What's on Your Mind?

I like to say that I spend most of my life negotiating—and if you consider your own work and life, you just might feel the same. My career has been full of back-and-forth: I sat across tables negotiating agreements for Christie’s for over two decades as Global Managing Director of Strategic Partnerships; I stand on stages around the world as a charity auctioneer, negotiating prices up to maximize fundraising; and I founded a talent agency that requires me to negotiate pay and conditions on behalf of my clients. To top it all off, I’m a mom of three kids. Over the years, I have listened to many people unknowingly sink their own negotiations with a mistake as simple as…

Consider a self-employed entrepreneur who racked up thousands of dollars in medical bills after a visit to the emergency department due to lack of employer-sponsored health insurance. Or the entrepreneur whose business never got off the ground—not because they lacked skill or demand, but because the burden of complicated taxes or owing money they didn’t expect made them walk away before they could even get started. This sentiment underscores how current policies can deter potential entrepreneurs from leaving traditional employment. Despite all of this, in recent years, solopreneurship—the practice of running a business without a team or employees—has grown drastically…

For many of us, December rushes by in a blur of holiday merrymaking and gift-giving, end-of-year invoicing and accounting, and hasty planning for the year ahead. In the rush, the thoughtful year-end reflection we might have hoped for often doesn’t happen. That’s a missed opportunity. Reflection doesn’t have to be complicated, though. Here’s a simple end-of-year exercise to help you process the year, stay aligned with your goals, and move forward with intention. Year in Review First, remind yourself what actually happened this year. It’s easy to fall prey to recency bias, focusing on the last few weeks and forgetting earlier events. We also tend to fixate on whe…

My friend Jessica Kriegel often warns her clients about the action trap, the urge to do something—anything—when things aren’t going well. Yet while taking action might make us feel better, it’s no guarantee we’ll get results. Many leaders fall into this trap, confusing taking action with making an impact, which can blind us to the underlying problem. The truth is that you can’t change fundamental behaviors without changing fundamental beliefs. It is, after all, beliefs, in the form of norms, that get encoded into a culture through rituals that drive behaviors. So unless you make a serious effort to understand the underlying problem you’re trying to solve, any action y…

As we head into the new year, I am facing a daunting prospect. After over 34 years in higher education as a professor and administrator, I’m moving to the private sector to support more effective teaching practices. I would classify this change as a significant career pivot. I am changing market sectors (public sector to private) and shifting from serving a single institution to a global base of clients. Decisions like this are not to be made lightly. It is important to ensure that you are making this move to run toward something attractive and not just away from something that frustrates you. Here are three important considerations if you think a significant career m…

The concept of advancement is baked into the way we think about work—almost like it’s a video game. Just like you don’t want to stay at a particular level of that game for too long, it sometimes doesn’t feel like you’re succeeding at work if your title doesn’t change, and you don’t get a significant raise. Getting a promotion isn’t just a matter of wanting it or playing the game long enough. There are several factors at play—only some of which are under your control. First, the organization needs to have a position for you to move into. If there is no role for you to play, then there isn’t much you can do to get promoted this year. Second, you have to decide whether t…

So you flew too close to the sun—downloading app after app, recording hi-res video, binging podcasts—and now you’re faced with the dreaded “Storage Almost Full” pop-up on your iPhone. It’s OK: we can handle this together. Here are three extremely expeditious tricks you can use to clear out the clutter and get back to a carefree life of digital hoarding. Detach from big message attachments Every hilarious GIF. Every video of someone’s kid skiing. Every duck-faced selfie. They’re all taking up space, and you’ll almost never need to revisit them. Free up a metric pant-load of storage in mere moments by heading to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > …

Fun fact: The saying “work smarter, not harder” is coming up on its 100th birthday. Coined in the 1930s by industrial engineer Allen Morgenstern, this simple, pithy directive is arguably more achievable today than ever before. Thanks to generative AI chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude, it’s never been easier to quickly create text, images, code, and more. Here are few practical ways you can leverage them to power up your productivity. Create content If you spend any time crafting marketing copy, drafting emails, outlining blog posts, or even brainstorming ideas, generative AI tools can save you an incredible amount of tim…

