach to developing new products simply won’t get the job done. Instead, companies in Japan and the United States are using a holistic method—as in rugby, the ball gets passed within […]| Harvard Business Review
Executing complex initiatives like acquisitions or an IT overhaul requires a breadth of knowledge that can be provided only by teams that are large, diverse, virtual, and composed of highly educated specialists. The irony is, those same characteristics have an alarming tendency to decrease collaboration on a team. What’s a company to do? Gratton, a London Business School professor, and Erickson, president of the Concours Institute, studied 55 large teams and identified those with strong col...| Harvard Business Review
