Middle managers have had a hard go of it over the past five years. There was the upheaval of the pandemic, followed by ongoing changes in the workplace as companies adjusted to remote work and then, in many cases, eventually brought employees back into the office. Amid all these fluctuations, managers have been tasked with mitigating low morale, parrying employee discontent, and juggling their mounting responsibilities, especially as recurring layoffs thin their ranks.

It doesn’t seem like the challenges middle managers are facing will disappear anytime soon, which could lead to high rates of turnover in the very near future. And it’s also not clear whether a new generation of workers is ready—or willing—to take their place if managers leave their posts.

In surveys, Gen Z workers have indicated they have little interest in middle management and that high rates of anxiety might keep them from taking on those jobs. “As managers struggle, Gen Z sees the toll of the job and backs away, leaving fewer employees to rise into management roles,” writes entrepreneur Jan Bruce. “This puts more pressure on remaining managers.”

Bruce argues that many companies could be facing a “manager crash” this year that would have far-reaching effects, particularly if younger employees don’t want to step into those roles. But there are some things employers can and should do to help support their current middle managers, as well as those who might take their place in the future.

Invest in programs that support middle managers

One thing leaders can do is evaluate psychosocial risk, according to Bruce, which can identify some of the biggest stressors facing managers at the company. That can include everything from tight deadlines to workplace conflict or excessive workloads. Managers are also often expected to oversee day-to-day tasks while also taking on more strategic, long-term projects.

Being explicit about mental health resources and other workplace benefits can also be an important aspect of supporting middle managers, who often report feeling invisible and underappreciated. Mandatory vacations or “disconnect periods” can help alleviate some of the burnout and stress that managers are likely feeling. Beyond that, however, they also need adequate support from their higher-ups. “Making sure managers have consistent, supportive check-ins with their own supervisors can help reduce isolation,” Bruce writes.

Train the next generation of managers

In order to make middle management more appealing, companies also need to think about how to cultivate a new crop of workers who are equipped to step into those roles. Bruce notes that it is important to focus on some of the skills that are most valuable in managers and perhaps underdeveloped among Gen Z employees.

“We have found the employees most skilled in handling change and challenge—the realities that managers deal with daily—have the highest levels of those very skills: emotion control, stress management, engagement, and positivity,” Bruce says. “These are the specific, actionable areas to focus Gen Z training efforts on in order to improve their ability to handle management demands.”

What managers can do

If you’re a manager looking for guidance, there are also steps you can take to better manage your workload and schedule. To avoid toggling between different tasks, management expert Lia Garvin recommends scheduling similar meetings on the same day. “When our calendar looks like Swiss cheese, we can get in the habit of slotting in meetings whenever we have a free moment, but this reinforces the overwhelm of having to operate at so many different levels in one day,” she writes.

Since managers are often hopping from meeting to meeting, it can be difficult to accommodate more strategic work or long-term projects. It can help to pencil that work into your schedule instead of assuming you’ll be able to carve out time in your day. Senior leaders can also help address this pain point by limiting meetings to certain days. “Instead of fitting work in where you can, plan for it,” Garvin says. “Find and schedule one to two hours every week for project time, during working hours, that you don’t schedule over.”

Perhaps the most important strategy managers can adopt, however, is to delegate more and spend less time involved in the details of projects that don’t require close attention. Think of this as a way to give your employees new opportunities while also freeing up time in your day—and hopefully making your job the slightest bit easier. “Ultimately, the middle manager’s role is to empower their teams to grow,” Garvin adds. “It’s impossible to do this when we’re too stuck in all the details and barely able to come up for air.”

Longevity with freelancing is entirely possible if you’re intentional, adaptable, and development-oriented. Freelancers should think of themselves as a business of one as opposed to an outsourced employee for other companies. And it’s import to always be improving that business. As E-Myth Revisited author Michael Gerber once wrote, “Most entrepreneurs fail because they are working in their business rather than on their business.”

There’s always going to be more competition, new technology, shifting market conditions, and stuff happening in your life that will impact your career as a freelancer. After nearly 12 years of freelancing, here are my recommendations on how to level-up your approach and ensure self-employment remains a sustainable option in 2025.

Look for new sources of leads

You don’t need to be everywhere, but building a consistent flow of outreach from clients who want to hire you happens when you’re visible on multiple platforms. Any marketing channel or relationship that’s led to you landing a project will ebb and flow with time and at some point become less reliable as a way of attracting clients. To offset the risks of a downturn in client outreach, I’ve found that actively using two different promotional platforms makes all the difference. 

A promotional platform could be a Slack community, social media network, local networking group, hosting a podcast, running a newsletter, or freelancer marketplace. What matters is that it’s a place where clients are looking for your products or services, and you can show up consistently to communicate the value of your offerings and expertise.

Marketing yourself takes time and resources, so identify another promotional avenue where you don’t need to start from scratch and could repurpose existing insights there.

Provide certainty and reliability

It’s fair to feel like we live in uncertain times. Now more than ever, you can help offset this shared feeling by aiming to make your engagements and interactions with clients and partners frictionless. Showing up as a source of certainty and reliability can help others see you as a valuable partner who’s easy to work with and makes their jobs easier.

This can play out in small ways like always showing up on time or sharing meeting invites in a client’s time zone to save them the effort, so engaging with you is seamless. And of course, this can be expressed in big ways like delivering outcomes you’ve promised on a project and when possible, exceeding those expectations.

Getting hired again by a past customer is often because you were enjoyable to work with the first time, delivered as expected, and helped them look good for hiring you.

Check-in with past clients

It’s up to you to stay in touch with past colleagues and clients. Often that’s the touchpoint needed for them to remember to hire you again and retain your services. Be intentionally persistent by following up with them in non-invasive ways like inviting them to a coffee, interacting with their LinkedIn content, or sending them an email.

Sometimes you’ll pitch them on how you can provide them value through another project, but most of the time that’s not the goal. Most of this outreach should be checking in on their progress, delivering them help like free advice or support of some kind, and genuinely maintaining the relationship.

Long-term, these connections you’ve built can deliver more client referrals, provide partnership and mentorship opportunities, and help you grow professionally.

Find your own networking style

Networking doesn’t have to be awful like many make it out to be. In fact, it’s one of the ways you’ll be able to sustain a business as an independent contractor when done right. But don’t wait until you’re between clients to start—that’s what’s most important.

It doesn’t need to be cringy or self-serving: Just staying in touch with people you actually like or have common interests with, or ideally both. It’s up to you to make it happen though. Most people put it off at all costs, so take the lead here.

Don’t have clients you actually like or have anything in common with? Put yourself out there and fix it so networking is more enjoyable and less of a cumbersome task. Reach out to someone connected to a colleague, attend a workshop in your area, or tap into your alumni network. There’s no shortage of options. Just get started.

Befriend other freelancers

Working on your own brings a lot of benefits, like having more control over your schedule. But one downside is that you can feel isolated. It’s helpful to connect with other freelancers.

Whether they do the same work you do, or provide adjacent services and skills, these relationships can provide you with motivation, friendships, or opportunities to learn. 

Sometimes these connections can even refer you to relevant projects or keep an eye out for opportunities you should consider—just don’t go into this looking for that directly.

Re-examine your offerings

Once or twice a year, I take a look at how I’m framing my services in terms of the structure of packages, pricing options, and how I’m communicating the benefits.

Early in my freelancing journey I’d set standards like, I’m not taking on this type of work for less than this dollar amount or unless it’s a project of this kind of duration. It can be helpful to set limits on the kinds of work you’re open to so you’re not inundated with low-paying engagements or misaligned clients. But sometimes, these self-imposed limitations can be too rigid or misaligned to what the market is currently interested in. As a result, you could miss out creatively and financially.

For a while, I only took on marketing consulting projects where I worked with a client on a month-to-month basis and partnered with their team to build out a strategy. Each month was centered on completing a set of agreed upon deliverables from making the marketing plan to training their team to execute on the programs over a few months.

While this was a successful way to frame this kind of project for large companies with the budget and resources to collaborate in this way, many other firms couldn’t afford to work with me in this capacity. To capture this business, I reframed this offering to include two options, one is high-touch and low-touch consulting. 

High-touch was the original offer where I worked closely with the company over a few months to build out their strategy, best suited to large, well-resourced teams. The new option—low-touch consulting—offers similar support but at a lower cost and provides advice and counsel across a set number of meetings per month. Instead of working closely with the team on deliverables, I’m providing them with strategic direction across select meetings, and it’s up to them to put our work into action.

As a result, I was able to land more of these clients when I offered more options suited to businesses with a wider range of circumstances. And at the same time, I’m protecting my bandwidth and ensuring I’m not taking on more than I can handle by setting different constraints for these kinds of projects. Structure and limitations are essential to a smoothly running business, but get more creative with how you’re framing your projects to adjust them to your client’s circumstances.

Look beyond social media

Social media is often the go-to method of promoting your work as a freelancer, but it’s far from the only choice. More professionals, for a variety of justified reasons, are trying to spend less time using social media personally or for work.

There’s many other options out there as long as you choose destinations where your audience is spending time and that align with the way you prefer to share your ideas.

If you’re more of a talker than writer, create your own podcast or become a regular guest of podcasts in your industry. If writing is your strong suit, you can contribute thought pieces to a trade publication. If you enjoy being in front of the camera, you could periodically host webinars.

Look out for AI susceptible projects

AI hype is exhausting at times. Don’t let it lead you to tune out. What’s important to focus on is areas of your work that are most likely to be disrupted by AI so you know where to scale back or adjust.

Review what you offer to clients and identify any aspects of your work that are execution-based, repetitive, formulaic, or require a little active thinking. These are the types of tasks most likely to be entirely replaced or change significantly with the integration of AI, and it’s necessary you’re not overly reliant on this kind of work.

For a freelance web designer, this might be a task like creating the initial wireframe for a website, which is an outline of sorts that details a site’s structure and hierarchy. While critical to the early stages of planning the design of a website, AI can create a comprehensive wireframe quickly and adapt it to a particular client’s needs.

Combining your expertise and AI might help you deliver quality wireframes at a faster pace and streamline the design process for clients in the process. However, if a majority of your freelance work is wireframing without AI, I’d strongly recommend reducing your focus on this output and diversifying your offerings to clients.

That’s one instance of the kind of work that is likely to dry up in the not so distant future, and the goal is to avoid being in that position. Instead, prioritize delivering work that’s centered on strategic problem solving, leverages your unique perspective shaped by your experience and skills, taps into your relationship building capacity, and draws on your emotional intelligence. And of course, consider hybrid services where you’re using AI-powered processes and your professional expertise to deliver outcomes with more speed, efficiency, and accuracy.

Always be learning

The number one way to maintain a career as a freelancer, and really most career paths, is prioritizing ongoing skill development. No matter the industry, enhancing your existing skills and acquiring new, complementary ones is what ensures you remain relevant in the workplace.

Change has always been a constant across industries, but the speed at which conditions are shifting is intensifying and requires you to make learning a regular habit. Direct your efforts towards passive and active learning, two modes of professional development that’ll better equip you to stay ahead of the curve.

Passive learning is one-way engagement with educational materials where you’re not immediately applying the learnings, getting hands on, and engaging with others. This involves asynchronous courses, reading articles, listening to podcasts, and consuming newsletters, and should be a daily or weekly practice of absorbing new information. Easier to incorporate into your workday and completely self directed, you create the curriculum that aligns with your expertise as a freelancer. 

Active learning is two-way interactions with instructional materials through engaging with others by discussing, analyzing, and applying the lessons learned. More time-intensive, active learning happens in cohort-based courses, networking, masterminds, group workshops, coaching, and educational bootcamps. Its deeper immersion into the subject matter and focused on collaborating with other learners, instructors, mentors, or coaches to help explore and integrate the material. Aim to incorporate active learning once a quarter or every few months to explore new skills more comprehensively.

Adding both to your routine will help make you a more adaptable and dynamic freelancer better suited to meet the ever-evolving demands of your industry.

Your insurance needs change over time. The policies that work for a single, 20-something professional renting an apartment with three roommates may be completely wrong for the same person after marriage, babies, and a cozy mortgage in a good school district.

If you’re struggling to determine how your coverage should change over time, the following guidelines can help.

Auto insurance: Follow the bell curve

Basic car insurance offers liability coverage, in case you cause an accident that injures a third party or damages their property. This is the kind of insurance that nearly every state in the nation requires drivers to carry. While liability coverage protects your finances if you cause an accident, it’s legally mandated because it offers protection for accident victims.

But drivers can also purchase “full coverage” car insurance. This typically includes collision coverage, which pays for damages from a collision that doesn’t include another vehicle (such as running into a tree), and comprehensive coverage, which pays to repair or replace your car if it’s damaged by something other than an accident, such as extreme weather or theft.

