Mental health is a topic of critical importance and front of mind for so many of us. My series on mental health has generated comments, ideas and recommendations—and it’s worth considering all the ways the collective thinking about mental health will shape responses from leaders and organizations.

Hundreds of readers shared in comments on LinkedIn and other social media about the pressures they feel as leaders, the risk of burnout, and how best to support themselves and their teams during difficult times.

For my entire life, I’ve struggled with anxiety, insomnia, and obsessive worries about things I can and can’t control. My friends chide me as the most paranoid risk-taker they know. Sometimes it helps me, but sometimes it absolutely doesn’t. When I’m facing a big moment, I can become absolutely paralyzed and completely unproductive. My body rebels, putting my success at risk simply because my brain won’t shut off and let me get rest. It’s a fight-or-flight response, a constant need to be at high alert—to look for danger.

Ask 100 leadership experts what the most important leadership skill is for the new hybrid workplace and you may get responses like listening, vulnerability, emotional intelligence, humility, coaching, etc. There have been many studies and articles with solid reasoning for developing all of those soft skills in leaders. But many of these abilities are based on one truly important attribute that accelerates our growth in most aspects of life: Self-awareness.

When you’re in the middle of a difficult conversation, it’s common to focus solely on yourself: your ideas, your viewpoint, and your feelings. But a “me-centric” approach can backfire. To achieve your goal, you need to think beyond yourself. While crafting your message, you must keep the other person’s feelings and opinions in mind, too. To do so, avoid these common mistakes: don’t assume your viewpoint is obvious; don’t exaggerate; don’t challenge someone’s character or integrity; don’t blame others for your feelings; don’t tell others what they should do; and don’t say “It’s not personal.”

If you've ever had the privilege to work for a good leader, you've probably noticed that they have their people's best interests in mind. In other words, they genuinely care about the success of their people -- including their career goals and aspirations. It is counterintuitive for most bosses to naturally gravitate toward caring and serving the needs of others due to competing demands, including pressures to meet their own performance expectations.

What makes for a happy life? Philosophers have pondered this question for millennia, coming up with different theories and recommendations for people to follow, but not necessarily having any hard evidence to prove their ideas. That’s what inspired the long-running Harvard Study of Adult Development. Starting in the 1930s, researchers tracked men from different neighborhoods in the Boston area over several decades, asking them to provide regular updates on their lives, including their current health, income, employment, and marital status.

It’s been a tried-and-true corporate strategy since the 1980s. If layoffs need to be done, fire the middle managers. They’re the group responsible, in the minds of many executives, when an organization becomes inefficient. True to form, the rounds of restructurings recently announced in technology, logistics, and other industries have targeted corporate midsections. But experts warn that removing too many middle managers—and putting too much pressure on those that remain—can jeopardize many corporate priorities, such as innovation and diversity initiatives.

It’s not uncommon for talented leaders to find collaboration unnatural. After all, rugged individualism set them apart and propelled their careers. And for many, that same focus on distinguishing themselves later becomes their demise. Most of an enterprise’s competitive value is created and delivered at organizational “seams,” where functions come together to form capabilities (think marketing, consumer analytics, and R&D, together developing innovation capability). That requires leaders of those functions to collaborate across the siloes to deliver that value. If you’re a leader who struggles to collaborate with your peers, you first need to understand why that is, then work to develop that skill

The list of skills at the bottom of your resume might feel like an afterthought, but that section is more important than you might think — especially if you’re hoping to land a new job soon. A majority of companies (76%) are using skills-based hiring to fill open roles, with more than half (55%) using role-specific skills tests to vet candidates, according to TestGorilla, an Amsterdam-based HR tech firm. These numbers are from an October 2022 survey of 2,736 employers in the United States, United Kingdom, and other countries.

Emotional maturity is the number one most important thing in relationships, the number one skill set we can work on to get great ones, and the number one most important thing to a happy and effective life. Contrary to some misconceptions, emotional maturity is not about “self-mastery,” or self-development. Mature people may pursue these, but they have nothing to do with emotional maturity.

Gallup’s 2022 Exceptional Workplace Award winners, selected for having exceptionally high employee engagement levels, have a few things in common. A notable one is that they use their organizational culture and values to guide business decisions. “Leaders at these exceptional workplaces relied on their culture and organizational values when making decisions that affected their people. Employees, in turn, saw the organization’s values lived out through decisions, which builds trust in leadership,” according to Gallup.

As we enter 2023, it's clear that we are entering an altered business paradigm driven as much by new technology represented by electric vehicles and the metaverse as it is by anachronistic conflicts such as the one instigated by the Russian Federation. The global recession, ongoing war in Ukraine and increased credit rates have all presented new challenges for businesses looking to grow. However, it's important to remember that adversity can also present opportunities for growth and innovation.

Great leaders tend to follow a set of principles that guide the way they work, organize their thoughts and plans, and lead their teams. Call it a platform, a policy, or a belief system, but most leaders have a foundational awareness of what they need to perform at their best. My own guiding principles stem from my strong belief in servant leadership, my background, and my need for establishing a balance between family and career.

The past few years have created renewed awareness of the importance of employee development and overall employee experience. Senior leaders are looking to learning and development (L&D) to guide skills development, skills data, upskilling, reskilling, and mobility, to meet the needs of their ever-changing business environments. A Redthread report indicates that L&D has established itself as an enablement partner in strategic discussions and organizational culture change.

As we enter 2023, the future of work has become the now of work. Many of the changes which started during the pandemic were accelerated and have become permanent aspects of our working lives. Just as I have done in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, here is my countdown of what you should include on your HR roadmap for 2023.

Every leadership role has its own complicated features – there’s nuance and variance to every company, team, and managerial role. But no matter who you’re supervising, what goals you’re hitting, and what kind of impression you want to make, UPenn has a 15-part leadership checklist that everyone can learn from. Here, we’ll break down what these tools mean and how to implement them regularly.

How can certain leaders successfully lead their company to emerge triumphant out of a major crisis, when others do the exact opposite and bring it to the ground? What makes them different? Alan Mulally is the former CEO of Ford Motor Company where he led Ford’s transformation into becoming one of the world’s leading automobile brands in the United States. Prior to serving at Ford, Alan was the CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes and Boeing Information, Space, and Defense Systems.

Are you procrastinating? I am. I have been delaying writing this article for the last few days even though I knew I had a deadline. I have scrolled through social media, and I have gone down a rabbit hole looking up houses on Rightmove—even though I do not need a new house. I have also re-watched the video “Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator” by Tim Urban, one of the best TED Talks I have seen. I found it especially comforting to learn that even pigeons procrastinate.

Growing up, my Indian immigrant parents instilled in me an incredibly strong work ethic. My father would always say, “Keep your head down, work hard, and you will be recognized.” Unfortunately, that advice has not always served me well in my career in corporate America. While I was working hard, I wasn’t managing up. I kept my head down working and working some more, busy trying to make an impact.

Most people have a never-ending mountain of work to get through and would likely feel immense relief if their workload were in some way lessened. Yet so many of us don’t actually ask for help, which is one way we can make our workload more manageable and feel less overwhelmed. After all, we are only human. We can’t do everything ourselves or be as successful as we aspire to be if we don’t ask for the support we need.