Tag Archives: Leadership

Holiday stress is killing your employees — here’s how to help them

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By Tony Case for WorkLife

With another holiday season in full swing, employers face a familiar challenge: helping their workforce navigate the complex blend of year-end pressures and holiday expectations.

The stakes are higher than many leaders realize. Recent data from employee recognition program Workhuman shows that while the season brings joy and celebration, it also generates significant stress for employees, particularly around finances, work-life balance and performance expectations.

That stress has a well-documented impact on individual employees as well as the business overall. Recent research from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that 44% of 1,405 U.S. workers surveyed feel burned out at work — feelings that only intensify this time of the year. In fact, more than half of us say we’re experiencing more holiday stress than ever.

“It’s important to make sure employees feel appreciated and supported during the holiday season,” said Traci Pesch, practice lead and strategist at Workhuman. “Whether it’s work-related stressors or something personal going on in the life of an employee that makes this time extra difficult, leaders need to make a concerted effort to celebrate what makes those people such valuable contributors to their organization.”

The cost of stress

According to Workhuman’s survey of 3,000 full-time employees across the U.S., U.K. and Ireland, financial concerns are the primary source of holiday stress for 64% of employees, with 35% depending on year-end bonuses to cover their holiday expenses.

Meanwhile, one-third of workers report feeling more stressed during the holiday season due to increased workloads and pressure to meet year-end goals.

The situation is particularly acute for working parents. A survey of 500 working parents in the U.S. by Bright Horizons and Opinium Research found that nearly half of parents with children aged 0-12 experience more stress during the holidays, mainly due to juggling work and childcare.

The survey determined that mothers are significantly more likely to experience increased stress (55%) compared to fathers (30%).

Charlotte Anderson, head of people experience at design platform Canva, emphasizes that recognition should be a year-round priority, though it takes on special urgency around the holidays. “Developing a strategy for recognizing employees at the end of the year is especially important as the holiday season often brings heightened stress, fatigue and burnout,” she said. That observation is supported by Canva’s recent workplace survey, which found that three-quarters of respondents wish they felt more appreciated.

The impact of recognition cannot be understated. Canva’s research, based on responses from 1,500 employees in the U.S. and Australia, indicates that recognition boosts motivation (among 87% of employees), confidence (85%) and productivity (84%).

However, Anderson warns against taking a one-size-fits-all approach. “Team members want to feel seen as individuals,” she said, stressing that just half of those surveyed felt their bosses recognized their unique qualities.

What truly matters

Rather than traditional perks or awards, Anderson suggests focusing on what truly matters to employees: flexibility, inclusion, work-life balance and opportunities for growth. Some practical approaches include:

  • Offering heartfelt notes or “hype reels”
  • Fostering two-way communication and feedback
  • Embedding “surprise and delight” moments throughout the employee lifecycle
  • Tying recognition to core values
  • Creating meaningful celebrations with visual communication

Those strategies align with what Sandra Moran, chief customer experience officer at WorkForce Software, advises, noting that what matters most to many employees is having control over their schedules. That is particularly critical for deskless and shift-based workers, who often face greater scheduling challenges around the holidays.

Leadership in a world gone mad: An ode to fewer, better meetings

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Thinkers 50 Blog

How could you become a better, more efficient and collaborative leader? Anne Morriss and Frances Frei provide a persuasive and time-saving strategy in the first in a series looking at the practice of leadership in a mad, mad world.

One way that organizations have responded to the combination of unprecedented uncertainty and a more distributed workforce is to drag more people into more meetings during more hours of the workday. Researchers now estimate that workers are spending about a third of their time in meetings, and much of that time is unproductive. One study from meeting software company Doodle estimated that across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, 24 billion hours will be lost to pointless meetings in the next year. 

All this time together is creating the illusion of progress while inhibiting the kind of deep work, true collaboration, and creativity needed to solve our increasingly complex problems. In response, some leaders have simply banned this toxic substance (no-meeting Fridays!), but a more effective remedy is to create a gathering culture defined by fewer, better meetings. Treat your people’s time as the most strategic resource you have. If you’re going to use it, use it wisely. 

One company we recently worked with leaned into this philosophy, reducing its employees’ time in meetings by fifty percent in just a few months. Early indicators of outcomes from this shift include reduced burnout and stronger customer relationships without any reduction in team connectivity. Tactics that worked well for this organisation: embracing old-school meeting agendas, using AI for notetaking, and sharing audio recordings with people who weren’t in the meeting, who could then listen to the proceedings on their own time (often at 2x speed).  