Deciding how much auto insurance you need can feel overwhelming, especially considering the high cost of car insurance coverage. While all drivers must carry no less than the minimum required liability insurance—and should also consider increasing the liability limits to further protect themselves and others—it can be difficult to figure out if you need full coverage or other optional add-ons.

To help you figure out your changing need for auto insurance coverage, think of this kind of insurance as a bell curve that corresponds with age.

Young drivers

Young drivers pay the highest premiums of any age demographic—since these wet-behind-the-wheel motorists are the most likely to get into accidents. That means purchasing full coverage when you’re young is going to cost a pretty penny.

In addition, teens and 20-somethings are more likely to be driving beater cars. (No, your cousin’s 1992 Buick Le Sabre is not vintage even if it does qualify for historic plates.) These vehicles have low actual cash values, which means a minor fender bender could render it a total loss.

In other words, if your vehicle’s cash value is lower than the cost of your favorite Starbuck’s order, there’s no reason to purchase collision and comprehensive coverage.

Midlife motorists

The auto insurance calculation changes as you hit your 30s and beyond. To start, the cost of auto insurance starts to go down for most middle-age drivers, provided they have a clean driving record.

Midlife also represents your prime earning years, as well as the time you’re most likely to be starting a family. Not only does that mean the interior of your vehicle will be permanently covered in a thin layer of crushed Goldfish crackers, but you’re also more likely to be driving a car that is worth the cost of fixing.

In other words, you have more to lose financially as a midlife driver than you did while you were still rocking the Le Sabre. That means carrying higher levels of coverage makes more sense in midlife than it did in your 20s.

Seniors on the road

Since older drivers tend to have the most experience and are least likely to make impulsive driving decisions, they enjoy the least expensive auto insurance of any age group. Seniors are also more likely to have a higher net worth and easier access to cash, which means they’re in a better position to pay out of pocket for a car repair (or even replacement) after a collision.

All of which is to say that most senior drivers have a lower need for auto insurance coverage than their middle-age counterparts.

Adjust your deductibles

Your insurance deductible is the amount of money you’re responsible for paying before the insurance coverage kicks in to pay for the rest. Nearly every type of insurance has a deductible, from health insurance to auto insurance to homeowners, renters, umbrella, and business insurance. And for each type of insurance you carry, you need to be prepared to pay the deductible if you make a claim.

But insurance policyholders have some control over the size of their deductible. You can lower your deductible—meaning you’d pay less before your insurance company has to open its own wallet when you make a claim—by paying a higher premium. You can also lower your monthly premium by increasing your deductible.

Typically, most people will opt for the higher premium and lower deductible when they are young, since dealing with a monthly premium cost that’s a little higher is easier than keeping a spare $1,000 (or more) kicking around in case of an emergency.

But as you age, you are likely to become more financially settled, which includes having a more robust emergency fund. Once you’re in a place where you can afford a higher deductible, you can lower your premium–which reduces your monthly outflow.

Since we can all be victims of set-it-and-forget-it thinking, it can be easy to forget to check the deductible levels on long-standing insurance policies. But there’s no need to pay your insurance company a higher premium when you can easily afford a higher deductible.

Self-insurance

Just as your financial stability can help you outgrow the need for a low deductible, increasing wealth may also allow you to self-insure instead of relying on insurance policies.

With this strategy, which is similar to creating an emergency fund, you set money aside to use in case of an unexpected loss, rather than paying a premium to an insurance company to assume the risk for you.

If you don’t experience a loss, self-insurance saves you money, since you’re not out the cost of premiums and you still have the full pot of self-insurance money available to you. Additionally, you can potentially invest your self-insurance money—as long as it’s in an investment that you can liquidate in a hurry—and let the money grow for you.

Self-insurance can be a risky strategy for any kind of serious financial loss, such as liability, flooding, or healthcare. But depending on your financial situation and assets, you may choose to self-insure for things like long-term care or full-coverage auto insurance.

Know your insurance needs

Recognizing how your coverage needs change can help you get the insurance you need while saving money. For auto insurance, remember that your coverage level will probably look like a bell curve, with younger and senior drivers purchasing lower levels of coverage while middle-age drivers go for more comprehensive coverage.

For all of your insurance policies, remember that your ability to afford a higher deductible as you gain more financial stability means you can reduce your premium. And a higher level of wealth can open up the possibility of self-insurance for some types of hazards.

National Leadership Day, which takes place every Feb. 20, offers a chance to reflect on what truly defines leadership – not just strategy or decision-making, but the ability to build trust. In an era of rapid change, when teams look to leaders for stability and direction, trust is the invisible currency that fuels organizational success.

As an economist, I know there’s a lot of research proving this point. I’ve conducted some myself, including work on how trust is essential for leaders in cross-cultural business environments. In an expansive study of China’s fast-paced restaurant industry, my colleagues and I found that leaders who cultivate trust can significantly reduce employee churn and improve organizational performance.

While my study focuses on one sector, its lessons extend far beyond that. It offers insights for leaders in any field, from corporate executives to community organizers.

Understanding the impact

In China, as in the U.S., the restaurant industry is known for high turnover rates and cutthroat competition. But our study found that managers who demonstrate trustworthiness can keep employees from fleeing to rivals, creating a more stable and committed workforce.

First, we conducted a field experiment in which we asked managers at around 115 restaurants how much money they were willing to send to employees in an investment game – an indicator of trust. We then found that for every 10% increase in managers’ trust-driven actions, employee turnover fell by 3.7 percentage points. That’s a testament to the power of trust in the workplace.

When managers are trustworthy, workers tend to be more loyal, engaged in their job and productive. Employees who perceive their managers as trustworthy report higher job satisfaction and are more willing to exert extra effort, which directly benefits the organization.

We also found that when employees trust one another, managers get better performance evaluations. That makes sense, since trust fosters improved cooperation and innovation across the board.

Practical steps to foster trust

Fortunately for managers – and workers – there’s a lot of research into how to be a more trustworthy leader. Here are a few insights:

• Empower your team. Let employees take ownership of their responsibilities and make decisions within their roles. This not only boosts their engagement but also aligns their objectives with the broader goals of the organization. Empowerment is a key strategy in building trust.

• Be fair and transparent. Managers should strive to be consistent in their actions, address concerns promptly and distribute rewards equitably. Those practices can create a psychologically safe and supportive work environment.

• Promote collaboration. Encourage an atmosphere in which employees can openly share ideas and support one another. Activities that promote team cohesion and open communication can significantly enhance trust within the team.

• Measure and manage trust. Implementing regular surveys or feedback sessions can help assess and manage trust levels within an organization. Consider integrating trust metrics into performance evaluations to emphasize their importance.

Some takeaways for National Leadership Day

Whether helming a business, a nonprofit or a local community initiative, leaders should recognize that being trustworthy isn’t just a “soft skill.” It’s a measurable force that drives success. By making trust-building a deliberate goal, leaders can create stronger, more resilient teams.

So this National Leadership Day is a good time to reflect: How do you build trust in your leadership? And how can you foster a culture of trustworthiness?

Managers should commit to leading with trust, acting with integrity and fostering workplaces where people feel valued and empowered. The impact will speak for itself.

Yufei Ren is an associate professor of economics at the Labovitz School of Business and Economics at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Somewhere between 25% and 35% of working Americans are gig workers–either as a supplement to their primary income or as their full-time job. And for many gig economy workers, cash apps and marketplaces offer a simple and convenient way to receive payments. Enter the IRS form 1099-K.

Third-party payment apps have to issue a 1099-K form to taxpayers who make more than a certain earnings threshold—a threshold which the IRS significantly lowered for the 2024 tax year. The IRS anticipates that millions of Americans will receive a 1099-K form for the first time this year because of that reduced earnings threshold.

If you’ve been wondering why you received a 1099-K form this year, here’s what you need to know.

1099-K history

Prior to the introduction of third-party payment apps and online marketplaces, the IRS typically received reporting about your income from either a W-2 form (for traditional employees) or 1099-MISC form (for contractors, freelancers, or other nonstandard employment).

The introduction of third-party payment apps like PayPal changed the landscape for taxable income. Even though freelancers who collect payments via third-party apps must claim every penny of income (just as employees must track and claim their tips), taxpayers seriously underreported their income from third-party payment apps when the technology was new. Uncle Sam estimates that taxpayers underreported $450 billion in 2006, which equated to a 17% noncompliance rate.

Recognizing that modern problems require modern solutions (or at least a new tax form), the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008  instituted a requirement that banks and credit card merchants report payments to the IRS via the new form 1099-K. The first 1099-K forms were issued in 2012 for the 2011 tax year.

Who issues 1099-K forms?

There are several different types of organizations, apps, sites, marketplaces, and platforms that may be required to issue a 1099-K form. These may include:

• Auction sites (such as eBay)
• Ridesharing platforms (like Uber or Lyft)
• Crafting marketplaces (such as Etsy)
• Crowdfunding platforms (like Kickstarter)
• Freelance marketplaces (like Fiverr)
• Online marketplaces (such as Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace)
• Peer-to-peer payment platforms (like Venmo, PayPal, or Cash App)
• Ticket exchange sites (such as StubHub or TicketSwap)

If you have earned money through any of these kinds of platforms, you may receive a 1099-K form this year—if you have taken in more than the minimum earning threshold (see below).

The one commonly used app that will not issue 1099-K forms is Zelle. That’s because Zelle directly transfers money from one bank account to another, rather than holding your funds in an account for you, the way PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App do. But just because Zelle will not issue a 1099-K doesn’t mean you’re off the hook for reporting any earned income you receive via Zelle. You will have to report income Zelled to your account on Schedule C of your tax return.

1099-K minimums

Until the 2024 tax year, the 1099-K form was only issued to taxpayers with more than 200 transactions on third-party payment apps who earned $20,000 or more in income. This meant only the individuals who were seriously committed to making a living via gig work received a 1099-K form.

That is now changing. For the 2024 tax year, if you made $5,000 on a payment app, you will receive a 1099-K, no matter how many transactions you cleared. This means hobbyists and side hustlers are much more likely to receive a 1099-K this year—and the likelihood will keep going up. That’s because the minimum income threshold for the 2025 tax year is $2,500, and it will dip to $600 thereafter—and there is no minimum number of transactions to trigger a 1099-K filing. 

	2023 Tax Year	2024 Tax Year	2025 Tax Year	2026 Tax Year and Beyond
Earnings threshold	$20,000	$5,000	$2,500	$600
Minimum transaction requirement	200	None	None	None

This means your aunt Esther who has an Etsy storefront that sells five or six risque needlepoint projects per month will be as likely to receive a 1099-K form as a professional eBay seller with thousands of transactions per week.

Fixing 1099-K errors

Not all transactions on third-party financial apps are taxable. When your sister Venmos you $75 to pay for her half of your mother’s birthday gift, that money is not taxable. But if you receive Venmo payments for your side gig as a photographer, that money is taxable. This means anyone who only has a single payment app for personal and professional payments may see errors on their 1099-K form.

To help ensure you’re not charged tax on nontaxable payments from friends and family, the IRS has added a space at the top of the 2024 Schedule 1 form to report any money that was included on your 1099-K in error.

The spot on the Schedule 1 form also allows you to report 1099-K money related to personal items you sold at a loss. For example, if you resold courtside basketball tickets for $5,000 and accepted payment via Venmo, that would trigger a 1099-K form. But if you purchased those tickets for $6,000 and sold them at a loss, the $5,000 you received is not taxable. You can include that $5,000 in the new space on the Schedule 1 form, and you will not owe taxes on it.

The future of 1099-K filing

The IRS wasn’t quite done tinkering with the 1099-K rules when it lowered the earnings threshold and minimum transaction requirement. As of the 2025 tax year, third-party payment apps may request your taxpayer identification number—which for most people is their Social Security number. If a third-party payment platform does not have your valid tax ID number, the platform has to withhold 24% of your payment for taxes.

This is similar to how your taxes may be withheld from a traditional paycheck, but it can come as an unpleasant surprise to aunt Esther when she sells the $100 Kirk/Spock needlepoint to an enthusiast and only receives $76. While the withheld amount can be credited to the tax you owe when you file your taxes, or it may be refunded if you do not owe any taxes, many taxpayers will prefer to simply provide their Social Security number to avoid the withholding altogether.

File responsibly

With more ways to get paid, there are more opportunities to underreport earned income. To combat taxpayer forgetfulness (both genuine and feigned), the IRS introduced the 1099-K form, which requires third-party payment apps to report earnings over a certain dollar amount.

