What's on Your Mind?

Leadership is not a title or a job description. It is the daily practice of turning authority into trust and presence into influence, according to renowned psychologist, University of Exeter Professor and former NBA player John Amaechi, OBE. Amaechi argues that leadership lives in ordinary moments: how you listen, the precision of your words, and the discipline of reflection. “Being a great leader is not magic,” Amaechi explains to me, “but rather the consistent choice to act with clarity and intention that helps others feel enabled, not stifled.” Too often, people think of leadership as something to perform when the spotlight is on them. Amaechi says, “In reality, th…

Job interviews are the fortune cookies of hiring—vague and often misleading. But companies keep using them, despite research suggesting that typical job interviews are mostly unreliable predictors of future job performance, because they give hiring managers the illusion of insight, and a convenient way to validate gut instinct with zero data. It’s not that all interviews are useless; some formats, like structured behavioral interviews with scoring rubrics, including AI-based scoring algorithms that match responses to actual outcomes and future performance, can be moderately predictive. But the typical unstructured interview? Oftentimes, it conveys the illusion of pred…

As a child, Sunita Sah says she learned to be “good.” Growing up in the U.K. in the 1980s as the daughter of Indian immigrants, she was praised for being obedient and studious at home and at school. But she also experienced racial slurs and hostile stares. Sah lived in a place that didn’t always welcome differences—and her family was different. Sah had long considered her mother to be a compliant person. Quiet and deferential, her mom was the model of goodness. But one day that changed. When Sah was 7 years old, she and her mother were accosted in an alley by teenage boys, who shouted at them to “Go back home.” They were alone, vulnerable, and outnumbered. That’s…

When it comes to how optimistic we are as a country, the glass is more than half full. According to a recent Marist Institute for Public Opinion poll, 56% of Americans feel optimistic about 2025, while 43% are pessimistic. You may feel like optimism and pessimism is an inborn personality trait, but which side you fall on is actually a choice. While it sounds surprising, Sumit Paul-Choudhury, author of The Bright Side: How Optimists Change the World and How You Can Be One, consciously decided to be an optimist after the death of his first wife. “It was initially black humor,” he explains. “I was saying, ‘Things are really grim right now, but I’ve decided that they’re g…

If you’ve ever been passed over for a promotion, you may have questioned the quality of your work. The other candidate probably had better experience, right? But what if the answer is that you simply weren’t top of mind. Instead of focusing exclusively on building a résumé, how much time do you focus on how you’re perceived? “A lot of people think that heads-down good work will speak for itself,” says Lorraine K. Lee, author of Unforgettable Presence: Get Seen, Gain Influence, and Catapult Your Career. “Then there are people who are thoughtful about how they’re seen, but they’re not being seen by the right people in the right places.” Both can be career killers. …

In March, women are at the forefront of the cultural conversation. Recently, on March 8th, International Women’s Day was recognized—a moment that originally sprung from a movement to fight against child labor and sweatshop working conditions. This year’s theme was accelerating action, and I feel fortunate in my role as chief philanthropy officer at UNICEF USA, that I can support girls around the world—our future leaders, scientists, engineers, mothers, entrepreneurs, and more. What are the barriers standing in their way? And how do we accelerate action? Right now, it’s estimated that we won’t see full gender parity until 2158. I don’t want to wait for my great-gre…

Dr. Drew Ramsey is a board-certified psychiatrist and psychotherapist. He is a leading voice in nutritional psychiatry and integrative mental health. He is a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and the founder of the Brain Food Clinic and Spruce Mental Health. For 20 years, he was an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. His book Eat to Beat Depression and Anxiety was an international bestseller, and his work has been featured by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Today show, NPR, and other outlets. What’s the big idea? The time to start working on positive mental health outcomes should not be when a mental heal…