On our podcast Fixable we interviewed Claire Hughes Johnson about how to run a great meeting. As the former COO of Stripe, Claire helped grow the company from fewer than 200 employees to more than six thousand – and from millions in revenue to billions. A casual talk she once gave on how to run an effective staff meeting at Google, her former employer, immediately went viral. (Claire is now a corporate officer and adviser to Stripe, in addition to writing great books). 

Claire’s principal advice is to prepare. Before you have the audacity to convene people, make sure you have clear answers to these questions: 

  • Why are we meeting? What are our objectives? 
  • Who needs to be there to achieve these objectives? 
  • How are we going to spend our time together? 

Circulate materials in advance so that everyone has the runway to contribute effectively, which some people need more than others. “Extroverts talk to think,” Claire explained. “Introverts think to talk.” And, yes, she’s on board with agendas, which signal where you’re going and keep everyone on track. 

Once the meeting begins, the objective is to surface unique information and ideas from your fellow gatherers. Our favourite prompt is, “Can someone articulate a different point of view?” which is a lower-stakes variant of “Who has a different point of view?” This will also help you resist the temptation to converge too quickly on a less-than-optimal solution. In our experience, fast convergence typically leads to a false optima (also known as not our best idea) and a higher chance that people will hold back additional ideas, even when they’re better. 

Finally, stick the landing. Before your meeting ends, summarise key decisions and action items. Make sure everyone knows what they’re responsible for delivering and the deadlines they need to hit. Claire likes to use a “check-out” at the close of meetings – a rapid-fire prompt to help reinforce commitments and get a pulse check on the group’s experience. A standard check-out she relies on is: “Use one or two words to describe what you’re thinking as we close this meeting – it could be a feeling, an idea, a topic you want more of.” 

When it comes to meetings, we urge you to get into the organisational sandbox and play with new approaches. Are you meeting to ideate or execute? To learn from what happened or prepare for what’s coming? Adapt your meeting’s structure, style, and pace to your goals. The only truly universal meeting rule is that if you’re gathering in person for any significant amount of time, then you need to feed people. 

Make the experience of work feel a little less crazy by committing to fewer, better meetings. We’ve seen companies go from sixty-minute meetings to thirty-minute meetings, thirty-minute meetings to twenty-minute meetings, using our favourite intervention profile: no new people, no new technology, just a healthy dose of intention. 

Survey Says: Ethics Still Matter in Business

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The Darden Report The University of Virginia

By McGregor McCance

Does the stakeholder approach to business still matter in a climate dominated by raw, power-play decision-making?

Stakeholder proponents like Darden School of Business Professor Ed Freeman say the answer is yes, even as corporate executives pull back on commitments to workers and political leaders today enact massive changes that will deeply affect employees and other stakeholders.

“The opportunity for businesses to step up is huge,” Freeman said.

New research suggests that is exactly what people want.

A recent survey gauging what people expect from corporate America ranked ethical leadership as the No. 2 expectation people have for business. That result was up from the No. 7 spot last year.

Similarly, respondents listed the expectation that corporations “communicate transparently” rose to the No. 4 rank this year, from No. 12 the previous survey.

The No. 1 result: People expect and want fair, living wages.

The annual Americans’ Views on Business Survey, conducted by JUST Capital, is intended to identify what the public expects from business, what issues matter most, and where there are opportunities for business leadership.

JUST Capital was co-founded in 2014 by a group from business, finance and civil society who “believed that business and markets can and must be a greater force for good.” The founding members include investor Paul Tudor Jones II, who earned an economics degree from the University of Virginia.

Freeman, who collaborates regularly with JUST Capital, said this year’s survey results are not surprising, as they fit with a pattern of public sentiment for ethical, fair behavior toward employees and other stakeholders such as suppliers, communities and investors.

“If you ask American people what they want about their business, they want them to essentially create value for their stakeholders. That’s the short form of what this survey says,” Freeman said. “They place fair wages, dealing with customers in the right way, and ethics, at the top of the list. This isn’t some weird idea. It’s what people expect.”

Stakeholder capitalism is defined broadly as an approach to business in which a company or organization considers how its actions will affect all stakeholder groups, rather than fulfilling a responsibility only to shareholders. The approach urges consideration of employees, customers, suppliers, the community and the environment – as well as shareholders.

“The opportunity for businesses to step up is huge.”

ED FREEMAN, DARDEN PROFESSOR

Stakeholder capitalism or stakeholder theory have long been core to Darden’s curriculum and School values. Freeman, who has taught stakeholder theory and ethics at Darden since 1987, is credited with articulating the original stakeholder tenets in a business context in his 1984 book “Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach.”

