Why Verbal Confirmation Lies to You In a technical conversation, or any conversation where there’s a power gap, saying “I don’t get it” carries a social cost. Nobody wants to be the person who slows down the meeting or looks unprepared in front of a senior leader. So people nod. They say it makes se...

Why Collective Confidence Beats Optimism Martin draws a sharp distinction between optimism and collective confidence. Optimism, he says, “is really just a forecast of the future.” Collective confidence is different because it’s grounded in evidence. It’s “a conclusion that a team draws” after lookin...

The Whale Biologist's Lesson When Roger Payne arrived in the San Jose Gulf in Argentina to begin researching whales, he had every credential a visiting expert could want: a Cornell PhD, a MacArthur Fellowship, and his famous 1967 discovery that humpback whales sing. But he approached his research wi...

There is a paradox at the heart of modern leadership: executives have more data about their organizations than ever, yet they can feel disconnected from what is actually happening. Pamela Meyer has spent her career studying this gap. A Harvard MBA, certified fraud examiner, and bestselling author of...

The High Cost of Living in Extremes For many ambitious professionals and high-performing leaders, the daily reality of work is defined by operating at the edge of extremes. A project is either a monumental, historic success or a complete failure. You either commit with relentless, all-consuming inte...

Rethinking Mental Strength in the Workplace There is a persistent myth about what it means to be strong at work. According to this conventional view, strong people absorb pressure without complaint, push through discomfort, and never show weakness. They keep doubts to themselves, project relentless ...

Rethinking Procrastination: A Solution, Not a Character Flaw Procrastination is commonly dismissed as a personal failing, a sign of weak discipline, poor motivation, or sloppy time management. Jon Acuff, however, offers a fundamentally different perspective. As a New York Times bestselling author, s...

Most leaders believe they know what makes a team exceptional. Dr. Ron Friedman, an award-winning social psychologist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Bloomberg, and the Harvard Business Review, has spent nearly two decades testing that assumption against behavioral science. His first b...

Look Where No One Else Is Looking In the film The Fabelmans, director Steven Spielberg brought some of his earliest childhood filmmaking memories to the big screen. Long before he became a three-time Oscar winner, he was a boy with an 8mm camera, painstakingly crafting homemade movies. He didn’t hol...

Rethinking Effort: Moving Beyond Hustle Culture Justin Ricklefs has spent nearly two decades building brands, but his real subject has always been people. As founder of Guild Collective, a branding and marketing agency, he has helped companies clarify who they are and why it matters. That work led h...

The Myth of Charismatic Leadership Ask the average person to think of a leader, and they will likely think of someone who is not just male, but also charismatic. However, science suggests this is more myth than reality. In contrast with the popular view that charisma is a critical ingredient for eff...

The Hidden Cost of Productivity: Why Managing Yourself Matters More Than Managing Your Calendar For decades, the productivity industry has promised that the secret to accomplishing more lies in mastering calendars, email, meetings, and task lists. Every few years, a new system emerges to help people...