As of the 2024 tax year, anyone earning $5,000 or more via payment apps or platforms will receive a 1099-K form. In 2023 and earlier, only taxpayers who earned over $20,000 and had 200 or more transactions got such a form. The minimum earnings threshold will go down to $2,500 for the 2025 tax year, and to $600 thereafter and there is no minimum transaction requirement.

Getting more tax forms may feel like a crappy reward for all the hard work you have put into your side gig—but the new 1099-K filing requirements will ultimately make it easier for you to correctly file your taxes. And correct tax filing keeps the auditor away.

Sophia Rosenfeld is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at the University of Pennsylvania. Her previous books include the award-winning title Common Sense: A Political History. Her writing has appeared in scholarly journals, such as the American Historical Review and the Journal of Modern History, as well as in media publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Nation.

What’s the big idea?

There is such a thing as too many options. Nowhere is freedom-as-choice and choice-as-freedom more evident than in the United States. As important as the right to choose has been in various emancipation movements, there is a point at which choice can become a trap that goes too far.

Below, Sophia shares five key insights from her new book, The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life. Listen to the audio version—read by Sophia herself—in the Next Big Idea App.

1. Having choices makes us feel free.

Have you recently picked something—anything? Maybe a kind of sandwich, a political candidate, or a movie to watch from the comfort of your couch? Did you first consult a menu of options and decide which appealed to you? That answer is probably yes because this kind of choice-making is routine these days. I am also going to guess that the opportunity to make a choice was valuable to you, even if it didn’t fully register at the time.

When we make a menu-based choice, most of us experience it as a kind of freedom. At that moment, no one is telling us what to do, and we get what we want. Sometimes, we even feel we are defining ourselves in the process as distinctive people with distinctive tastes: vegetarians vs. meat eaters, fans of simple fare vs. foodies, etc. The same goes for choice-making about everything from ideas and beliefs to jobs, dates, or spouses. Choice is where political life, democracy, and consumer culture converge.

This is constantly being reinforced in our way of talking. Constitutions produced around the globe ever since the Second World War reflect this. You could also look at billboards and see this, too. The “right to choose” has become enshrined in everything from bills of rights to advertisements. For most of us, having options and being able to act on them in keeping with our desires is what feeling free (nowadays) is all about.

2. People always have as many choices—and they probably didn’t care.

Exaltation of choice for choice’s sake, or choice as the key sign of autonomy, is relatively new. Just a few centuries ago, being at the top of the social scale meant not having to worry about what to own, where to live, whom to marry, what to believe, or who should rule. These questions were, ideally, already settled, sometimes from birth. You can probably imagine how this must have been a sort of privilege, as it meant a life without constant hustling. Choice didn’t have the special status it has today for men or, especially, women.

Freedom was imagined differently. In the era of slavery and more rigid class structures, it had more to do with living without being dominated by someone else and with doing, of one’s own volition, what was right rather than wrong. We might say that the emergence of individualized and largely value-neutral choice as a stand-in for freedom is really the story of the development of modern life around much of the globe. It is the story of how we learned to shop, read selectively, choose a place of worship, pick dance partners and then life partners, vote in elections, and participate in the invention of whole fields of study—like psychology or economics—that explore how or why or when we make the choices we do.

“We tend to see our attachment to choice as natural, maybe even biological, rather than something particular to our historical moment.”

This story of how choice became the modern form of freedom has never been fully told or even recognized. That’s because we tend to see our attachment to choice as natural, maybe even biological, rather than something particular to our historical moment. However, once we see that we live uniquely in an age of choice as a result of historical factors, we also start to notice the many consequences of this development on how we live today.

3. Freedom of choice requires a lot of (largely invisible) rules.

As choices have grown across all kinds of sectors, from romance to politics to decorating your house, they have required new technologies to make them work. Think of catalogues, sample books, ballots, surveys, and all their internet counterparts, which require a display of all the available possibilities along with ways to register one’s selections. The steady proliferation in both choice-making situations and choices themselves has demanded the invention of ever more rules about who can choose what and when and how. Selecting a sandwich off a menu posted behind a lunch counter paradoxically requires all kinds of largely invisible regulations that have also grown with time, from rules about the safety of the products one is picking amongst, to rules about what happens to the money you hand over in exchange for your turkey club, to rules about how to line up to register one’s choice in the first place.

So-called “free markets” only work when laws of various kinds—themselves designed by a host of “choice architects,” in the lingo of behavioral economists—emerge to help make the whole business run smoothly. This kind of freedom to do or select what matches one’s preferences is generally only available in our hours not on the job, or so-called “free time.” It is also always restricted to some people rather than others: people with money, people of a certain age, people who are citizens or residents, people of one sex rather than the other. Choice is always a limited form of freedom insofar as it requires other constraints, formal and informal, to be operable.

4. Choice can be a trap with negative repercussions.

Most of us, rightly, don’t want to relinquish any of our existing freedom to choose. There is good reason why having choices is associated with human rights protections and global happiness indexes. It is hard for most Americans to imagine the benefits of arranged marriages, or a political system without secret, individualized voting, or a world of provisioning rather than supermarkets, even though these are relatively recent developments in the broad sweep of history.

But, then again, we rarely stop to look at the downsides of our reliance on and faith in choice. Humans are limited in our ability to make good choices, as psychologists often tell us, because we fail to really know our own minds. We are also made anxious by having too many choices since we can’t predict their outcomes and know we are likely to wonder if we picked wrong afterward. Who can’t relate to that feeling of slight panic and sometimes paralysis at the very 21st-century scenario of being confronted with too many options and too little guidance about how to discriminate among them, whether in real life or online?

“Choice is always a limited form of freedom insofar as it requires other constraints, formal and informal, to be operable.”

All this stress on individual choice means we often end up blaming people—especially disadvantaged people who face few or only bad choices—for outcomes that might not be entirely their fault. Is it really a “bad” choice, suggestive of criminality, to try crossing a border illegally if one is stuck in a war-torn nation with no other possibilities for moving elsewhere?

We get so caught up in considering our own options for fulfillment that we become incapable of considering how to achieve something in our collective interest, like clean air, water, or a solution to the refugee problem. In such cases, having more choices doesn’t enhance our freedom and well-being on an individual or societal level.

And for all its global appeal, not least under the guise of feminism, commitment to choice has also become a potent source of resentment in places and subcultures that do not accept that this central capitalist-democratic value should be a goal unto itself or that feel left out of its operation. That’s one reason political fights often revolve around the question of what choices should be available to whom, especially when it comes to women and their reproductive lives.

5. Knowing when to advocate for enhanced choices, and when not, could benefit us.

This isn’t a brief for getting rid of choice, but we should be more attentive to when choice meets our needs and when it doesn’t or won’t. For example, we might find scenarios where we want fewer rather than more choices as consumers. Who wouldn’t prefer a single good-quality, mandated health insurance plan over picking between nine different market options, all with different contingency plans, which we have no way of foreseeing if they will match our future needs?

As voters, we might want to take some options off the table entirely. I can imagine deciding we want to live in a world that doesn’t offer civilians the option of buying certain kinds of military-grade weapons, just as we prohibit the option of buying children or bodily organs or dangerous drugs or driving without passing a special test. We might even decide there are some scenarios in which we need to limit the choices of some people to increase the choices of others.

Looking to history helps us see how choice came to occupy the importance and high status it has today. We can trace its development from the first want ads for spouses in the 18th century to Tinder today. History also shows where and how we risk going overboard, especially in the United States, where freedom-as-choice and choice-as-freedom are most evident. This inquiry is equally vital for ordinary people, business leaders, and policymakers.

That’s especially true at this moment, when artificial intelligence is being developed to grow our choices further and also to tailor those choices to individuals—thus shaping and constraining which options we pick. We need to remain aware that the promise of choice has been critical to many emancipation movements, from abolitionism to feminism, and has given people new possibilities for how to live. Still, it is time we got past the idea that choice is either cost-free or always the solution, never the problem. Think about this fact next time you find yourself in front of any kind of menu.

This article originally appeared in the Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.

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Clearly, automation will affect labor in 2025. But we maintain that when implemented well, automation elevates our employees and empowers our American workers to make U.S. businesses more competitive on the global stage.

This is our “why.” Now Chang Robotics’ president, Kate McAfoose, will address the “how.” These are remarks she shared at a recent Delaware Valley Goods Movement Task Force quarterly meeting panel.

New automation brings new challenges

Yes, new challenges emerge with increased automation and digitalization. As an engineering firm, our company is coming from an engineering culture into companies ranging from manufacturing to warehousing, transportation, e-commerce, healthcare, and government spaces. Many are Fortune 500; some are smaller, but the challenges they face are the same:

1. They want to maintain staffing from within their regions, but they must be sure they’re meeting quality requirements and regulatory benchmarks.
2. They want to build a resilient supply chain within the U.S.

So how do they transition manual workers to jobs informed by digital technologies?

Smart technologies and asking the right questions

As part of our robotic solutions, we integrate smart sensors, internet of technology (IoT) platforms, data collection, and analysis. We also provide C-suites with a dashboard to track key metrics, and identify areas where performance may be lacking. The dashboard answers questions such as “Are we maintaining uptime?” “Are we meeting production requirements?” “Are the quality measurements in line?”

Perhaps the client needs to improve operational efficiency to maintain profitability. In healthcare, nursing staff may be burned out due to a shortage, leading to physical exhaustion or extended shifts. Or a government facility might be ready—or required—to transition to autonomous shuttles.

In all cases, the process involves finding the repetitive tasks that are not necessarily high skilled, then finding ways to automate those functions. Now the challenge is to upskill the staff and operators to new trades as we’re implementing the systems.

Training the trainers is key

Our company has a philosophy called “train the trainer.” As we implement new technology, we walk side by side with the operators for roughly 3-6 months. We make sure they understand and can operate the system; then we help them champion the system. In addition to the new level of employment, they earn the metaphorical “badge of honor” for having learned a new trade.

We focus on empowering employees who can go home and say, “My job is cool. I get to work with robots.” It’s not a situation of humans being replaced by robots, but in positioning them with collaborative robots that can drive efficiency and quality but cannot function without human interaction. If we implement the change in this way, everyone wins.

A new world, with room for many

How many people go through high school thinking, “I want to specialize in goods movement” or “I want to work in automated transport?” This is not a career path people have considered as a “cool” future role. But as these functions become better understood, the respect for their power will grow.

There will still be a range of skilled and lower-skilled positions in the automated workforce. More positions will naturally focus on the maintenance and planning of the automated facilities. People will be required to perform maintenance and testing functions and to plan and maintain the spare parts inventory. These roles are vital to the operation’s success and will naturally gain a much bigger seat at the organizational table.

Automation also applies to quality control. For example, if you’re automating plasticware production, the utensils must come off the line cleanly, with no excess edges. The moment one piece fails to meet quality standards, it can cause a backup in the entire line, leading to a shutdown and requiring manual labor to resolve the issue. If you’re operating with a smaller staff, you’ll need to pull workers from other areas, further slowing down production. Everyone involved will continually learn and adapt.

Jobs remain, but skillsets are shifting

It’s critical to avoid the assumption that automation leads to job reduction. It’s a drive for as much production and quality enhancement as possible, but it will require a specialized team to achieve. Ideally, it’s the same team you already have, but differently trained.

Traditionally, manual warehouse labor roles have very high turnover. After 6 months, many workers feel the job is repetitive and unappealing, or they leave to avoid night shifts or seek higher pay elsewhere. When this happens, the training investment is lost, and the next employee must be trained. However, when automation is implemented effectively, the need for manual labor decreases. Ideally, this reduction can occur through natural attrition—when an employee moves on rather than advancing, the company may not need to hire a replacement.

Automation can streamline roles that involve heavy lifting, high workplace injury risk, and increased burnout or boredom. People will leave less often. Effective automation can reward companies and workers in new ways.

Technology for a bright future

What does this mean for our children’s future? Kate has a child in kindergarten right now. “I have no idea what she will do. Maybe she’ll pursue data science or data analysis, but the truth is, the roles of the future most likely don’t even exist yet. But they will be necessary. And so will she.”

We will continually need to strive for the right decisions and balance, with a focus on innovation and action. This is how the next generation of companies—and employees—can continue to win.

Matthew Chang is founder and Kate McAfoose is president of Chang Robotics.

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.

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Sterile, isolating, and stressful: Today’s hospitals can kindle deep discomfort. Because they must be designed adequately for everyone, they’re designed perfectly for no one. So, what would our healthcare experience look like if physical hospitals were to disappear altogether?

Artificial intelligence that is generative, predictive, and integrated, combined with the power of edge computing in every background device, will transform our very notion of hospitals. Healthcare will become a lifestyle so seamlessly woven into our daily experience that it will be invisible.