JUST Capital said the latest survey results mirror sentiments expressed by voters in the November 2024 election cycle: “Americans are concerned about their economic well-being, about how they are treated as consumers, about being able to support their families. And they appear distrustful of institutions as they repeatedly call for increased transparency, corporate accountability and leadership.”

For Freeman, the results bolster Darden’s commitment to teaching responsible leadership, while giving corporate and government leaders more reason to think about how their decisions affect others.

“When the effects are not good, you’re partially responsible for that,” he said. “Stakeholders are responsible too, but you’re partially responsible for the effects of your actions. That’s just ethics 101.”

The survey’s top 10 issues that members of the public identify for business:

  1. Pays a fair, living wage
  2. Acts ethically at the leadership level
  3. Supports worker wellbeing
  4. Communicates transparently
  5. Provides benefits and work-life balance
  6. Supports workforce advancement and training
  7. Treats customers fairly
  8. Offers fair pricing
  9. Creates jobs in the U.S.
  10. Protects customer privacy

About the University of Virginia Darden School of Business

The University of Virginia Darden School of Business prepares responsible global leaders through unparalleled transformational learning experiences. Darden’s graduate degree programs (MBA, MSBA and Ph.D.) and Executive Education & Lifelong Learning programs offered by the Darden School Foundation set the stage for a lifetime of career advancement and impact. Darden’s top-ranked faculty, renowned for teaching excellence, inspires and shapes modern business leadership worldwide through research, thought leadership and business publishing. Darden has Grounds in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the Washington, D.C., area and a global community that includes 18,000 alumni in 90 countries. Darden was established in 1955 at the University of Virginia, a top public university founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The Best CEOs Are Like Great Frontmen and Here’s Why That Matters

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Here’s how organizations can rethink leadership readiness by drawing inspiration from the way rock bands test and elevate their talent.

By Rhett Power for RollingStone Magazine

The crowd is roaring. The lights are up. The stage is set. At that moment, no résumé, portfolio or pedigree can help a musician hit the right note. It’s all about performance. The same holds true in the corporate world. The clearest sign of executive readiness is a leader’s ability to perform under real pressure: When uncertainty is high, stakes are real and others are looking for direction. And in a business climate where leadership turnover is accelerating, companies can’t afford to cast their headliners without a proper soundcheck.

Over the years, I’ve helped companies navigate high-stakes leadership transitions. Time and again, I’ve seen that the most effective leaders aren’t the ones with the best résumés, but the ones who’ve proven they can perform under pressure. What I’ve learned is simple but often overlooked: the best leaders are the ones who have already delivered a strong performance when it mattered most. Here’s how organizations can rethink leadership readiness by drawing inspiration from the way rock bands test and elevate their talent.

Résumés Don’t Predict Readiness — Live Performance Does

It’s easy to be dazzled by credentials, tenure and polished interview skills. But a strong résumé is like a pristine demo tape: it might sound good, but it doesn’t tell you how someone will perform on a live stage.

Research consistently shows that leaders who stay calm and composed in high-pressure situations have a significant impact on team outcomes. Teams take their cues from the people leading them. When leaders stay composed under pressure, the ripple effect shows up in performance, collaboration and resilience. That kind of steadiness doesn’t show up in interviews but rather in the hard moments, when direction and calm are most needed.

Executive search firms are seeing a shift in how boards define “readiness.” What matters most is how someone shows up when everything is on the line. Companies need to focus on leaders who’ve already faced tough moments and demonstrated they can lead through them with clarity and resilience.

Interim Leaders Are the New Test Run for the C-Suite

More companies are turning to interim executives to observe how a leader handles the job under real conditions before committing to a long-term hire. Demand for interim CFOs and other top-level leaders is rising fast, and these roles are increasingly being used as quiet auditions for the long term.

I’ve seen interim roles serve as powerful auditions that can either uncover a leader’s readiness or expose critical gaps long before a permanent offer is made. Interim roles offer a glimpse into how a leader handles ambiguity, drives strategy and gains trust without the commitment of a long-term hire. But they also carry risk. Interim leaders can flounder without clear expectations and support, leaving organizations worse off.

Much like a band might bring in a touring musician to test chemistry and capability before offering a permanent spot, businesses are using interim roles to simulate the pressure of the top job. Interim roles have become the rehearsal space for the C-suite, offering leaders a chance to prove themselves before the spotlight turns on for good.