As my husband was growing his finance career, the year-end bonus became a pivotal moment: to see how much his hard work translated into cash. And rather than rushing to tell me the news, he and his close peers would gather at a local bar on bonus day to share their numbers. They wanted to know who got paid how much. “You share your bonus number with your colleagues?” I asked in disbelief. “Why would you do that?” “We want to know the range of bonuses given out,” he shared. “This also helps us understand how we can get paid more next time around and do better.” When I started my career, I remember a mentor once telling me, “Don’t talk about religion, sex, or po…

Stress isn’t just an occasional visitor in our lives—it’s more the houseguest who never got the hint to leave. Between economic uncertainty, workplace upheaval, rounds of layoffs, and the delightful unpredictability of daily life (surprise traffic jams, anyone?), most of us are living in a near-constant state of low-grade panic. But here’s something most people don’t realize: resilience—the ability to stay calm, flexible, and creative in the face of stress—isn’t just an inborn trait. It’s a skill. One that can be learned, practiced, and strengthened. And some of the most effective tools for doing that come not only from the world of business or psychology, but also fr…

Is your résumé on trend? If it is, you’ll get more interviews. If not, expect to be rejected or ghosted by recruiters and hiring managers. These tips will help you craft a résumé that reflects your success in a changing world. First, understand what’s top-of-mind for CEOs and feature solutions in your résumé. Transformation, artificial intelligence, and return-to-office are more urgent than ever. Transformation CEOs worry that their organizations won’t be viable in 10 years if they don’t transform. So, ask yourself what you’ve contributed to preparing your organization for the future. Then, feature your greatest accomplishments and highest impact in résumé bull…

Chances are you’ve had a bad boss at some point in your career. Research shows that up to 65% of employees would take a new boss over a pay raise, and roughly half of people who quit their jobs cite their manager as the main reason for leaving. Bad bosses are not just annoyances; they’re productivity drains, engagement killers, and mental health hazards. They create toxic cultures, stifle growth, and often drive the best people out while promoting dysfunction. So why do we keep ending up with them? Companies have long tried to solve the “bad boss” problem. They spend billions on leadership development programs, executive coaching, and increasingly, AI-powered feedbac…

Integrity, understood as a disposition to behave in prosocial, ethical, and principled ways rather than corrupt or self-serving ones, is among the strongest and most consistent predictors of job performance and leadership effectiveness. The reason is far from mysterious. Leadership, whatever its context, is a collective enterprise. No meaningful goal, from building empires to running companies, has ever been achieved alone. Across history, not just in humans but also other animals, cooperation has depended less on raw power than on trust. Ancient trading societies flourished precisely because reputation constrained behavior: merchants in Phoenician city-states, mediev…

Optimism has a branding problem at work. It often shows up as pressure to stay upbeat in meetings, reassurance that everything will work out, or encouragement to find the silver lining when pressure mounts. When things feel uncertain, that approach tends to backfire. As a clinical psychologist, I’ve seen how well-intentioned positivity can actually make work more strenuous. When you’re already stretched thin, being told to “stay positive” doesn’t help you reset. Research shows that when people feel pressure to suppress stress or override difficult emotions, the nervous system stays in a heightened threat state, reducing activity in the prefrontal cortex–the part of t…

Frequent flyers and travel hackers who visited SeatGuru on October 31 were met with an unpleasant surprise: a shuttered website directing them to Tripadvisor’s homepage. After nearly a quarter-century in operation, the beloved website that helped fliers determine which seats to grab, and which to avoid, is gone. Here’s why, and three SeatGuru alternatives to try now. What was SeatGuru? SeatGuru was a website highly regarded by frequent fliers. The site hosted seatmaps for thousands of airplanes and categorized every seat on each aircraft in order to help fliers figure out which to book and which to avoid. “Good” seats were those with qualities like the most legroom…

You may not realize you’re still clinging to the corporate world’s measures of success, but they can undermine your solo efforts. View the full article