When Gabriela Flax left her corporate position managing 40 people to work on her career coaching businesses solo and moved from London to Sydney, the first thing she noticed was the silence. Without the constant movement, office hum, phones, and elevator dings, she says, she could finally bask in the quiet she’d always craved. But, she quickly realized, “Oh, wow, there’s no one around me.” Flax, a career coach and founder of the newsletter Pivot School, says, “I initially named my Substack No One’s in the Kitchen. I’d get off a work call super excited [because I] signed a new client . . . go to my kitchen to make a coffee, and no one’s there . . . just my dog loo…

Have you ever wanted to sign up for an online service but you didn’t want to provide your real email address as part of the process? There’s a good chance your email address has your actual name in it. Or perhaps you want to avoid the risk of getting spammed. What if you’d rather just sign up privately and have a quick “no more emails please” button? That’s precisely where a reliable email forwarding service can save the day. It empowers you to create a special disguised email address and then use it when signing up with a new app, services, or website. You’ll still get any emails sent to the anonymous email address in your normal email inbox—but the service y…

Every professional faces cycles consisting of booms, busts, restructurings, and reinventions. The difference between those who endure and those who fade isn’t luck or timing; it’s adaptability. In volatile economies, careers built on curiosity and agility thrive long after others stall. No market cycle lasts forever. Careers, like economies, move through expansions and contractions. It’s vital to continue upskilling, remain flexible, and adapt to market cycles. They are not always predictable, but the leaders who adapt, always learn, network, reflect, and rebalance will outperform the cycles. Adaptability Is the New Alpha In finance and beyond, resilience has …

Leaving your corporate job for a solopreneur path is a bold move—and it can feel terrifying. But as long as you’re prepared, it can be a smart move, especially in the current rocky job market. I worked at one corporate job for 15 years. Then I pivoted to a new career in marketing. Eighteen months later, I was working for myself as a full-time freelance writer. Within two months of going solo, I had replaced my salary at a marketing agency, but I’d also taken a lot of baby steps in advance of making the switch. You can make the transition to solopreneurship easier if you build a safety net before you walk out the corporate door. Here’s how. Calculate how much…

As 2026 begins, many organizations are launching AI transformation initiatives. The new year brings with it fresh budgets, renewed strategic focus, and mounting pressure to capture value from artificial intelligence. Yet studies consistently show that most AI projects fail to generate meaningful returns. Companies pour resources into promising experiments that never scale, accumulate tools that are never integrated, and watch initial enthusiasm curdle into skepticism. What separates organizations that create lasting value from those that don’t is rarely the technology to which they have access. Instead, the critical “secret sauce” lies in having a systematic, rigorous…

Business travel is often seen as glamorous—whether that’s new destinations, exciting opportunities, or packed itineraries of fun and adventure. I was certainly looking forward to all of these things when I began working with national and international companies. Unfortunately, once we actually start to go on these trips, the reality looks different. It’s long flights, disrupted sleep, constant stimulation, and very little space to recharge. Over time, this can leave us running on empty. As a result, decision-making, creativity, and well-being all suffer. Rest and recovery on work trips aren’t luxuries. They’re necessities if you want to stay at the top of your game. W…

Below, Ben Swire shares five key insights from his new book, Safe Danger: An Unexpected Method for Sparking Connection, Finding Purpose, and Inspiring Innovation. Ben is a former Design Lead at the innovation firm IDEO and co-founder of Make Believe Works, a team-building company that uses creative activities to accelerate connection, deepen trust, and fuel collaboration. His methods have helped organizations, from Fortune 500 companies to public school districts, build healthy, productive workplace cultures. What’s the big idea? Most of us think of risks as a threat to our safety. But what if they’re the best way to create the kind of safety that matters most—…

Every working parent has that one thing keeping them from completely losing it. Some have the Mary Poppins-like nanny who knows exactly when to show up with wet wipes and organic muffins. Others swear by meal kits, color-coded Google calendars, or chore charts their family actually follows (unicorn families, basically). For me? It’s a group text. Not glamorous, not particularly organized, but it’s my lifeline. This is where playdates get arranged, last-minute pickup emergencies get solved, and critical intel on the latest stomach bug gets dropped. It’s also where I can admit, “I fed my kids popcorn and blueberries for dinner,” and instead of side-eye, I get heart …