Flattened Orgs Are Losing Their Next Leaders

The pandemic-era push for agile, flatter organizations has helped eliminate bureaucracy but eroded the traditional leadership pipeline. “The Great Flattening,” a trend where companies eliminate middle layers of management, is making it harder to identify, train and promote the next generation of executives.

Without strong VP-level roles that stretch talent and provide real leadership reps, companies are starving their future stars of stage time. It’s like skipping the opening act and expecting someone to headline flawlessly.

That’s why companies must treat mid-level leadership as a developmental phase, not a holding pattern. These roles should be structured to challenge, empower and evaluate performance under increasing responsibility. I’ve always seen VP roles as more than middle management. They’re the training ground where future executives build the instincts and experience they’ll need when it’s their turn to lead.

The Final Encore

Leadership readiness comes through in real moments — not in theory, but in how someone leads when it counts. When the spotlight hits, you either rise or fall. Companies can avoid costly misfires at the top by shifting focus from credentials to real-world performance, treating interim roles as meaningful auditions and rebuilding mid-level proving grounds.

In the end, what matters most is having people who can step up and deliver when the moment demands it — just like the bandmates who shine when the crowd’s waiting and the lights come up.

Don’t Just Tell Your Team What to Do—Tell Them Why

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Giving a reason boosts performance and reduces resistance—here’s how.

By Andy Lopata for Psychology Today

For such a small word, why has a tremendous impact. The presence of a reason, for example, makes it easier for people to reach out to others. The power of why extends to other scenarios.

Giving people a reason for a request can also be incredibly impactful in leadership. Many leaders focus on issuing clear instructions, but they often overlook the value of explaining the purpose behind a request. Without that explanation, even straightforward tasks may be met with resistance or resentment, while giving a reason helps to build engagement, ownership and motivation.

As Daniel Pink observed in his book Drive, “People at work are thirsting for context. They want to know that what they do contributes to a larger whole.”

A Simple Reason Leads to Strong Results

In a study conducted by Adam Grant of the University of Pennsylvania, employees in a university call center were split into groups. One group was told why their work mattered (for example, they were raising funds to help students), while the others received no explanation. The group given a reason for their activity raised more than twice the amount of money as the control group.

In Thinking, Fast and Slow, psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains that people are more likely to accept ideas when they experience cognitive ease—when the information feels easy to process and familiar. When a reason accompanies a request, it requires less mental effort to understand and accept, leading to less resistance and greater trust.

A clear correlation has been established between giving reasons for requests and the response received. There are other reasons why leaders should communicate purpose more clearly to their reports.

Creating Safe and Engaged Teams

In recent years, there has been a growing acceptance of the benefits of creating a psychologically safe environment for people to work in. Amy Edmondson, of Harvard Business School, has demonstrated how something as simple as giving a reason when making a request can increase feelings of psychological safety.

In her book The Fearless Organization, Dr. Edmondson states, “When people understand the rationale behind a decision or direction, they feel more included in the process—even if they didn’t make the decision themselves.”

When leaders provide the why behind a request, they move from command-communication to a more collaborative style of engagement. They are telling their team that they trust them to understand the whole picture and not to have to act blindly. As Edmondson highlights, this fosters interpersonal trust and reduces the perception of a power imbalance, helping to create a more psychologically secure environment.

Open communication also drives engagement, removing confusion about priorities and the bigger picture and increasing motivation. Linking a request to an overarching objective gives a purpose to the work, and, as Penn’s Grant has shown, people are more motivated when they feel that their work has meaning.

Simple Steps to Providing Purpose

It shouldn’t be a challenge to move from telling teams what to do to enrolling team members through purpose. It just takes a little thought and time and enough caring to explain rather than dictate. Here are some simple steps to shift your communication:

  1. Ensure you include a reason in every request or directive you give your team. Make it a core of your ask, whether verbal or written, so that communicating that purpose clearly becomes second nature.
  2. Bring your requests to life by sharing real-world examples, telling stories and explaining exactly what success will look like if everyone plays their role.
  3. Don’t just tell, ask. Take purpose to another level by sharing your ideal outcome and inviting your team to share their ideas for a path forward before allotting tasks. After all, if you reach your objective with everyone on board, does it matter where the ideas came from?

Giving reasons for requests and direction is a simple way to turn instruction into inspiration. By doing so, you’ll see better results, greater team engagement, and more-trusted relationships with the people you lead.

There’s a very simple reason why!