Why is this the future of healthcare?  The trends are already apparent:

• Evolving economics: As baby boomers transition to Medicare, millennials, Gen X and Gen Z are emerging as the primary healthcare consumers. These groups place an emphasis on convenience and personalization, and this social shift is influencing how we access care.
  
• Modern living: Biometric data collection is being increasingly integrated into our homes and daily routines, and predictive AI is streamlining diagnostics and preventing diseases.
  
• Converging technologies: Healthcare delivery has traditionally required specialized devices for every test and procedure, but the limitations of cost and size are fading. Advances in computation will converge functionalities, revolutionizing the patient experience in the process.

Strategies for success

In light of these trends, my firm has recently explored strategies for success in a changing healthcare landscape. They reflect our belief in a gradual transition toward decentralized healthcare and the integration of AI technology, celebrating our gradual societal progression towards an improved future, rather than a utopia that appears overnight. Here are some of these strategies.

• Lean into wearable technology. Soon, health data will be paired with pattern-recognition AI to identify and predict all risk factors for disease. This is a future inflection point where almost all healthcare becomes preventative medicine. For example, instead of learning about our heart disease after a cardiac event, AI will accurately warn us of our impending heart attack decades before it happens.

• Treat mental health as a community endeavor. The human body emits numerous indicators of psychological stress: elevated heart rate, tense muscles, and insomnia—which can be read by advanced biometric devices like an open book to our minds. Combined with large language model and diffusion model AI, a radical change in behavioral health could be at our fingertips. With AI-driven behavioral medicine available anywhere, anytime, communities could invest in public infrastructure—like augmenting parks to combine mental health with public green space—to increase accessibility and fight social stigma.

• Repurpose obsolete infrastructure: By 2051, gas stations may be obsolete, and diagnostic equipment that is expensive today will be cheaper, smaller, and more powerful. Repurposing existing gas stations—and other outdated infrastructure—into neighborhood health stations could efficiently disperse essential health services throughout communities.
  
• Create personalized care environments: Unbound by location, cost and data availability, we can enjoy more personalized healthcare. For example, combining a labor and delivery room with augmented reality will make birth more comfortable by bridging the personal environment of a home birth with the medical sophistication of a specialty clinic. Floor-to-ceiling digital screens that respond to cortisol levels to create a calming atmosphere while displaying critical health information would have positive health impacts and improve patient satisfaction.

• Integrate diagnostic screening into the home: Households will become data collection centers and bathrooms can become labs of the future by integrating AI into existing buildings. For example, imagine household appliances that track the type of food you keep on hand as a marker of your overall health or screen your biowaste for signs of sickness in real time. Your own digital health avatar will be updated every time you cook a meal or brush your teeth.

Today, a visit to the hospital entails finding a place to park in a busy lot, picking the right door to enter, and winding your way through confusing corridors past services you don’t need, and ride elevators with people who cough without covering their mouths. Designers and architects have an opportunity to design a better way of doing things.

It’s a safe bet the future of healthcare will be a messy evolution of technology, culture, and economy. Markets are demanding more personalized on-demand service, technology is getting smaller and cheaper every day, and AI continues to advance. As designers, we believe this leaves us free to envision healthcare first and foremost as experiences rather than buildings or places. By embracing solutions that are opportunistic and incremental, we can create a future where healthcare is invisible and omnipresent. As we move into a future where technology will diminish the constraining power of location, cost and data, designers must resolve to increase our commitment to human flourishing. We must work together to deliver healthcare that delights.

Mike Sewell is director of innovation at Gresham Smith.

Siri Chilazi is a senior researcher at the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School. Iris Bohnet is a professor of business and government at Harvard Kennedy School and co-director of the Women and Public Policy Program.

What’s the big idea?

Fairness is not merely a choice; it is a way of moving through the world. For life and work to exhibit more fairness, people need to embed fair behavior into everyday choices, routines, and systems. Everyone can show up in ways that allow for a diversity of people to be seen, heard, and valued at the table.

Below, co-authors Siri and Iris share five key insights from their new book, Make Work Fair: Data-Driven Design for Real Results. Listen to the audio version—read by Siri and Iris—in the Next Big Idea App.

1. Fairness must be embedded in our systems.

At some hotels, room key cards both unlock doors and control the lights. This little bit of technology makes it more likely that the lights are off when leaving the room. This is our vision for fairness as well. We want to embed it into everything we do.

Fairness is not a program, it is a way of doing things, but it does not happen automatically. Only a few years ago, Swedish engineer Astrid Linder and her team developed the first crash test dummy built in the form of a woman’s body. And during COVID-19, personal protective equipment (PPE) was not made for everyone: not for those with small hands or large feet, and not for cultural dress codes that did not correspond with standard overalls. Unfairness can creep in anywhere: cars, protective gear, artificial intelligence, data for decision-making, and workplace procedures.

A few years ago, we were approached by one of the largest employers in Australia. People had applied to positions of leadership at this organization and they sent those who were not chosen an email inviting them to reapply. They found that men were about twice as likely to reapply than women. Why was this and what could they do to not lose that talent? We asked the organization, who exactly are you writing to? They responded that they only asked the top 20 percent of applicants to reapply. This was our opener.

Given that women have been found to be less self-confident, we suggested that we run a randomized control trial. Some applicants still got the email that was normally sent, but for others, we added one sentence sharing that they were among the top 20 percent of applicants. This edit completely closed the gender gap in reapplication rates. We fixed the system and equalized the playing field for all.

2. Make fairness count.

Ros Atkins, a TV presenter at the BBC, made fairness count when he realized he had no data to know if he featured women and men with equal frequency as experts on his nightly primetime news show. Atkins and his team decided to generate that data. They began spending two minutes at the end of each night’s show counting how many women and men had appeared on screen during their one hour on air. This counting exercise illuminated that women made up only 39 percent of experts on air—a much lower share than they had anticipated. They set themselves a target of reaching 50:50 gender representation and became more thoughtful about featuring a diversity of experts on air. Within four months, they hit their target and maintained it for years.

They also inspired hundreds of other BBC content-creating teams to join them in what has globally become 50:50 The Equality Project. Even though it wasn’t an organizational mandate, Ros Atkins and his team made fairness count in their work. They simply knew that for journalism to be of the highest quality, it needed to represent the world they reported on. They tweaked their everyday ways of working to better deliver on that goal.

“Even though it wasn’t an organizational mandate, Ros Atkins and his team made fairness count in their work.”

Another great example is Google, which discovered a few years ago that women were leaving the company at higher rates than men. A deeper dive into the data revealed that new mothers drove this pattern. Google tested a solution: increasing the length of leave available to all new parents from 12 to 18 weeks. Google continued to monitor the data and discovered that this solution worked to close the gender gap.

To make fairness count, we need to use the same tools we rely on to manage our daily work on incentives and accountability. Accountability, in particular, is critical because research shows that it’s one of the most powerful influences on behavior. For the 50:50 project, this meant that all participating teams could see each other’s data. When humans know that our actions are being watched, we’re more likely to be on our best behavior.

3. Make fairness stick.

For fairness to stick, we must build changes into existing practices and procedures.

Consider the resume: perhaps a benign document describing our educational and work experience, but whoever decided what a resume should look like? Two of our collaborators, Ariella Kristal and Oliver Hauser, took this to heart and tested the impact of a redesigned resume. They were interested in one specific issue: how we describe work experience.

They explored the impact that different ways of framing work experience on resumes have on the likelihood that an applicant will be invited to an interview. They responded to job postings by more than 9,000 employers in the United Kingdom and presented job history either by displaying a single number indicating how many years a job was held or (as it is commonly done) by indicating the dates during which the applicants worked in a given job.

The change in framing made the applicant’s acquired expertise salient while obfuscating employment gaps. When prior work experience was shown by the number of years worked, without any dates, it increased the likelihood that a candidate would be invited to an interview by 15 percent. This finding held for women and men. While this reframing is gender-neutral, it will disproportionately benefit those more likely to have had career breaks: women.

4. Make fairness normal.

Before the pandemic, flexible work was typically a special accommodation available only by request and not always granted. For decades, research has shown that providing flexible work options for everyone improves retention, employee satisfaction, and productivity. Studies in the U.K. and Switzerland even showed that job postings advertised as flexible received up to 30 percent more applications, especially from women. It took COVID-19 for most organizations to accept flexible work as a default option for all their workers.

“Closing perception gaps shifts what people view as normal and, therefore, what they end up doing.”

Employees and job seekers pay attention to company signals about their norms and culture. Drivers do the same. In Montana, 85 percent of drivers reported using seat belts, but they estimated that only 60 percent of other drivers would do so. In Saudi Arabia, married men similarly underestimated the share of other husbands who support their wives working outside the home. Eighty-seven percent of Saudi men said they were supportive, but they believed only 63 percent of their peers would be.

Closing perception gaps shifts what people view as normal and, therefore, what they end up doing. Like in meetings, if your workplace has a culture of rampant interruptions, it can be hard to get the full benefit of everyone’s ideas. One simple way to shift this norm is to interrupt the interrupter like this: I look forward to hearing what you have to say, but please let Nicole finish her point first. Soon, interruptions will likely become less common because they are no longer tolerated or viewed as normal.

5. Make fairness personal.

In the film Hidden Figures, Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan were three brilliant mathematicians who worked for NASA during the space race in the 1960s. Jackson became the first female African American engineer at NASA, Vaughan was the space agency’s first African American supervisor, and Johnson conducted crucial research on flight trajectories for various space shuttle missions. Role models matter. Seeing is believing.

A few years ago, India amended its constitution with the provision that a third village head position had to be held by women. Seeing women in leadership changed what women in these villages thought was possible for themselves. They became politically active, spoke up in town hall meetings, and were likelier to run for political office. The role models inspired parents who reported that one of the core career aspirations for their daughters was to become a politician. You can be one of these role models. You can also change the portraits on your office walls to ensure they represent everyone. You can inspire others to dare.

The crux of making work fair is that it must be part of every single person’s job. No matter your role, seniority, or activities, there is something that you personally can do to make work more fair. We liken this to communications. Most companies have a dedicated corporate communications department that handles high-profile press releases and CEO speeches. But simultaneously, every employee writes emails, speaks in meetings, and creates slide decks daily.

Make small changes in the way you work and share them with others. Shift what people see as normal or what people expect as the way to do things. Together, we can get further faster and see real results unlike ever before.

This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.

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A glance at the day’s headlines reveals a universal truth: Leadership matters.

Whether uplifting and ethical or toxic and abusive, leaders profoundly shape our lives. And this is especially true on the job. Research consistently shows that leadership influences employees’ attitudes, behaviors and emotions, driving key organizational outcomes such as creativity, employee engagement, well-being and financial performance.

Unfortunately, research also shows that supervisors abuse their employees far too often and then try to manage impressions to compensate for their bad behavior. But what happens when a leader tries to “make up” for past abuse by suddenly acting ethically? And do employees have to experience the abuse firsthand for it to hurt them?

As professors who study management – and who’ve heard horror stories of employees working under mercurial bosses – we wanted to find answers. So we conducted a study, which was recently published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Our research includes multiple samples of full-time employees in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. To begin, we surveyed 222 employees and 66 supervisors to gather insights into workplace leadership and work experiences. We focused on two contrasting leadership behaviors: ethical leadership and abusive supervision. We also conducted experiments with 400 people, presenting them with stories about managers who alternately display both ethical leadership and abusive supervision and asking them how they would respond.

Across these studies, we found that employees who experience such oscillating leadership often end up worse off – in terms of their emotional well-being and job performance – than if they were consistently being abused. By going back and forth between abusive and ethical behaviors, leaders create greater confusion, leaving their employees emotionally exhausted.

Instead of providing relief, acts of ethical leadership ironically serve to amplify the damage done by prior abusive behavior.

Jekyll and Hyde leadership in practice

As an example, consider Steve Jobs, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple for more than a decade until his death in 2011. While Jobs was an icon to many people, he reportedly swung between toxic and positive leadership behavior while dealing with subordinates.

For example, when Jobs’ exacting standards weren’t met, he would reportedly storm into meetings and profanely berate the team responsible for not living up to his lofty expectations. Yet, despite these outbursts, he was also described as a leader who believed in his employees’ potential, expressing unwavering confidence in their abilities and empowering them to exceed their own expectations.

This kind of unpredictable leadership can leave workers emotionally exhausted, wondering: “Which version of my boss will show up today? Will this kindness last, or is it just a setup for another blow?” Unsurprisingly, this isn’t good for productivity.

Employees value stability and predictability in their leaders. A supervisor who bounces between harsh criticism and warm praise creates an emotional roller coaster for the team. When employees see a supervisor as unpredictable, they experience more stress and emotional exhaustion, which hurts their job performance and willingness to share ideas.

