I know two retail store owners who learned different lessons during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first was caught by surprise. His brick-and-mortar store was already struggling to attract customers, and the quarantine only made things worse. One by one he laid off staff, reduced the hours his store was open, discounted prices, and eventually had to close his doors for good. His lesson? Never open a store again. It’s too hard.

We can all name them: Who in your organization holds your attention when they speak up? Who can you count on to be the most engaging dinner conversationalist? What speaker do you see on a program who pulls you in? The names that come to mind are those who tell stories so well that time seems to stand still.

Fabian was feeling anxious as he left the leadership training course. He knew what he had to do, and yet he didn’t know how to actually do it. Fabian had been promoted up through the ranks of a global construction firm, starting in 1994 out of his university as part of a rotational management program.

The first time I interviewed Adam, he sat across from me in my office adjusting his glasses, and speaking in a low, calm tone. He didn’t radiate charisma, the way you imagine a hot shot leader would appear, with a fancy suit and tie. But I wasn’t looking for some hot shot executive either.

When applying for a job, there are many ways to optimize your resume. You can check the listing to see where the employer’s priorities lie in terms of experience, and make sure to highlight what’s most important to them, for example. You can include any major achievements like exceeding sales goals. And you can include a link to your LinkedIn profile.

Though they’ve been warned for decades about the dangers of over-relying on gut instinct and personal experience, managers keep failing to critically examine—much less challenge—the ideas their decisions are based on. To correct this problem they need to think and act like scientists. That requires doing five things: (1) being a knowledgeable skeptic and relentlessly questioning assumptions; (2) investigating anomalies—things that are unexpected or don’t look right; (3) devising testable hypotheses that can be quantifiably confirmed or disproved; (4) running experiments that produce hard evidence; and (5) probing cause and effect.

When I was a child in the 1950s, my friends and I had two educations. We had school (which was not the big deal it is today), and we also had what I call a hunter-gatherer education. We played in mixed-age neighbourhood groups almost every day after school, often until dark. We played all weekend and all summer long. We had time to explore in all sorts of ways, and also time to become bored and figure out how to overcome boredom

Many years before I fully understood extrovert and neurotypical privileges, I took part in a variety of experiential learning sessions. The ostensible goal of one of the sessions was to solve a problem as a team in a high-stakes simulation. The underlying goal was to do so in a way that made people trust you and want to work with you. The most “trustworthy” people at the end were the “winners.”

Ask any communication professional or skilled speaker and they will tell you that the first step in getting results through your communication is knowing and connecting with your audience. But that’s easier said than done. Often we fall into the trap of trying to impress our audience rather than making sure what (and how) we’re communicating is what will resonate with them.

It wasn’t so long ago that a CEO was considered effective if they could keep the board of directors happy, appease shareholders, and steer clear of major reputational issues. Not so anymore.

The job description for the CEO of today is being crowdsourced, with nearly every segment of society — employees, customers, suppliers, governments, and activists — registering their expectations and demands.

“Oh, I pretty much know my strengths and my weaknesses.”

If we had a dollar for every time we’d heard this from an executive we were coaching, we could have retired a long time ago. When probed, they often proclaim that while they might not recognize all their strengths, they are confident about knowing their serious weaknesses.

Business, technology and innovation are evolving at a faster pace than ever before in history. Employees are also transitioning jobs and careers at an increased rate amid The Great Resignation. While these changes create new opportunities, it also elevates the urgency of the already increasing need for employees to have skillsets they may not currently possess, in other words, a skills gap.

Desiree Pascual is the chief people officer at Headspace Health and leads HR for around 1,000 employees. Despite a packed schedule during the hypergrowth phase of the company, it doesn’t keep her from taking a three-week trip to Spain every summer to visit her parents.

It’s gotten to a point where I’m not even shocked anymore. An organization with a charismatic leader experiences enormous growth. Rumors and rumblings of leadership trouble behind the scenes start to come out, followed by actual allegations of bullying, sexual harassment, dominating personalities, or abuse. The leader goes down in scandal, sometimes taking the organization with him or her.

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” Ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu was onto the idea of servant leadership centuries before it became a modern-day concept. This leadership style boils down to one principle: The goal of a leader is to serve.

Speaking virtually can be an enormous challenge if you want to inspire your audience. After all, listeners don’t receive the usual visual cues from a virtual speaker, nor do they hear the presenter’s voice with the same clarity that characterizes in-person communication.

An ongoing argument my husband and I have — which has become more contentious during the pandemic — is about how many friends we should have. We both have one or two close friends and siblings we like to spend time with. Plus, we are busy parenting two young boys who sap most of our energy. As a textbook introvert, this feels like plenty of friends to me.

Vacation time is an important way for employees to recharge their mental and emotional batteries before returning to work. But new Qualtrics research shows that nearly half (49%) of employed Americans say they work for an hour or more a day, even while on vacation.

A critical aspect of effective leaders today is the ability to lead change. Indeed, many would argue that the most distinguishing difference between people we identify as good managers and those we deem to be great leaders is that leaders are adept at bringing about change.

Before he died, beloved MIT professor Patrick Winston regularly gave a fascinating and deeply compelling lecture to university students about the value of good communication. In his introduction, he drew attention to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which calls for court-martial for any officer who sends a soldier into battle without a weapon.