Leading With Hope and Kindness: 5 Ways to Be a Better Leader

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Five Qualities of a Great Leader: Hope, Trust, Gratitude, Strength, and Purpose

By Christine O’Connell, Ph.D. for Psychology Today

Leadership isn’t just about making decisions or hitting targets, it is about inspiring, empowering, and creating a culture where people feel valued. The best leaders don’t just manage; they uplift. By fostering hope, trust, and a strong sense of purpose, leaders can help their teams thrive.

1. Lead With Hope and Vision

Hope is a job that starts at the top. A 2025 Gallup Poll found that 56% of people believe hope is the most important trait in a leader. When employees see a leader who believes in a better future, they are more engaged, motivated, and resilient. Hope fuels optimism, encourages problem-solving, and helps people navigate challenges with confidence. Leaders should share their vision clearly, celebrate progress, and remind their teams that they are part of something meaningful.

2. Foster a Culture of Trust

Trust is the foundation of strong leadership. When teams trust their leaders, they collaborate more effectively, take creative risks, and perform better. Research shows that employees in high-trust environments are not only more productive but also happier and healthier. Trust isn’t built overnight—it comes from consistency, transparency, and genuine connection. Leaders should communicate openly, follow through on commitments, and actively listen. By doing so, they create a culture where people feel safe and supported.

3. Practice Gratitude and Invest in Well-Being

Gratitude isn’t just a nice gesture, it’s a leadership superpower. Studies show that when leaders express appreciation, employees feel more engaged, satisfied, and loyal. A simple “thank you” can go a long way in building a positive work culture. But beyond words, investing in whole-person health, including mental, emotional, and physical well-being, ensures that employees feel valued and supported, and helps avoid burnout. Burnout affects your bottom line. A Workhuman and Gallup poll found that workplace turnover due to burnout alone is 15-20% of payroll. Investing in whole-person health creates a deeper connection to the organization and builds workplace community. Supporting work-life balance, encouraging wellness, and recognizing individual contributions create an environment where people stay, and can do their best work.

4. Empower Others by Recognizing Their Strengths

Great leaders don’t just correct mistakes, they amplify strengths. A strengths-based leadership approach leads to higher engagement, better performance, and stronger teams. Instead of focusing on weaknesses, leaders should recognize what their team members excel at and give them opportunities to shine. Great leaders also recognize their own strengths and lean into those. When people feel seen for their talents, they gain confidence, take ownership, and contribute more meaningfully.

5. Lead With Kindness and Purpose

Leadership isn’t about being the loudest voice in the room, it’s about lifting others up. Kindness isn’t a weakness; it’s a powerful leadership tool. Leading with empathy, active listening, and genuine care creates an environment where people feel valued and motivated. And having a clear purpose beyond just profits or productivity helps inspire others to work toward something bigger than themselves.

The Leadership We Need Today

In a world filled with uncertainty, strong leadership matters more than ever. The best leaders don’t just focus on results, they focus on people. By fostering hope, trust, and purpose, they create workplaces where individuals feel empowered, supported, and driven to make a difference. As Maya Angelou wisely said, “A leader sees greatness in other people. He or she can’t be much of a leader if all she sees is herself.” The greatest leaders inspire, uplift, and leave a lasting impact.

Survey Says: Ethics Still Matter in Business

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The Darden Report The University of Virginia

By McGregor McCance

Does the stakeholder approach to business still matter in a climate dominated by raw, power-play decision-making?

Stakeholder proponents like Darden School of Business Professor Ed Freeman say the answer is yes, even as corporate executives pull back on commitments to workers and political leaders today enact massive changes that will deeply affect employees and other stakeholders.

“The opportunity for businesses to step up is huge,” Freeman said.

New research suggests that is exactly what people want.

A recent survey gauging what people expect from corporate America ranked ethical leadership as the No. 2 expectation people have for business. That result was up from the No. 7 spot last year.

Similarly, respondents listed the expectation that corporations “communicate transparently” rose to the No. 4 rank this year, from No. 12 the previous survey.

The No. 1 result: People expect and want fair, living wages.

The annual Americans’ Views on Business Survey, conducted by JUST Capital, is intended to identify what the public expects from business, what issues matter most, and where there are opportunities for business leadership.

JUST Capital was co-founded in 2014 by a group from business, finance and civil society who “believed that business and markets can and must be a greater force for good.” The founding members include investor Paul Tudor Jones II, who earned an economics degree from the University of Virginia.

Freeman, who collaborates regularly with JUST Capital, said this year’s survey results are not surprising, as they fit with a pattern of public sentiment for ethical, fair behavior toward employees and other stakeholders such as suppliers, communities and investors.