Interestingly, we found that workers don’t even need to be directly targeted by an abusive supervisor to be affected; employees whose immediate supervisors get the Jekyll-and-Hyde treatment from their higher-ups suffer similar consequences.

These negative reactions occur, in part, because employees begin to doubt that their immediate supervisors are able to effectively influence higher-level leaders. In other words, the psychological toll of Jekyll-and-Hyde leaders isn’t limited to direct encounters but can also be experienced vicariously.

How companies can banish Mr. Hyde

The good news is that organizations can break this cycle – and workers are likely to be less stressed and more productive when they do. Here are three steps every organization can take:

• Train leaders to manage stress without lashing out. High-pressure environments are prevalent these days, but abusive leader behavior doesn’t have to be. Providing leaders with tools like emotional intelligence training and conflict resolution skills can help leaders navigate both personal and professional challenges more constructively.

• Address the abusive behavior directly. When abusive actions occur, ignoring them or asking the leader to “be nicer next time” isn’t enough. Structured interventions – like one-on-one coaching, counseling or formal sanctions – are essential for generating real change. Employees need to see that the organization is living up to its stated values and ideals.

• Foster a culture of trust and accountability. Tools like 360-degree feedback reports – which involve feedback from supervisors, peers and subordinates – can help leaders gain deeper insight into their behaviors. These can be used not just for development, but also for heightened accountability. Creating a climate of psychological safety – in which employees can report concerns without fear of retaliation – is key to rebuilding trust. So is ensuring clear, consistent responses to reports of abusive supervision.

Great leaders understand the power of trust and setting an example. Employees want leaders they can rely on, not ones who keep them guessing. So leaders should be wary about employing ethical leadership as a quick fix for past mistakes. Rather, it’s about showing up consistently, authentically, and with integrity every single day.

For leaders at all levels, the takeaway is simple: Consistency fosters success. Organizations that prioritize stable, ethical leadership create workplaces where employees feel valued, supported and empowered to do their best work.

John Sumanth is a James Farr Fellow & associate professor of management at Wake Forest University.

Haoying Xu is an assistant professor of business at Stevens Institute of Technology.

Sean Hannah is chair of business ethics and a professor of management at Wake Forest University School of Business at Wake Forest University.

Sherry Moss is associate dean of MBA Programs at Wake Forest University School of Business at Wake Forest University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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While having lunch with a few fellow business owners recently, our conversation turned to the topic on every entrepreneur’s mind—artificial intelligence. It turns out that AI tools have quietly woven themselves into our daily routines, whether we’re brainstorming, researching, or synthesizing data, were also using it in slightly different ways.

Tools like ChatGPT are like Swiss Army Knives for productivity and creativity. It’s no surprise that in the latest McKinsey Global Survey on AI, 65% of organizations reported regularly using AI—the technology is here to stay.

That said, leaning too heavily on AI can go awry. If you delegate content creation to ChatGPT, for example, it runs the risk of plagiarizing. The generative AI tool is also a notorious liar. In 2023, one startup found that ChatGPT made things up about 3% of the time. That same year, a Google chatbot’s false claim caused the company’s market value to tumble by around $100 billion.

The key is strategic integration with safeguards in place. If you’re curious about how to integrate AI smartly into your business, here are some friendly tips to get you started while keeping things safe and effective.

Use AI’s strengths—without losing your own

ChatGPT can supercharge your creativity. Wharton professor Christian Terwiesch pitted the large language model (LLM) against humans to determine which group could generate better business ideas. (Spoiler alert: The robots came out victorious.) Commenting on his findings, Terwiesch said that everybody should be using ChatGPT to help them generate ideas—if nothing else, your idea pool will improve. He called it a “no-brainer.”  I like to use ChatGPT to get the ball rolling on creative brainstorming. Using simple prompts, you can ask ChatGPT to help you generate ideas and then choose and refine the best ones. 

ChatGPT can also summarize dense, lengthy information in seconds. It can break down concepts in as simple terms as you’d like—just begin your prompt with something like, “Pretend you are explaining this to [a 12-year-old, a college kid, etc.].”

Importantly, the best practices with ChatGPT entail using the LLM as a jumping-off point, without delegating your creativity entirely. To me, the idea is to assign ChatGPT the rote or manual parts of your work to make more time and space for wide swaths of impactful, deeply creative work—the work that leads to innovation and breakthroughs. 

In sum, use ChatGPT for tasks like summarizing information and generating ideas, not as a replacement for your own critical thinking and expertise.

Always verify information from AI

Fact-checking is a practice that we sometimes take for granted. The New Yorker, known for its historically rigorous fact-checking department, employs around 30 people to verify the facts in every single story. As one former fact-checker explained, “Each word in the piece that has even a shred of fact clinging to it is scrutinized.”

ChatGPT, however, has no fail-safe in place. That’s why leaders must be skeptical of anything presented as a fact, verify information with sources, and encourage employees to do the same. If ChatGPT generates a summary of something—for example, the latest news on DeepSeek—the summary will include the names of sources hyperlinked to the corresponding web addresses. I recommend checking each one, as ChatGPT has a tendency to link to a source that does not contain the relevant information. 

In short, never take information from ChatGPT at face value.

Be clear about how AI should be used

Finally, it’s critical for leaders to be transparent about how employees can use generative AI tools. For starters, this signals to employees that they should leverage LLMs—if they’re not, the company’s competitors and their colleagues will. I regularly encourage Jotform employees to seek out new ways to automate their busywork, including using generative AI tools, to make more time for tasks that feel personally meaningful, motivating, and inspiring. 

Failing to communicate corporate policies surrounding AI creates a risk that employees will misuse it—for example, handing over the reins for their creative work, or essentially copying and pasting other people’s work product based on the LLM’s results. Without clear guidance, employees may encounter problems with data security, ethical concerns, and regulatory compliance issues. 

There’s no shortage of fear and anxiety surrounding AI, especially regarding its potential to take human jobs. Transparency can help employees understand AI’s role as a productivity and creativity booster, rather than a threat, fostering innovation and meaningful productivity.

By setting clear expectations, leaders create a culture where AI enhances work and advances individuals on their career paths, rather than disrupting them. 

I was watching comedian and political commentator Bill Maher talk about Reverse Improvement (RI), and it struck me how profoundly relevant this idea is to the leadership challenges highlighted in this article and the themes we’ve explored in my upcoming book, TRANSCEND: Unlocking Humanity in the Age of AI. Reverse Improvement, as Maher describes it, occurs when technological progress unintentionally diminishes core human skills and values. Maher’s idea of RI isn’t just about clunky tech updates or frustrating software upgrades—it’s about a much larger, more insidious phenomenon: how technological “advancements” can subtly, and sometimes drastically, lead to the erosion of fundamental human skills and values.

The concept of RI highlights a key dilemma facing leaders in the age of AI: When does technological progress stop being an improvement and start becoming a regression? As AI and automation handle tasks once dependent on human creativity, intuition, and problem-solving, we risk outsourcing not just labor but also our intellectual and emotional core. RI warns us of this subtle decay—a decline that happens not in obvious ways but slowly, through overreliance on tools meant to help us.

As AI transforms the workplace, it’s easy to view automation as a form of progress. But if AI makes us less self-aware, less creative, and less empathetic, are we truly improving? Or are we succumbing to RI—replacing meaningful human effort with efficiency at the cost of long-term growth? This tension is exactly why mindful leadership, grounded in principles like self-awareness, right intention, and resilience, is more important than ever.

AI, Reverse improvement, and the risks of dependency

Not all technological upgrades lead to better outcomes. Many improvements, particularly in the context of AI, can unintentionally diminish the very skills that made us successful in the first place. A leader who once relied on keen observation and strategic thinking may, over time, rely on AI-generated insights without questioning their validity. An employee who once developed persuasive narratives may now rely on AI to draft content, losing the ability to connect ideas creatively.

This erosion of skills is why leaders must maintain mindfulness in how they integrate AI into their workflows. Mindfulness, as taught by Eastern and Buddhist philosophy, emphasizes the importance of being present, aware, and intentional. Leaders who embody these qualities recognize when AI is genuinely enhancing their abilities versus when it’s causing stagnation.

Reverse Improvement occurs when leaders fail to pause and evaluate whether technological progress aligns with long-term human development. AI may offer convenience, but convenience can come at the cost of resilience, problem-solving, and self-reflection—skills critical to effective leadership.

Recognizing when AI helps vs. when it hurts

We don’t lose skills all at once—we lose them gradually, as dependency on AI subtly erodes our mental muscles. Self-awareness, a core tenet of mindfulness, helps leaders recognize when this erosion is happening. Self-aware leaders evaluate whether they are engaging with AI as a tool or relying on it as a crutch.

For example, a marketing leader who once crafted compelling campaigns may now rely on AI-driven algorithms to optimize strategies. Without self-awareness, they may stop developing their storytelling abilities, assuming the AI will always “know best.” But self-aware leaders pause, reflect, and ask: “Am I still growing, or am I letting AI take over my creative instincts?”

Action Plan: Leaders should integrate mindfulness practices directly into their daily routines and team interactions. This can include short reflective meetings where leaders and teams pause to evaluate decisions and their alignment with long-term goals. Additionally, conducting regular assessments of AI’s role within workflows will ensure leaders remain in control, using AI to complement rather than override human judgment. By fostering an environment of ongoing reflection, leaders can continuously recalibrate their strategies to balance innovation with intentional decision-making.

Leading with purpose, not automation for automation’s sake

Purpose-driven leadership ensures that leaders consider the ethical, human, and long-term consequences of their decisions. RI occurs when leaders pursue technological upgrades without questioning their value beyond short-term productivity gains.

AI should free up human potential for higher-order tasks, such as creative problem-solving and relationship-building. However, when AI is implemented without the right intention, it can lead to the opposite effect—de-skilling employees and fostering dependency. Leaders with the right intention ask: “How does this technology enhance, rather than replace, human growth?”

Action Step: Leaders should develop a structured framework for evaluating new AI tools by integrating key criteria such as ethical considerations, employee impact, long-term strategic alignment, innovation potential, and risk management. This framework should assess the tool’s ability to foster creativity and innovation while identifying potential operational disruptions, ethical risks, and unintended consequences. To ensure comprehensive evaluation, governance protocols should be established to monitor compliance with organizational policies, data privacy standards, and ethical guidelines. In addition, diverse stakeholders across departments should be involved to assess both short-term efficiency gains and long-term human development outcomes.

By embedding periodic reviews of AI’s effectiveness, leaders can balance technological progress with sustainable, human-centered growth while mitigating risks and driving continuous innovation.

Building human strengths alongside technological progress

Resilience in leadership means embracing change without losing core strengths. Technological progress can undermine resilience when we allow machines to do the hard work that builds character and cognitive stamina. Leaders who embrace resilience understand that problem-solving, creativity, and emotional intelligence are developed through struggle, effort, and reflection—not instant solutions.

AI can certainly assist with repetitive tasks, but leaders must ensure that the hard, growth-oriented work of leadership remains intact. For example, instead of relying solely on AI to analyze market trends, resilient leaders involve their teams in brainstorming sessions to sharpen their strategic thinking.

Action Step: Leaders can prioritize activities that involve manual problem-solving, creative brainstorming, and team collaboration. These exercises help maintain and strengthen cognitive and strategic thinking abilities, preventing skill atrophy in a tech-driven world. Resilience also requires leaders to create a culture that values learning through experience. Rather than shielding teams from challenges by automating solutions, resilient leaders encourage problem-solving, risk-taking, and adaptive learning. By facing difficulties head-on, teams can strengthen their critical thinking and innovation skills.

Balancing AI and humanity: Avoiding RI through the middle way

Buddhist philosophy’s middle way teaches us to avoid extremes and seek balance. In the context of AI and RI, this means integrating technology thoughtfully, ensuring that it complements human effort rather than replacing it. The key to leadership in a tech-driven world is not to reject AI, but to integrate it in ways that amplify human strengths while preserving creativity, empathy, and resilience.

Leaders who follow the Middle Way avoid the extremes of either over-relying on AI or rejecting its benefits entirely. They understand that technology can enhance human potential, but only when used with mindful intention and purpose.

From reverse improvement to mindful progress

Technological progress sometimes can be deceptive. What appears to be an upgrade may, in fact, be a step backward if it causes us to detach from our core human capacities. True progress isn’t measured by how much we automate or accelerate—it’s measured by how much we grow, both individually and collectively.

Mindful leaders will recognize that AI is a tool, not a replacement for human creativity and judgment. We must remain devoted to creating a future where technological innovation drives genuine improvement—not just in productivity but in the development of resilient, purposeful, and empathetic individuals.

In recent months, we’ve seen a wave of companies (including Amazon, JPMorgan, and Dell) and the federal government announce plans for a full-time return-to-office for workers. Other companies have slowly increased the numbers of the days they require in-office weekly. 

