1.

Remote Managers Are Having Trust Issues

Covid-19 has thrust many leaders into remote management which requires a different skill set than face-to-face management. They have been forced to make this transition quickly, and for the most part, without training. As a result, some managers may be finding their roles more difficult than before - and making their subordinates’ lives more stressful as they struggle to adapt. To investigate how Covid-19 is impacting both managers’ and employees’ work, well-being, and productivity, Sharon K. Parker, Caroline Knight and Anita Keller invited remote workers all over the world to participate in an ongoing longitudinal study. The results in this Harvard Business Review article offer some insights into today’s new work as well as some ways forward.

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2.

How to (Actually) Change Someone’s Mind

If you’re a leader, it’s likely that not everyone who works with you will agree with the decisions you make — and that’s okay. Leadership involves making unpopular decisions while navigating complex relationships with colleagues, partners, and clients. But often, you will need to get buy-in from these constituents, and therefore you will need to convince them to change their mind. There is little friction involved in convincing people who are your natural supporters. But trying to change the mind of a dissenter, or a detractor, is a different story. In this Harvard Business Review  Laura Huang and Ryan Yu take a look at how you go about convincing someone who, for one reason or another, doesn’t see eye-to-eye with you? Someone who gives you a flat out “no”.

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3.

Steal 3 Surprising Storytelling Techniques From Jeff Bezos

Whether you are an entry-level employee or one of the richest people on earth, eventually everyone faces the same challenge. Everyone has to convey the essence of who they are. In this Forbes article Esther Choy looks closely at Jeff Bezos’s well crafted testimony before Congress, and specifically when asked “so, tell me about yourself.” Choy outlines the three storytelling techniques at work in Bezos’s testimony. She argues that telling stories may not be part of your preparation routine when faced with a high stakes moment. In fact, telling stories might not be part of your communication repertoire at all. However, if you truly want to change minds and hearts, you don’t have a choice not to tell stories.

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4.

Anxious About What’s Next? Here’s How to Cope

This year, we are all poised on a massive professional threshold, waiting to see what a “return to work” actually looks like. Our daily habits and routines have all gone out the window. We’re left in a sort of limbo, fretting over how long it will last and what will come next. All we really know, at the end of the day, is that work has been fundamentally changed. The human mind believes falsely that it can think its way through a period of uncertainty. We are convinced that by understanding the source of it, we can somehow fix it. But it doesn’t work that way. On the contrary, by overanalyzing, we are making matters worse. In this Harvard Business Review article, Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter discuss how breaking this cycle starts by letting go of the overthinking and instead getting comfortable with just being and experiencing our emotions as they come. 

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5.

Life Is Now a Game of Risk ... Here’s How Your Brain Is Processing It

When making important decisions, we like to think that humans assess risks rationally, that people weigh the pros and cons of a situation to come to a sensible conclusion. In reality, emotions, particularly fears and desires, play an outsize role in decision-making, and typically we go with our initial gut reaction. What’s more, the brain plays a host of tricks, called cognitive biases, to further convince us that our emotionally led decision is the right one. In this Medium article Dana G. Smith looks at how understanding how the brain navigates this new reality can build confidence and empathy in everyday decision-making.

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