Experience sharpens judgment, boosts productivity, and teaches lessons that only come from years on the job. Yet, despite its value, companies continue to undervalue those with the most experience to offer. Employers have spent the past decade championing inclusivity. Yet, our latest survey of 1,000 Americans over 50 by DateMyAge found that 73% of over-50s feel treated as if their best years are already behind them, and 62% believe that employers have written them off professionally. Ageism isn’t just a workplace issue. It’s a cultural one. We wanted to explore it more deeply to challenge the idea that life and ambition have an expiration date. Age bias, som…

As you sift among the various options for your short-term investments, keep these key items on your dashboard: yield, guarantees, liquidity and your individual situation. The short-term investments that promise the highest yields often come with at least some risk and/or constraints on your daily access to funds. It may be that you’re just looking for the highest safe yield and don’t care that much about liquidity. Or maybe having ready access to your funds is the name of the game. Also think through whether you value an ironclad guarantee or are willing to go without in exchange for a potentially higher yield. Some cash instruments are fully FDIC-insured, while o…

Recently, after decades of paying high fees for the aging photo-sharing site Flickr, I finally moved all my images to Google Photos. It saved money and offered advanced features, like very accurate search results. But uploading years of pictures triggered the dreaded warning that I was approaching the storage limit of my Google account, which also holds Gmail, documents, spreadsheets, and other files. Cloud storage (be it Google Drive, iCloud, or Dropbox) is just one more in a growing list of subscriptions we all face, such as video and music streaming services, online magazines or newspapers, newsletters, Patreon sponsorship, and often just the right to keep using so…

If your team can’t function without you in the room, you don’t have a team, you have a dependency. Too many business owners confuse supporting their team with carrying them. Instead of learning how to coach team members, they do the work for them. They jump into every problem, solve every issue, and answer every question themselves. It feels like good leadership, but it’s actually just bottlenecking in disguise. The goal of leadership isn’t to be the smartest person in the room. Instead, it’s to build a room full of people who can think, solve, and act without you. That shift, from problem-solver to coach, is one of the most important moves a business owner can make.…

The 2001 Tilda Swinton film The Deep End features a scene that has stuck with me for nearly 25 years, even though I’ve forgotten almost everything else about the movie. Swinton’s character is being blackmailed for $50,000 and is given 24 hours to come up with the cash. Although her character is shown to live a comfortable, upper-middle-class life, she spends a stressful day on the phone trying to find the money—and she misses the deadline. As a budding money nerd, I wondered what I would do in her situation. I had some go-to sources of cash for smaller financial emergencies, but there was a limit to how much I could gather quickly. The thing is, everyone has a lim…

The room is silent. All eyes are on you. Your heart races, but as you take a deep breath, confidence replaces the nerves. You begin to speak, not just to inform, but to captivate. Public speaking isn’t an innate talent; it’s a skill that can be mastered. With the right techniques, anyone can transform into a compelling speaker. Research shows that 77% of people experience anxiety around public speaking, yet confidence and clarity can be learned. I frequently speak publicly, addressing teams of executives, industry leaders, and students. As a seasoned financial services executive with two decades of leadership experience and the two-time author of Wisdom on the Way to…

Nothing strikes fear in a leader’s heart more than an upcoming announcement. Yet big changes and announcements are the turning point for many organizations. Whether its layoffs, acquisitions, launches, or reorganizations, the pressure to “get it right” is real. Company performance, team morale, retention, and public image are all on the line. Unfortunately, most leaders rely on advisers and experts when it comes to how, when, and what to communicate. Well-meaning attorneys, publicists, or CFOs typically water down the message, and the company ends up with something that is factual but uninspiring. Oftentimes, that message is also ambiguous with no plan, next steps, or…

The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Virgin lithium mining is a focal point for the U.S. and is necessary for the nation’s growth in the critical minerals market. Yet, there is another primary source to secure key battery materials (lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese), and that is recycling end-of-life and scrap batteries. Domestic sourcing is crucial to expanding our manufacturing efforts, and it’s imperative …