The subsequent pushback from many employees has been intense, with workers signing petitions, opting into “coffee badging” routines (where they swipe their badges, grab a coffee, and head home), or quitting all together. 

As multiple elements of psychological safety are broken by actions such as these, there is often some collateral damage. After accepting countless changes needed to survive and thrive over the past few years, employees thought they had found their grooves. Therefore, when changes that were viewed as working well are amended or even nullified, workers feel justified in being upset.

If up to 70% of team engagement can be attributed to one’s manager, how, then, should managers guide teams who are feeling let down by the organization? When companies remove the remote flexible work arrangements they have come to enjoy and expect, how can you remain an authentic leader when your team—and you—may be feeling let down?

Does anybody care what we like?

One of the greatest tools leaders can employ to demonstrate their respect toward their employees is how they validate their emotions. Employee engagement has long been measured at an organizational level as an indicator of organizational effectiveness and workforce retention. Whether via large scale annual surveys or team-based conversations, employees will usually respond if asked how they are feeling.

In aggregated findings, flexible work arrangements and ability to work remotely (at least some of the time) have shown positive correlations to employee happiness, augmenting this sentiment by as much as 20%. Combined with other studies that indicate that happier workers are up to 20% more productive, many thought that hybrid and flexible work arrangements were here to stay.

However, for as many different means as executives use to determine levels of employee satisfaction, they seem to be ignoring sentiments that support flex-work and flex-time sentiments. Beyond this, as many companies are eliminating their diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, employees are not only feeling their opinions are unheard, but they are also not feeling welcome. 

This sentiment has the potential to create significant ripple effects since, when employees share what’s on their mind, they will only feel “heard” if listeners meet their subjective needs and expectations. Thus, despite many reports indicating flexible work has increased productivity and job-value satisfaction, employers are catching the RTO wave and calling employees back to the office. Employees are, therefore, apt and justified to feel resentment.

This may be an indication that companies are not listening, or perhaps employers simply believe that being in the office will (eventually) equate to higher productivity and/or engagement. Whatever the reason, companies initiating RTO do not appear to be weighing employees’ desire to continue to have flexible working arrangements. Gallup reports that overall, U.S. employees’ daily negative emotions have been and remain elevated above pre-pandemic levels.

If employers were really listening to their people, they would likely hear that workers have settled into flexible work and appreciate its attributes. There are likely opportunities to fine-tune or tweak how it is managed, but abrupt RTO announcements have made the news most often because employees did not see the change coming.

When employees are happy with how things were but sense a change is underfoot, they will look to leaders to make sense of it all. This can be extra tricky with RTO policies, especially if you also appreciated your own flexible work arrangements. Thus, when it comes to leading the initiative to return to the office, a first step will be to determine how members of your team feel. Next, it will be to remain empathetic during the process, rather than trying to “manage” the change.

Change Versus Transition: Making Sense of What’s Happening

In 2020, the world hit a pivot point: Life as we knew it changed and, as a result, how and where we worked did, too. However, as managers we need to ask: Did we change, or did we actually transition to our new reality? Determining this distinction is quite relevant, as identifying what is happening bears significant influence on effective management.

We tend to interchange the ideas of  “change” and “transition.” But they actually have a slightly different meaning. We know when we’re experiencing change when external events impact how we live our lives and/or interact with others. Interrupting how work is done with a policy shift is therefore a change. Thus, when the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated people to stop working together in formal office settings, this was a change. Meanwhile, according to the Bridges Transition Model, a model focusing on phases of emotional experiences and reconciliations, a “transition” is an inner psychological process that we experience when we internalize—and then come to terms with—the new situations that change brings about. Learning to regulate individual productivity and the cadence of remote-office workdays was therefore a mental transition. 

While the change to remote work was almost impossible to plan for, developing a longer-term management plan was encouraged in tandem. However, in retrospect, it seems that many of these suggestions focused on the macro/organizational level, such as codifying company standards and practices and instituting training. Helping workers to become comfortable with their new reality was not a priority, and many fell into ruts of anxiety, burnout, and depression. However, those who elected to stay in their roles made mental adjustments, got into a new groove, and transitioned into a comfortable new-normal.

The Center for Creative Leadership, a nonprofit focusing on leadership development, advises leaders who manage change to bring their team members together to create a shared vision around desired goals. This was not done with the switch to remote work, as workers were abruptly sent home because of health risks. And now employers are again sending this signal with blanket RTO initiatives. 

Some leaders may view changing work modalities as “just going back to how things were,” but for employees who had mentally transitioned to their new normal, it’s more than that. For the second time in five years, employees are realizing that what they want and like about how they work does not matter to their supervisors. If they are not willing to return to the office, their jobs will not be theirs. So it’s no wonder that many employees are sending their own signal: They are not happy being called to the office and many are indicating they would rather quit.

Putting It Together: Transitioning Through Change

While there are surely some organizations that are bringing people back to work just because they can (and do not have more of a rationale than that), most companies will have done some due diligence to make the RTO decision. Whatever the reason, if your company is going to institute a change in work modality, you will need to accept the decision, and then lead your people through.

What if, instead of trying to manage the team through a change, you are empathetic to the unique needs, wants, and levels of acceptance the individuals on their team are experiencing? In other words, instead of focusing on the RTO change, focus on helping the team transition through the ending of what they are used to and will likely miss? 

Employees who were given the opportunity to work from home or who had flex-time or flex-space work arrangements have become comfortable in how they do their work. Whether they adjusted post pandemic or were hired into remote or hybrid roles, employees established a comfortable rhythm of work and felt trusted and empowered to work remotely. No matter how well justified RTO initiatives may be, individuals will feel shocked and angry, and may even try to deny that their old way of life is ending. It is very likely that they will grieve the loss of what they had become accustomed to which may manifest in sadness or anger if gone unattended. 

To approach a change that impacts a way of life by using company policy—objectively saying “this is what has been decided”—will not feel good. At the same time, trying to make people feel comfortable by telling them it is not a big deal or that they will not notice the change after a while will also not likely work. In times of transition, a leader’s imperative is actually to help people feel like they can be successful despite being uncomfortable and temporarily unhappy.

Empathetic leaders who recognize their team members are struggling with a transition will create opportunities to foster dialogue. This may entail acknowledging that the situation is difficult and reminding the team that they have experienced challenges in the past, but the commitment to working together toward organizational goals while upholding organizational values has never waivered and will not change now. Then, leaders will listen to concerns while seeking to abate confusion and uncertainty by answering questions about what a change means, what it means to them, and how it will impact interactions with systems and with their colleagues.  

They will also not hesitate to offer direct feedback to their team members about how the change is going to impact things at an organizational level. For example, if RTO is a company-wide ordinance, leaders will want to explain how office space will now be managed in a way that may enhance team interactions and/or encourage team building. If relationships are nurtured in this way, it is reasonable to expect that most employees will progress to a calmer state of acceptance—what Bridges calls a “neutral zone.”

As a leader, you can follow up on what you hear as an employee advocate. You can find the right time and ask your own supervisor your why, what, and how questions such as: Why is the company doing this now? What metrics/data demonstrates that returning to the office is appropriate? And what lift do we expect to see (productivity, efficiency, retention, etc.) with RTO? How will we accommodate employees who have made plans assuming we were going to stay remote/hybrid as we said we would? 

If you do not feel the answers you receive make sense, it’s also okay to talk with Human Resources. Remember, you are not only asking for yourself, you are asking for the people you are leading.

Authentic reconciliation: You and the change

Change is never easy, but it can be the impetus for a new beginning. Leaders who take the time to respectfully listen to how team members are feeling will also need to remember that what they do with what they hear matters. The goal will be to help team members make sense of what is changing, then determine how they can effectively contribute as part of the new environment.

When President Trump issued a freeze on federal grants and loans in late January, there was widespread confusion about what it could mean for countless programs that rely on that funding. For childcare providers, that funding can be a crucial source of financial support, since block grants and federal programs like Head Start enable them to serve low-income families who need affordable care. 

The Trump administration later clarified that certain programs—including Head Start—would be exempt from the freeze, and Trump’s proposal was rescinded just days later. But the damage had already been done: Even a week later, there were reports that childcare providers could not access federal funds that they desperately needed to cover payroll and continue providing care to families. The National Head Start Association found that at least 45 providers could not access federal funds, potentially compromising care for nearly 20,000 children and families.

In the childcare industry, the steep cost of labor means that providers often operate with slim margins and have little to no financial cushion, leaving them in a precarious position. During the pandemic, many childcare centers only stayed afloat because the industry received billions of dollars in federal aid, which has since dried up.

Some childcare workers worry that they could still be impacted by a freeze on federal spending, even if their funding has not been stripped at the moment. Their concerns are not unfounded: Despite the rescinded memo and court orders blocking the freeze, the Trump administration has paused funding for a variety of other federal grants, according to multiple reports.

Fast Company spoke to two childcare providers who shared what it was like to navigate the aftermath of Trump’s proposal, and how a funding freeze could have impacted their ability to serve low-income families—or even keep their doors open. These conversations have been edited for clarity and length.

Amanda Schillinger, childcare administrator in Burnsville, Minnesota

For the entire time I’ve worked in [childcare], it has been an industry that struggles financially. You can only charge parents so much because they can only pay so much—but they can’t go to work if they don’t have childcare. So it’s a complicated system where it’s a needed service, but it’s a very expensive service to operate, and you have to have plenty of staff.

I always tell people, imagine having seven 2-year-olds all by yourself because in Minnesota, the ratio is one adult for every seven [kids]. Or imagine having four babies that you are responsible for feeding and caring for and educating and changing diapers—and how much work that would be. 

I was checking news, like I do throughout the day, and [the funding freeze] popped up. My heart started to race. What does this mean? I know our childcare assistance comes from the block grants, which is a federal program. I know we’re on the food program, and that is also a federal program. I was like, are we not getting money anymore?

I spent the entire day trying to find any information, to find out: What does this mean? There was no information. Nobody knew. I had to sit down with our owner and say, hey, this is what’s going on right now. We need to start coming up with a plan. 

Sixty-five percent of our students are served by the childcare assistance program. So I was like, how long can we operate if we aren’t seeing that money? And the owner [said] maximum 30 days. Having those students leave includes laying off staff. We can’t just indefinitely pay staff when we don’t have the students to pay for that. The food program pretty much pays for 100% of our food costs because we serve so many low-income families. 

We have not run into issues at this time with accessing our funds. I know Head Start programs have still been having issues with that. Until this is completely settled, we still are working on all of our plans and contingencies. Could we float those families on childcare assistance for a period of time? Or is this something where once we aren’t getting reimbursed, we just can’t? So that’s one of the big things we’re having to look at—and that impacts staff and layoffs.

We are fortunate to live in a state that has invested in childcare. That has definitely made a huge difference here compared to so many states. We have a program that helps cover classroom staff costs, and those things help us have a little bit better footing. But don’t get me wrong—it’s not enough. If the funding freeze ever happened, it would be an absolute stretch to make it 30 days.

Christina Robles, childcare provider in Salt Lake City, Utah

I have been running a daycare from my home since 2013. I have some of my own traumas with childcare, so when I had my own daughter, I decided that I wanted to be able to provide care for those that were in my situation and give my daughter the social development that she needed at that time. Originally, I was only going to do it for a few years, and here I am with three locations. 

Currently, I’m serving 48 families that are economically disadvantaged. I would say about 75% of my income comes from subsidized childcare, and the rest of it is out of pocket by parents, but that’s not the norm. I’m not in this for money. I’m in it to help the community. In addition to that, I also employ six single mothers because it gives them an opportunity to stay home with their children while making an impact on their life and get a livable wage. I pay $15 an hour to all of my employees, so it’s as livable as I can [afford] in this economy. 

I walk a fine line between profitability and providing a safe space for children, where parents can trust that their children are being taken care of and taught. The pandemic funding [for childcare] made it possible for me to make big changes in my program so that I could reach more families, and it offset a lot of the cost for those parents and made it possible for me to grow in an industry that you can’t really grow in.

It felt like there was this tidal turn, where we were being seen, heard, and valued. When the government was investing in us, I was investing in my workers; we were investing in children. We were really starting to see a huge difference across the board. It allowed me to go from paying my employees $10 an hour to paying all of them $15 an hour or more. When that funding went away, it left a heavy, heavy burden on me. 

When the news came down that there was a federal freeze, nobody knew what the heck that meant. Did that mean that was going to impact our food program? Nobody could answer, and they didn’t know when it was going to take place. For me specifically, that’s about $6,000 a month. That’s the income for at least two of my employees. And then, it would have impacted block grants. Like I said, 75% of my income comes from subsidized kids—so right there, that’s my entire livelihood. 