“If you ask American people what they want about their business, they want them to essentially create value for their stakeholders. That’s the short form of what this survey says,” Freeman said. “They place fair wages, dealing with customers in the right way, and ethics, at the top of the list. This isn’t some weird idea. It’s what people expect.”

Stakeholder capitalism is defined broadly as an approach to business in which a company or organization considers how its actions will affect all stakeholder groups, rather than fulfilling a responsibility only to shareholders. The approach urges consideration of employees, customers, suppliers, the community and the environment – as well as shareholders.

“The opportunity for businesses to step up is huge.”

ED FREEMAN, DARDEN PROFESSOR

Stakeholder capitalism or stakeholder theory have long been core to Darden’s curriculum and School values. Freeman, who has taught stakeholder theory and ethics at Darden since 1987, is credited with articulating the original stakeholder tenets in a business context in his 1984 book “Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach.”

JUST Capital said the latest survey results mirror sentiments expressed by voters in the November 2024 election cycle: “Americans are concerned about their economic well-being, about how they are treated as consumers, about being able to support their families. And they appear distrustful of institutions as they repeatedly call for increased transparency, corporate accountability and leadership.”

For Freeman, the results bolster Darden’s commitment to teaching responsible leadership, while giving corporate and government leaders more reason to think about how their decisions affect others.

“When the effects are not good, you’re partially responsible for that,” he said. “Stakeholders are responsible too, but you’re partially responsible for the effects of your actions. That’s just ethics 101.”

The survey’s top 10 issues that members of the public identify for business:

  1. Pays a fair, living wage
  2. Acts ethically at the leadership level
  3. Supports worker wellbeing
  4. Communicates transparently
  5. Provides benefits and work-life balance
  6. Supports workforce advancement and training
  7. Treats customers fairly
  8. Offers fair pricing
  9. Creates jobs in the U.S.
  10. Protects customer privacy

About the University of Virginia Darden School of Business

The University of Virginia Darden School of Business prepares responsible global leaders through unparalleled transformational learning experiences. Darden’s graduate degree programs (MBA, MSBA and Ph.D.) and Executive Education & Lifelong Learning programs offered by the Darden School Foundation set the stage for a lifetime of career advancement and impact. Darden’s top-ranked faculty, renowned for teaching excellence, inspires and shapes modern business leadership worldwide through research, thought leadership and business publishing. Darden has Grounds in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the Washington, D.C., area and a global community that includes 18,000 alumni in 90 countries. Darden was established in 1955 at the University of Virginia, a top public university founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Distraction Or Disruption? It Matters For Strategy

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By Tara Rethore for Chief Executive

The flurry of Executive Orders—and the way it has dominated the news cycle—has made it more challenging to determine the true impact to your business. But it still has to be done.

Within days of the Presidential Inauguration, the U.S. saw a flurry of leadership and policy shifts. While not entirely unanticipated, the range, volume and reach of Executive Orders has dominated conversation.

Whether personally supporting or opposing the directives, executives must sort through them all, understand their specific and broader implications, and take action.

News outlets, social media, experts and individuals—everyone is eager to comment on, react to and make sense of the changes coming at them rapid-fire. Staff inside and outside government must evaluate what they’re doing and how they are working. Further, several orders directly impact individuals, likely including staff or customers.

Talking with executives across a wide range of industries in both for-profit and not-for-profit environments, I noted an interesting question:

Do the policy shifts signal a disruption to your business or are they a distraction?

Both distraction and disruption make it harder to get work done and can impede progress toward objectives. Nevertheless, they are different, an important distinction that matters for how you take strategy forward. A change in trade policy, such as revised tariffs or new restrictions on foreign partnerships, can either be a distraction or a disruption depending on the industry. A multinational retailer sourcing products from overseas may see a disruption that affects pricing, profitability and competitive positioning, while a professional services firm focused on domestic clients might experience only a minor distraction as it navigates industry discourse but sees little direct impact. For CEOs, distinguishing between these levels of impact helps determine whether to adjust strategy or simply manage the internal noise created by external shifts.

Understand the nature of the onslaught

The best way to determine course of action is to take a beat to assess the scope and impact of the changes more deeply and specifically.

• Distraction: Usually transient, temporary, with limited or specific impact. Nevertheless, without deliberate attention, they tend to compound over time as anxiety spreads. Water cooler or Slack conversations no longer advance the work and relationships; instead, they simply consume time. Progress stalls. Or sometimes, what may feel like a non sequitur may in fact be a new or unexpected opportunity.

  • What is the real work here?
  • How will you guide your team to quiet the noise and focus on value delivered?

