We are spending more time indoors and online. But recent studies suggest that nature can help our brains and bodies to stay healthy. I’ve been an avid hiker my whole life. From the time I first strapped on a backpack and headed into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, I was hooked on the experience, loving the way being in nature cleared my mind and helped me to feel more grounded and peaceful.

In a recent article, we explained that achieving sustainable, profitable growth requires companies to actively choose growth through a holistic approach comprising three elements: developing an aspirational mindset and culture, activating pathways, and executing with excellence. We then set out to bring those pathways to life through the ten rules of growth (see sidebar, “The ten rules of value-creating growth”), based on an in-depth study of the growth patterns and performance of the world’s largest public companies.

Are the training initiatives at your organization meeting stakeholder objectives? Improving employee performance? Showing measurable success rates, based on goals and key performance indicators (KPIs)? If not, there are five “usual suspect” areas where you can make improvements that will lead to better (measurable) outcomes.

Success is not about winning a competition. It’s about making a contribution.

That was the thesis of my first book, Give and Take, which came out 10 years ago today. It was about the surprising consequences of being a giver—rather than a taker or matcher. Takers are selfish: they aim to be better than others. Givers are generous: they strive to bring out the best in others. Matchers try to be fair: they trade favors evenly. But they often come across as transactional. You didn’t really care about me—you were just paying off a debt or racking up credit.

Ask many corporate workers what they think of human resources, and they’ll rattle off a litany of stereotypes: HR is incompetent, any brush with HR spells bad news, or that HR will always toe the company line. Above all else, people tend to believe that HR represents the employer and simply can’t be trusted to have their best interests at heart. Multiple studies have found that, on average, nearly half of employees don’t trust HR or feel comfortable confiding in their HR leaders.

If you’re an ambitious salesperson, building and delivering compelling sales presentations should be your focus in the new work environment. Salespeople who master sales presentations in the virtual and hybrid workplace will outshine their techno-novice counterparts and make a mark on the prospects they seek to convert into clients.

The pandemic changed the world and customer expectations, and the most successful companies recognize that their customer experience needs to change in turn. But many leaders are deploying the same digital customer experience (CX) strategies that they used in 2019, thereby risking customer defection and dissatisfaction at a time when they can least afford it. This article addresses three common CX missteps, and strategies to address them before your competitors seize the opportunity. By engaging cross-functional teams in CX discussions and understanding customer values, leaders can ensure that their brand remains relevant for years to come.

In recent years, the role of technology, especially the role of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, has significantly increased across a variety of industries. Customer service is one of the industries that has been introduced to the capabilities of AI technology, and businesses are turning to it and other evolving technologies to improve the quality of their business and the customer’s experience.

Using ineffective and poor sales words and phrases can damage your sales conversations. In the modern world, where sales are driven by science, our choice of vocabulary can emotionally connect or disconnect with our buyer’s brains and emotions in different ways. Sometimes, using the wrong choice of words can make your prospects think and feel differently about both you and your company with the click of a finger. A slip of the tongue can rapidly change the dynamics of a conversation and sales opportunity.

When we got married, my husband had a “bachelor party” that consisted of five guys going out to dinner together. There was no heavy drinking or roasting the groom or naked women jumping out of a cake. Just guys sitting around talking about life. This group has been meeting regularly ever since, taking turns hosting brunch so they can chat for hours, sharing the joys and struggles of their lives.

A new Korn Ferry survey on the use of ChatGPT in the workplace leaves no doubt that the artificial-intelligence platform—only months old—has captured the business world’s attention. According to the survey, which polled professionals across industries, 46% are already using ChatGPT to complete work tasks. More telling, upwards of 80% say ChatGPT is a “legitimate, beneficial work tool” that will be a regular part of their workday in the future.

What is a scary hour? In her video, which has more than 1 million views, Wheeler says she sets a timer for one hour and works only on tasks she’s been avoiding because of anxiety. Indeed, feelings of stress make us more likely to procrastinate, according to Alicia Walf, a neuroscientist and senior lecturer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. According to research, 20% of U.S. adults are chronic procrastinators, meaning they procrastinate at home, at work, in relationships, and more.

Today’s business leaders must navigate ever-changing conditions—economic uncertainty, geopolitical instability, and a lingering pandemic. Meanwhile, the same leaders are working to optimize business efficiency. Much has been written about business efficiency and how much, fast, and well a company can produce a product or service vs. the time, effort, and resources.

Objections are unavoidable on sales calls, but encountering one doesn’t necessarily mean an end to the conversation. If you’re able to anticipate what your prospect’s objections will be, you stand a better chance of overcoming them. At Trellus, their AI sales coach detects objections, provides real-time suggestions to guide reps during the call, and measures the effectiveness of those suggestions based on different metrics.

Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, service robot technology has been on the rise in the past few years. Self-service automated kiosks are here to stay, and robots are the future of customer service. service robots must be designed and implemented the right way, otherwise customers — and human coworkers — will avoid interacting with them. Robot technology should not simply be added as a novelty, but carefully integrated to deliver value to customers and support employees — maintaining a balance between automation and human interaction.

Like many in the learning business, it’s likely you’ve spent the past several years adapting your sales enablement approach toward meeting the needs of an increasingly remote and, in some cases, highly distributed workforce. And, while the COVID-19 pandemic challenged each of us to redirect learners to new forms of enablement, it also provided a unique opportunity to view existing training methods in a new light and to reassess what has worked and what hasn’t for our learners.

If you can’t remember the last time you apologized: congratulations, you are perfect — or at least you believe you are. For the rest of us, apologizing is a common, if difficult, part of life. Among the earliest lessons imparted to children is the art of saying sorry, yet these skills don’t always transfer neatly to adulthood. Relationships are messy and both parties often have some level of culpability. However, the biggest obstacle to apologetic bliss isn’t a complicated argument — it’s self-protective motivations.

Let’s face it, you won’t see eye-to-eye with everyone you work with — no matter how hard you try. From co-workers to bosses, there are probably more than a few people who you consider to be difficult.

And we’re all the “difficult person” in at least one other person’s story, says Marc Lesser, a Zen teacher and executive coach with clients like Google and Facebook, and CEO of consulting company, ZBA Associates.

Credibility is an increasingly valuable attribute today. Perhaps to no one’s surprise, the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer found a rise in polarization, with the U.S. falling in the top quarter of countries deemed “severely polarized.” But business bucks that trend. Edelman’s research found that business is now not only the most trusted institution but also the only one trusted globally. In addition, the research found that respondents overwhelmingly expect CEOs to use their resources to “hold divisive forces accountable,” according to the report’s press release.

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.