I also serve children from Indigenous tribes. It’s a good 30% of my income at one of my locations. When a few days had gone by, and I was like okay, this [federal freeze] is not happening, I got a letter stating that their funds had actually been frozen. They did not have access to it, and they had no idea when they would be able to pay us, if at all. I literally wasn’t getting paid as of that moment—and that was $5,000.

It took about three weeks or so before we realized that the funding was coming through, and I didn’t end up actually having to front the cost. But I was going to. I had already had conversations with the Indigenous parents because I couldn’t imagine what they were going through. What would they have done? Where would they have taken their kids? Would they have been able to take time off? I had to sit down and have really tough conversations with all of my employees, who do an amazing job every single day. I was like I don’t know that I’m going to be able to make payroll. It was just so disheartening and stressful. 

If I lose any federal funding, either I’m going to have to close my doors completely to all of my locations—that’s a real possibility—or I will have to change the clientele, and I will no longer be able to serve those underprivileged families who deserve an opportunity to have high-quality childcare.

I would literally have to say: You don’t make enough money. And how do you place value on someone with their economic status? How do you do that to a child? How do you do that to a family that you’ve created a lifelong bond with? I would be forced to only look at profits and numbers. That’s never how I’ve operated. But I cannot live in fear of this administration, and what they’re going to do. If I do that and I base my decisions off fear, I’m not doing any justice to my families that I serve. 

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This year, high-profile companies like Amazon and JPMorgan have embraced strict policies to get their employees back into the office full time, eliminating the option of hybrid work altogether. With limited exceptions, workers who choose not to comply with these new mandates are unlikely to keep their jobs—let alone get a raise.

One company, however, is willing to shell out thousands of dollars to lure workers back to the office. According to a CNBC report, the celebrity video platform Cameo has promised each of its employees an additional $10,000 annually in exchange for coming into the company’s Chicago-based office four days a week.

“We really felt like we wanted to make HQ a perk, not a punishment,” Cameo CEO Steven Galanis told CNBC. “We know we’re asking more out of you to give up the flexibility, and we wanted to compensate you for it.”

In addition to the $10,000 raise, employees who returned to the office this week will receive perks like free lunch and parking, as well as access to a gym. While the policy currently applies only to Chicago-based employees, the company has said it will help cover relocation expenses and extend these benefits to people based elsewhere if they are interested in moving.

The leadership team decided on the $10,000 figure by considering what sum of money would move the needle for the majority of employees, but especially for those who are in the earlier stages of their career.

“That might be the difference between them being able to get an apartment in the city or having to take the train because they live with their parents in the suburbs,” Galanis said.

Chicago-based employees did not have the option to opt out of going into the office, but Galanis claims that nobody has quit in response to the policy change.

Many corporate employees have resisted the RTO push in part because they don’t want to give up the flexibility that hybrid work offers. In some cases, they may have even moved to another state and would have to relocate to abide by some of the most stringent policies.

But another reason workers have resisted these mandates is because of the financial tax of returning to the office: In fact, surveys have shown that many people are willing to accept a pay cut for a job that allows them to work from home and maintain some flexibility. Research conducted by Harvard Business School found that 40% of workers would take at least a 5% pay cut to keep a remote job; about 9% of respondents said they would accept a cut of 20% or higher. Women were found to be more likely to give up a higher percentage of their salary.

Since employees incur costs by going into the office, particularly commute-related expenses, it’s possible that some people would feel differently about RTO mandates if they received additional compensation. Cameo also reportedly does not plan to track attendance. Its approach could be a model for other companies that want to bring workers back to the office—without stoking their ire or losing top talent.

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As a former military officer turned sustainability-focused CEO, I often find myself reflecting on the intersection of two worlds that, on the surface, seem unlikely companions. The military and environmental activism may not share much in popular perception, but my time in service fundamentally shaped how I approach mission-driven leadership. It gave me the tools to tackle complex, seemingly insurmountable problems while galvanizing a team toward a higher purpose. If we are to solve the key challenges of our time—challenges as large as protecting our planet—leaders will need to adopt three key lessons I learned from the military.

Lesson 1: Service before self

The military’s core ethos revolves around serving a mission greater than oneself. For me, this meant uprooting my life every 2 years, enduring long deployments where my husband was gone for 320 days of the year, and working on classified missions I could never share. These sacrifices weren’t about personal glory but about contributing to something bigger: protecting the freedoms and safety of others.

This same mindset is essential in mission-driven leadership. Building a values-driven company that prioritizes the health of people and the planet is an inherently uphill battle. But this work isn’t about personal comfort or short-term wins. It’s about serving a mission that has lasting value for future generations.

One of the greatest leadership challenges is finding and motivating others who share this sense of purpose. In the military, what binds individuals together—even in life-or-death situations—is the shared passion for serving the mission. The same is true for leaders of purpose-driven companies. Surround yourself with people who are deeply committed to the cause. Their shared purpose will provide the resilience and determination needed to face setbacks and keep pushing forward.

In the U.S., we tend to prioritize individual success over collective progress. For me, military service was a catalyst for this mindset shift, and it continues to shape how I approach sustainability: as a duty to serve the greater good.

Lesson 2: Discipline and making excellence a habit

At the United States Air Force Academy, I learned that excellence isn’t a singular act—it’s a habit. This lesson was ingrained in me through daily practices like making my bed with hospital corners, ironing uniforms to perfection, and pushing through grueling physical challenges. These seemingly small acts built the discipline to tackle larger, more complex tasks. The ability to consistently show up and meet high standards—even in the face of fatigue, doubt, or hardship—is the secret weapon that has helped me accomplish the greatest challenges in my life, from running a sub-3-hour marathon to leading a purpose-driven company.

Shaping businesses that improve our health and planet often feels overwhelming. The statistics alone can make you want to throw up your hands: Humans generates over 400 million tons of plastic waste annually, much of which ends up in landfills or the ocean. So instead, focus on the small things laddering up into larger ones. Consider something as simple as making your bed every day. It’s not about the bed itself; it’s about starting the day with a small win, a signal to yourself that you’re committed to doing the work, no matter how small it seems. Discipline drives progress when motivation fades—because motivation will fade. For business leaders, building a culture of disciplined habits is critical. Tackling problems at scale requires a disciplined approach and a team that’s practiced in the excellence of laddering little disciplines up into larger ones.

Are you modeling attention to detail and high standards in your daily work? If not, how can you expect your team to do so when tackling massive societal and environmental challenges?

Leadership in the movement for conscious consumer goods and beyond, requires long-term thinking, consistency, and resilience—all of which are forged through disciplined action. Leaders must show up every day, no matter how difficult the path ahead may seem.

Lesson 3: Integrity, even when no one is looking

In the military, integrity isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a core value. We were trained to do what was right, even when it was inconvenient or when no one was watching. This principle was so critical that a breach of integrity, known as an “honor violation,” could lead to immediate discharge. A friend of mine once faced 6 months of probation because his homework was too similar to his roommate’s. In the business world, integrity often feels like a luxury rather than a necessity. Capitalism is not built this way—companies don’t just do the right thing to feel good. If it doesn’t drive the top or bottom line, it likely won’t make the cut, even when they know their actions are harmful to human health or the environment. However, I believe companies have the potential to be inherently good.

Many companies treat sustainability initiatives as a cost center, doing the bare minimum to meet regulatory requirements or appease consumers. But real progress happens when sustainability is integrated into the business’s core objectives, showing measurable returns that drive the company’s growth. At my company, Novi, we work to build incentive structures that align sustainability efforts with revenue and cost-saving opportunities, ultimately driving both environmental progress, human health, and business success.

For business leaders, integrity means pushing for solutions that don’t just check a box but create meaningful, measurable impact. It’s about holding yourself and your organization accountable to high standards—even when it’s inconvenient or costly—because the stakes for our planet are just as high as they are on the battlefield.

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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.

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As we face the monumental task of preserving our planet for future generations, leaders across disciplines must embrace a mission-first mindset, build the discipline to tackle daunting problems, and act with integrity, even when it’s inconvenient. These principles aren’t just relics of my time in uniform; they’re the guiding forces that help me navigate the complex, high-stakes challenges of mission-driven leadership.  The military may have prepared me for battle, but it also prepared me to serve a different kind of mission: protecting the health of people and our planet. And for that, I’ll always be grateful.

Kimberly Shenk is cofounder and CEO of Novi Connect.

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.

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From a young age, feedback from authority figures shape our self-perception. Unfortunately, too many young people internalize the message that they should only pursue what comes easily to them. I know this firsthand. As a student, I was interested in STEM but found it challenging. After an educator told me to focus on what I was “good at,” I believed I could never succeed in science or technology—and I gave up.

What happened to me isn’t unique. Too often, young people aren’t given the opportunity to fail safely, leading them to impose limits on their own potential. The consequences extend beyond the individual—industries suffer, too. Research shows that professionals with high confidence earn $8,000 more each year than their less self-confident peers, and 93% cite confidence as key to career success. Without a cultural shift that embraces safe failure—the opportunity to fail, learn, and try again—innovation will stagnate, and talent pipelines will weaken.

As the leader of FIRST, a global robotics community dedicated to igniting young people’s passion for STEM, I’ve seen firsthand the impact that building confidence in kids as young as preschool age can have on students’ educational affinity and interpersonal skill development. The same principles we apply to students ages 4-18 are relevant for young adults entering the workforce. A thriving business environment depends on uplifting young talent and empowering them to navigate challenges.

Celebrate failure, don’t fear it 

FIRST founder and prolific inventor Dean Kamen, who holds more than 1,000 patents, believes that yes—a project may fail—but never a person. He says, “A step backward is a failure, but what if, for every step backward, you take two steps ahead?” Learning from failure is a critical step in progress—something over 3.2 million FIRST participants and alumni understand well.

Business leaders must foster environments where failure is not only accepted, but expected. Controlled, low-risk failures offer young workers invaluable learning experiences that allow them to iterate and improve. Teams should see failure not as a sign of incapability but as a tool for growth. If we expect young professionals to push through challenges, we must provide them with the safety net to do so.

Use mentorship to model resiliency and offer guidance 

Mentorship is a powerful way to help young professionals build resilience. Whether they are learning a new skill or questioning whether they have what it takes to “go pro” in STEM, it is not at all uncommon at FIRST to see young people stepping outside of their comfort zones, seeking guidance, and needing reassurance. Our role as leaders is not just to teach but to help young people find their places of belonging, and mentorship is a key piece of that puzzle. Strong mentors—who have faced setbacks and persevered—offer support, model confidence, and help young people navigate obstacles. 

Mentorship doesn’t just benefit mentees; it strengthens the mentors’ leadership skills. Corporate leaders I’ve spoken with who invest in mentorship often report improved communication, problem-solving, and long-term employee commitment. Business leaders should consider structured mentorship programs, to cultivate a culture of support and professional development for their employees. 

Focus on flexibility and growth mindsets

Career paths are rarely linear. Many young professionals pivot as they discover their passions and adapt to changing industries. Organizations that encourage continuous learning and skill development—not just technical expertise but also communication, teamwork, and adaptability—will retain talent and drive innovation.

Looking back on my past experiences, I wish I had understood that I had a choice: I could either accept my teacher’s discouragement or cast her words aside and believe in my limitless potential. As business leaders, we must create spaces where young professionals are empowered to take risks, learn, and grow. Innovation requires risk taking and trial and error. And for innovation to flourish, we must give young professionals permission to jump, with the knowledge that they have a safety net beneath them. 

If we reframe failure as an opportunity, provide mentorship, and encourage resilience, we can ensure young professionals—and the businesses they power—reach their full potential.

Chris Moore is CEO of FIRST.

The most important leadership strategies are often the ones you don’t see. The quiet, behind-the-scenes work that truly drives success might not make the headlines, but it makes all the difference. We spoke to 10 experienced leaders who opened up about the practical, everyday practices they use to transform team dynamics and boost business outcomes. From creating space for honest conversations to fine-tuning how work gets done, these insights show that small, thoughtful changes can have a big impact.

Create space for vulnerability and open dialog

One of the most impactful but often invisible aspects of leadership is creating space for vulnerability and open dialog within the team. As leaders, we’re often expected to be solutions-oriented, decisive, and forward-focused. While these traits are critical, the behind-the-scenes work of fostering trust and ensuring everyone feels heard is just as vital, though it rarely makes the highlight reel. 

A real-life example comes from my time leading marketing at a private company. The team was incredibly talented but stretched thin as we took on a large-scale branding initiative. It was clear that the surface-level team updates weren’t addressing the underlying stress and misalignment. So, I introduced a weekly stand up meeting. It was a simple concept: every team member anonymously submitted one thing they felt was working well and one thing causing frustration. 