• Disruption: Fundamentally changes the business context. Like a distraction, this adds to anxiety, particularly when the disruption creates new uncertainty. Abrupt, dramatic disruption can provoke a crisis mentality that may or may not be helpful.

  • What part of your business is most vulnerable in this situation?
  • How deep or broad is the impact?
  • And your customers: How might you help them address their vulnerabilities?

There is value in seeing the situation differently, prompted by answering these questions. Further, visibility is key to making your strategy work. Whether the company is facing rapid change, a crisis or the cacophony that each often produces, it’s difficult for CEOs to have a clear line of sight about what’s going on.

Taking a breath and discerning the difference between distraction and disruption will help with clarity. From there, leaders can identify the actions required and the urgency of their response. And of course, they should monitor both the efficacy of their response and the evolution of the situation.

How you show up as a leader matters

Whether distracting or disruptive, sweeping change—like that potentially precipitated by the recent Executive Orders—affects real people. Customers. Staff. Stakeholders. Partners. Board members. What impacts them also affects your business context. It doesn’t matter whether you support or oppose a particular change, or even whether or not you like it. It is very likely that your organization includes people holding both views. But how you show up as a leader matters.

Executives cannot remain on the sidelines

Consider taking these three actions:

• Be the calm in the storm. As CEO, you and your executive team set the tone for the organization. Your words, actions and decisions reflect values and commitment to their people. Use constructive language and guide others to understand and accept the range of emotions, viewpoints and ideas present within your teams.

• Nurture trust and build new relationships. Involve unexpected or previously unlikely parties. Focus on common outcomes and what each contributes to their achievement. Together, you may find a new path forward.

• Engage the board. The executives I advise routinely rely on the varied experiences and perspectives of their board members. While this is always a valuable way in which boards contribute, it has even greater potential for positive impact during a crisis, (as I wrote for Corporate Board Member here.) Like the Farmers’ Insurance tagline, they “know a few things because they’ve seen a few things.” Why not tap that experience?

Distraction or disruption: it matters for strategy. And executives cannot remain on the sidelines. Discern the nature of the changes mandated by the Executive Orders—or whatever shift you face—and take action. Above all, ignore the situation’s human impact at your peril, both personally and for your business.

Holiday stress is killing your employees — here’s how to help them

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By Tony Case for WorkLife

With another holiday season in full swing, employers face a familiar challenge: helping their workforce navigate the complex blend of year-end pressures and holiday expectations.

The stakes are higher than many leaders realize. Recent data from employee recognition program Workhuman shows that while the season brings joy and celebration, it also generates significant stress for employees, particularly around finances, work-life balance and performance expectations.

That stress has a well-documented impact on individual employees as well as the business overall. Recent research from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that 44% of 1,405 U.S. workers surveyed feel burned out at work — feelings that only intensify this time of the year. In fact, more than half of us say we’re experiencing more holiday stress than ever.

“It’s important to make sure employees feel appreciated and supported during the holiday season,” said Traci Pesch, practice lead and strategist at Workhuman. “Whether it’s work-related stressors or something personal going on in the life of an employee that makes this time extra difficult, leaders need to make a concerted effort to celebrate what makes those people such valuable contributors to their organization.”

The cost of stress

According to Workhuman’s survey of 3,000 full-time employees across the U.S., U.K. and Ireland, financial concerns are the primary source of holiday stress for 64% of employees, with 35% depending on year-end bonuses to cover their holiday expenses.

Meanwhile, one-third of workers report feeling more stressed during the holiday season due to increased workloads and pressure to meet year-end goals.

The situation is particularly acute for working parents. A survey of 500 working parents in the U.S. by Bright Horizons and Opinium Research found that nearly half of parents with children aged 0-12 experience more stress during the holidays, mainly due to juggling work and childcare.

The survey determined that mothers are significantly more likely to experience increased stress (55%) compared to fathers (30%).

Charlotte Anderson, head of people experience at design platform Canva, emphasizes that recognition should be a year-round priority, though it takes on special urgency around the holidays. “Developing a strategy for recognizing employees at the end of the year is especially important as the holiday season often brings heightened stress, fatigue and burnout,” she said. That observation is supported by Canva’s recent workplace survey, which found that three-quarters of respondents wish they felt more appreciated.

The impact of recognition cannot be understated. Canva’s research, based on responses from 1,500 employees in the U.S. and Australia, indicates that recognition boosts motivation (among 87% of employees), confidence (85%) and productivity (84%).