There’s a lot of noise in the crypto space. Price swings rile up the internet, new jargony terms pop up constantly, and the hype and haters can turn people off before they begin. But if you’re curious about where crypto is actually headed, here’s what’s worth paying attention to in 2026. Three key shifts are changing how everyday people interact with digital assets. None of them require you to have tech or financial expertise. And none of them require you to act right now. Think of this as a look at the horizon, so you can make informed choices when you’re ready. 1. ADOPTION IS PICKING UP, EVEN IF YOU HAVEN’T NOTICED At the beginning of 2025, our State of C…

“Your new boss didn’t even offer you a glass of water?” my mother had questioned me in disbelief. “After how many interviews? You should not take that job. I am telling you not to take that job.” I had received a call from a recruiter to interview with one of the biggest beauty brands in the world. This was my chance to catapult my career into a company that didn’t often have job openings at my level, but didn’t have the best Glassdoor reviews. And I didn’t have time to ask too many questions. The recruiter had given me 48 hours notice to come in and do interviews. I had shared with my mother I did close to a dozen in person interviews, 30 minutes each, back to back. …

Burnout is a pervasive issue that can be damaging to individuals and costly to organizations. As Fast Company has reported previously, 82% of workers feel at risk for burnout and could be costing companies an average of $21,000 per year in lost productivity. And while there’s no shortage of advice about how to prevent burnout, prevention isn’t always a level playing field. Here are some situations that may leave you more prone to burnout than others: 1. If you’re in the wrong work environment Kandi Wiens, senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the university’s master’s in medical education program, says that some people may be more at r…

The productivity numbers don’t lie. Or do they? Most companies have now rolled out AI tools enterprise-wide. Licenses have been purchased. Trainings have been scheduled. Slack channels have been flooded with prompts. And yet, when leadership asks about the ROI, the room goes quiet. This is not a new story. In 1987, economist Robert Solow looked at the data after years of massive corporate investment in personal computers and found something baffling: zero statistically significant improvement in productivity. Companies had bought the technology. They just had not changed how they worked. This became known as the productivity paradox, and it is playing out again ri…

Meetings in corporate America are broken—and only breaking down more. Globally, people sit in three times as many meetings as they did before the pandemic, 60% of meetings are ad hoc, rather than scheduled, and 71% of people regularly multitask through them. When poorly-run meetings become the norm, people begin to see them as a time with little value. But meetings are an opportunity to shape organizational culture, and not enough leaders are taking advantage of it. Most high-performing teams build strong relationships, show care for the whole person, have open and honest communications, listen to each other, clarify processes, and collaborate. These are all beha…

From fake “apologies” that spread like wildfire on social media (as was the case during the Astronomer CEO scandal) to companies facing backlash for using generative AI without safeguards, recent crises have shown how quickly brand reputations can unravel in the digital age. The rapid spread of misinformation online, combined with new risks tied to emerging technologies, has left organizations more vulnerable than ever. Companies that are not ready to deal with a crisis are putting their brands, reputations, and future at risk. There are three warning signs that your workplace is unprepared for the next disaster, scandal, or other corporate emergency. 1. There’s N…

There’s a special place in you-know-where for spam callers. They’re annoying. They waste time. They’re also dangerous. And while it’s challenging to eliminate spam calls entirely, the good news is that with a little time and effort, you can significantly reduce the number of spam calls you receive. Here’s what to do. Add yourself to the FTC’s Do Not Call list One of the easiest and longest-lasting ways to reduce spam calls is to add your phone number to the National Do Not Call Registry, which is a free service managed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Once you’ve added your number, telemarketers have a month to remove you from their lists so you don’t…

Happiness has been a bit thin on the ground these days. The headlines are grim, loneliness and disconnection are rising, and work pressures seem to multiply by the day as new technologies, global unrest, and social upheaval collide. In the midst of all that, searching for joy may feel a bit . . . selfish. Even absurd. But none of these forces seem likely to resolve themselves anytime soon. Work will remain demanding. The news cycle will keep churning. Which raises a practical question: if the world isn’t getting lighter anytime soon, how do we find a little more lightness inside it? That doesn’t mean ignoring the difficulties around us. But you will be better…