You probably think you’d be a modern, supportive boss. Most people do. The issue is that we are generally bad at judging our own competence. In the Dunning–Kruger study, participants in the bottom quartile for skills like logic placed themselves…
I spent thirty minutes last Tuesday arranging the catering for an off-site workshop. The workshop was not my project. The organiser, a male colleague, thanked me for being “so helpful.” He will get credit for the workshop’s outcomes. My effort…
Sixty-one percent of managers say at least half the time they spend making decisions is ineffective. At a typical large company, that translates to about 530,000 wasted days per year. I read that figure from a McKinsey study and immediately…
Fifty-five percent of managers reported having to fire a recent graduate in the last year. The reason was almost never a lack of skill. It was a failure to understand how a workplace operates. According to a 2024 survey, the…
You have less time than you think. According to transition researcher Michael Watkins, it takes the average mid-level professional 6.2 months to reach the “breakeven point” — the moment you have contributed as much value to a company as you…
Right now, 62% of people globally are not engaged at work. Another 15% are actively disengaged. Only 23% are truly engaged, according to Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workplace report. In the U.S., engagement has sunk to a decade…
In 2007, researchers from Harvard and Carnegie Mellon published a series of experiments with a clear, uncomfortable finding. When women negotiate for higher pay, they are often penalised for it, viewed as less likable and less desirable to work with.…
Your job title says ‘Senior Manager’. Your email signature says ‘Director’. But if someone asked you what drives your decisions at work — the satisfaction of completing a task perfectly, or the desire to shape what happens next — what…
Gallup’s 2025 report states only 21% of workers globally are engaged in their jobs. The estimated cost of that disengagement is $438 billion in lost productivity. Most advice treats this as a problem with management or individual resilience. The research…
Your employer expects you to negotiate. A CareerBuilder survey found 73% of U.S. employers say they would be willing to negotiate salary on an initial job offer. The first number is their opening position, not their final one. They have…