However, Anderson warns against taking a one-size-fits-all approach. “Team members want to feel seen as individuals,” she said, stressing that just half of those surveyed felt their bosses recognized their unique qualities.

What truly matters

Rather than traditional perks or awards, Anderson suggests focusing on what truly matters to employees: flexibility, inclusion, work-life balance and opportunities for growth. Some practical approaches include:

  • Offering heartfelt notes or “hype reels”
  • Fostering two-way communication and feedback
  • Embedding “surprise and delight” moments throughout the employee lifecycle
  • Tying recognition to core values
  • Creating meaningful celebrations with visual communication

Those strategies align with what Sandra Moran, chief customer experience officer at WorkForce Software, advises, noting that what matters most to many employees is having control over their schedules. That is particularly critical for deskless and shift-based workers, who often face greater scheduling challenges around the holidays.

Leadership in a world gone mad: An ode to fewer, better meetings

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Thinkers 50 Blog

How could you become a better, more efficient and collaborative leader? Anne Morriss and Frances Frei provide a persuasive and time-saving strategy in the first in a series looking at the practice of leadership in a mad, mad world.

One way that organizations have responded to the combination of unprecedented uncertainty and a more distributed workforce is to drag more people into more meetings during more hours of the workday. Researchers now estimate that workers are spending about a third of their time in meetings, and much of that time is unproductive. One study from meeting software company Doodle estimated that across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, 24 billion hours will be lost to pointless meetings in the next year. 

All this time together is creating the illusion of progress while inhibiting the kind of deep work, true collaboration, and creativity needed to solve our increasingly complex problems. In response, some leaders have simply banned this toxic substance (no-meeting Fridays!), but a more effective remedy is to create a gathering culture defined by fewer, better meetings. Treat your people’s time as the most strategic resource you have. If you’re going to use it, use it wisely. 

One company we recently worked with leaned into this philosophy, reducing its employees’ time in meetings by fifty percent in just a few months. Early indicators of outcomes from this shift include reduced burnout and stronger customer relationships without any reduction in team connectivity. Tactics that worked well for this organisation: embracing old-school meeting agendas, using AI for notetaking, and sharing audio recordings with people who weren’t in the meeting, who could then listen to the proceedings on their own time (often at 2x speed).  

On our podcast Fixable we interviewed Claire Hughes Johnson about how to run a great meeting. As the former COO of Stripe, Claire helped grow the company from fewer than 200 employees to more than six thousand – and from millions in revenue to billions. A casual talk she once gave on how to run an effective staff meeting at Google, her former employer, immediately went viral. (Claire is now a corporate officer and adviser to Stripe, in addition to writing great books). 

Claire’s principal advice is to prepare. Before you have the audacity to convene people, make sure you have clear answers to these questions: 

  • Why are we meeting? What are our objectives? 
  • Who needs to be there to achieve these objectives? 
  • How are we going to spend our time together? 

Circulate materials in advance so that everyone has the runway to contribute effectively, which some people need more than others. “Extroverts talk to think,” Claire explained. “Introverts think to talk.” And, yes, she’s on board with agendas, which signal where you’re going and keep everyone on track. 

Once the meeting begins, the objective is to surface unique information and ideas from your fellow gatherers. Our favourite prompt is, “Can someone articulate a different point of view?” which is a lower-stakes variant of “Who has a different point of view?” This will also help you resist the temptation to converge too quickly on a less-than-optimal solution. In our experience, fast convergence typically leads to a false optima (also known as not our best idea) and a higher chance that people will hold back additional ideas, even when they’re better. 

Finally, stick the landing. Before your meeting ends, summarise key decisions and action items. Make sure everyone knows what they’re responsible for delivering and the deadlines they need to hit. Claire likes to use a “check-out” at the close of meetings – a rapid-fire prompt to help reinforce commitments and get a pulse check on the group’s experience. A standard check-out she relies on is: “Use one or two words to describe what you’re thinking as we close this meeting – it could be a feeling, an idea, a topic you want more of.” 

When it comes to meetings, we urge you to get into the organisational sandbox and play with new approaches. Are you meeting to ideate or execute? To learn from what happened or prepare for what’s coming? Adapt your meeting’s structure, style, and pace to your goals. The only truly universal meeting rule is that if you’re gathering in person for any significant amount of time, then you need to feed people. 

Make the experience of work feel a little less crazy by committing to fewer, better meetings. We’ve seen companies go from sixty-minute meetings to thirty-minute meetings, thirty-minute meetings to twenty-minute meetings, using our favourite intervention profile: no new people, no new technology, just a healthy dose of intention.