The key wasn’t just collecting feedback, it was addressing it transparently. Each week, I’d share a summary of the submissions and collaborate with the team to find actionable solutions. This process wasn’t glamorous, and it required consistency and vulnerability. I had to acknowledge blind spots, accept critique, and, sometimes, admit we didn’t have an immediate fix. Also, that it would take all of us to solve. 

Over time, this practice reshaped our team dynamics. People felt safe to speak up and trust grew stronger. Productivity soared because the hidden obstacles were brought to light and resolved. The importance of this kind of invisible work lies in the ripple effect. When team members feel heard and supported, they don’t just work harder, they work smarter and with greater collaboration. 

Leadership isn’t always about big wins or public recognition; it’s about the small, consistent actions that cultivate an environment where people can thrive. That effort to foster a culture of trust continues to influence how I lead today with clients. It’s the foundation for building stronger teams, which is ultimately the backbone of any organization’s success.

Renae Scott, founder and CEO, Bee Collaborative LLC

Revise and adjust treatment plans

As a leader in physical therapy and sports medicine, I consider one of the most vital back-office tasks to be the careful revising and adjusting of treatment plans for each specific patient. Often, this requires staying late to evaluate patient progress based on data accumulation, researching new techniques, and communicating with other professionals so that the provided care is not only effective but also at the forefront of the latest developments in the field. 

This may not always be work that’s directly visible to my team, but it does set the bar for the quality of care we provide. By doing so, I model for them what thoroughness and continuous learning look like; this has cultivated a culture of dedication and excellence in the team. Over time, this invisible effort has engendered trust, inspired others to go the extra mile, and strengthened our collective commitment to the success of our patients.

Amir Majidi, physiotherapist, CEO Sports Medicine Clinic, Push Pounds

Review team workloads weekly

I’ve learned that one of the most crucial behind-the-scenes tasks is something surprisingly simple: I spend two hours every Sunday reviewing each team member’s workload for the upcoming week. 

This habit started after I noticed our best analyst getting burned out from uneven task distribution. 

Looking deeper, I found that different client projects had similar deadlines, creating hidden pressure points nobody could see from their individual view. 

The impact of this weekly review surprised me. 

By redistributing work and adjusting timelines before the week started, our team’s stress levels dropped significantly. 

Our internal surveys showed a 20% decrease in reported overtime hours, and our project completion rate improved. 

One specific win stands out the most. 

Last month, I spotted three major reports due on the same day for different clients. 

By shifting one deadline earlier and one later, our team delivered higher quality work on all three projects. 

This invisible work of load balancing might not always show up in metrics directly, but it’s transformed how smoothly our projects flow. 

Vukasin Ilic, SEO consultant and CEO, Linkter

Observe and shape communication styles

As a 25-year veteran behavior analyst and subject matter expert in neurodiversity, it’s part of my involuntary operating system that I am constantly observing and shaping communication styles to elicit the best thinking in my team. Understanding that context and lived experience has shaped individual preferences and communication styles helps reduce friction and problem solve faster than continually trying to force all individuals into one communication style.

For example, individuals from the boomer generation often tend to prefer a quick phone call to discuss a matter rather than texting or email, whereas individuals from Gen X and younger tend to prefer quick written communication. I think this may be in part due to the education and training of older generations to have a far more formal written style.

Also, as a female leader of an all male team I am acutely aware of communication differences between genders. I use humor to point out disparities to a group of individuals who obviously are open to such feedback by way of joining a queer, female CEO in a company called NonBinary Solutions.

Modeling authenticity invites others to be authentic and understanding that different individuals have different communication styles fosters trust in an organization.

Allowing all individuals to be authentically themselves invites collaboration, innovation, and builds psychological safety. And you can still create healthy boundaries and call out bias when you see it to foster growth. It’s not binary.

By acknowledging that each team member thinks differently, we create space to appreciate creative collaboration to problem-solving. Things are not black and white—solutions often live in the gray.

Amanda Ralston, founder and CEO, NonBinary Solutions

Develop and maintain emotional regulation

One critical piece of behind-the-scenes work I prioritize as a leader is developing and maintaining my emotional regulation. Leadership can be demanding, and in a world that often feels increasingly chaotic, I recognize that how I manage my emotions has a profound ripple effect on the people I serve.

Each day, I carve out at least 30 minutes for practices that help me stay centered. Meditation and affirmations are a staple of this routine. These practices allow me to connect deeply with my inner self, align my thoughts with my values, and set a positive tone for the day.

Breathwork has also become an invaluable tool for me. It’s a simple yet profound way to regulate my nervous system, helping me stay calm and focused, especially when I’m navigating high-stress situations. I’ve recently been learning HeartMath’s approach to building heart-brain coherence. This practice is about harmonizing my emotions and thoughts to strengthen emotional resilience and promote a sense of calm clarity. It not only enhances my ability to respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively but also fosters a deep sense of emotional balance.

This work is invisible to others, but its importance cannot be overstated. By showing up grounded, I create a sense of safety and stability for my community. When people know they’re interacting with someone who listens deeply, responds thoughtfully, and doesn’t let external chaos dictate their energy, it encourages trust and openness. This emotional consistency allows for more authentic communication and collaboration, which are the cornerstones of healthy relationships and effective leadership.

The people I serve feel empowered to bring their whole selves to the table because they see it modeled in me. It has also fostered a culture of calm confidence within my community. By prioritizing my emotional regulation, I not only strengthen my ability to lead but also inspire others to embrace their own emotional resilience. This, in turn, equips them to navigate challenges with greater clarity, courage, and composure.

The unseen work of emotional regulation may never make headlines, but it’s the steady undercurrent that allows me to lead with intention and more grace, even amidst the most challenging times. This commitment to grounding myself daily ensures I can show up as the leader my community deserves.

Natalie Jobity, leadership elevation strategist, keynote speaker, best-selling author, The Unveiled Way

Design strategic icebreakers for meetings

One simple example of my behind-the-scenes work as a leader is strategically designing the first five minutes of our team meetings to promote skill-building and relationship-building in the areas my team needs. I call them “strategic icebreakers.” 

While it may seem like a simple icebreaker, I carefully choose questions or activities that align with the challenges or goals the team will face in the near future. For instance, if collaboration with another department is upcoming, I’ll use a question like, “What’s one skill you admire in a colleague?” to foster a mindset of mutual respect. If the team is presenting at a conference, I might ask, “What’s a story in our industry that has inspired you recently?” to get them thinking about compelling narratives. When stress is high, we might start with a quick breathing exercise or, “What’s one thing you do to recharge during a busy week?” 

This invisible work matters because it sets the tone for the meeting and primes the team for the tasks ahead. It also consistently builds relationships and trust, even in virtual and hybrid environments. Over time, this intentional approach has positively impacted our team dynamics by fostering a sense of connection, purpose, and alignment that extends far beyond the icebreakers themselves.

Bailey Parnell, founder and CEO, SkillsCamp

Curate Personalized Growth Roadmaps

One of the most unique and often unseen aspects of my leadership is curating personalized “growth roadmaps” for every team member.

This isn’t just about job responsibilities—it’s about understanding what drives each person, what they’re passionate about, and how they want to grow both professionally and personally. Some want more 1:1 meetings for guidance, others prefer fewer meetings to focus, some are looking for tips on growing their LinkedIn presence, while others need accountability partners to stay on track.

By getting to the heart of what each individual needs, I can tailor my approach, offering support where it’s most needed. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach; it’s about aligning their role with their personal goals.

This level of personalization is crucial because everyone on the team is motivated by different factors. By understanding what they need to succeed and feel fulfilled, I can provide the right kind of environment for them to thrive. Whether it’s a space to be creative, the opportunity for deeper mentorship, or the chance to grow their personal brand, this approach ensures that people feel empowered and engaged in what they do.

For example, one team member wanted more frequent feedback and strategic input, so I set up regular 1:1s with them. Another person needed fewer meetings to stay in a creative flow, so I gave them more flexibility in their schedule. Some were eager to build their LinkedIn presence, so I offered tips and coaching, while others needed a push to stay accountable, so I paired them with accountability partners.

AJ Eckstein, founder and CEO, Creator Match

Foster cross-team communication and alignment

One example of behind-the-scenes work I do is fostering cross-team communication and alignment. It’s not something that’s immediately visible, but it’s crucial for keeping everyone on the same page, especially as the organization grows. I spend a significant amount of time in one-on-one conversations with team leads, understanding their challenges, and finding ways to bridge gaps between departments. 

This work is important because miscommunication or misalignment can slow progress and create frustration among teams. By staying proactive, I ensure that everyone understands how their work contributes to the bigger picture and where they can support each other. 

The impact? It’s created a more collaborative environment where teams feel supported and empowered to work together. This invisible effort has strengthened our team dynamics, leading to faster problem-solving, smoother project execution, and a stronger sense of shared purpose.

Yuying Deng, CEO, Esevel

Reflect before making decisions

One of the most impactful, yet often invisible, aspects of my role as a leader is the time I spend in quiet reflection before making decisions that affect our company. Whether it’s choosing a strategic direction or addressing operational challenges, I take a step back to evaluate how these choices will impact every stakeholder—our employees, vendors, clients, and the broader ecosystem of our business.

This approach is deeply rooted in my military experience, where I learned that every decision has cascading effects on the mission, the team, and the larger operation. That same principle applies in business leadership—every choice I make must be thoughtful and precise, with a clear understanding of how it will ripple through the organization.

This intentional process requires me to disconnect and think deeply about long-term implications. While it might look like I’m “off the grid,” I’m actually mapping out how a single decision could affect every layer of the business. This ensures that when I communicate a decision with my team, I’m prepared to address follow-up questions and explain the rationale clearly.

Not everyone sees the full picture—they may only focus on how a decision affects their specific role or department. By taking the time to consider how my choices impact everyone, I help align our team around a shared vision, reduce friction, and create a culture where people trust that their perspectives have been factored into the bigger picture. It’s invisible work, but it’s essential for fostering trust, cohesion, and long-term success within the company.

Tabatha Turman, CEO, Integrated Finance and Accounting Solutions

Embed values in every business aspect

Much of the behind-the-scenes work I do revolves around ensuring our values are embedded in every aspect of the business. Sustainability isn’t just a marketing message—it’s a guiding principle that requires ongoing decisions around materials, supply chain processes, and product innovation. I dedicate significant time to conversations with suppliers, auditing production methods, and improving our B Corp scores to ensure we remain true to our mission of creating a more sustainable world. It’s not glamorous, but it’s vital to maintaining authenticity and building trust with our customers.

Embedding values into the core of our business is crucial for three reasons:

• Building trust and reputation: Stakeholders—including customers, partners, and investors—engage more deeply with companies that consistently uphold their values, enhancing our integrity and reputation.
  
• Improving employee engagement and retention: A company that practices what it preaches fosters a positive work environment, reduces turnover, and attracts talent aligned with its mission.
  
• Enhancing customer loyalty: Authenticity and ethical principles resonate with customers, creating stronger emotional connections and driving long-term loyalty.

A strong team culture is equally important. Investing in people ensures they feel valued and see a clear connection between their aspirations and the company’s success. This drives engagement and motivation, creating a ripple effect of positivity and collaboration.

This approach has fostered a culture of trust, psychological safety, and empowerment, allowing team members to bring their authentic selves to work and take ownership of their roles. It strengthens our resilience in high-pressure situations and deepens the sense of community that fuels collaboration and innovation.

Phoebe Yu, founder and CEO, ettitude

In “The Mindset of Making,” Oliver Jeffers shared a compelling invitation: “Simply make as an extension of being alive.” 

His wisdom ignited my imagination. Too often, we associate creativity with being an artist, when all of us are creators. What might the world look like if we tapped into our innate creativity? 

“The world is a result of all of us as creators and storytellers,” Jeffers shares. “All human beings are is a collection of stories: There are the stories that we’re told, the stories that are told about us, and then the stories that we tell.” 

“We’re all born with this sense of surviving and then making—that is the reason that civilization flourished in the first place,” he adds. “So, to say that creativity is just for artists—or it’s just decoration or entertainment—is to fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of creativity.”  

Jeffers is a visual artist and author, renowned across mediums from painting to performance, sculpture to bookmaking. He’s created 21 award-winning picture books, while presenting first of their kind art exhibits around the world. 

His answer reflected the spirit that he creates his own art with: an unafraid curiosity to explore both the beauty and complexity of our life on Earth. Then, an invitation to write a better story about it.  

In our conversation, Jeffers illuminates questions and a road map to begin doing so, individually and collectively. He shares how to trust yourself as a creative, master the art of simplicity, and ask questions to design a brighter future. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Fast Company: You’ve described your work as “making books about what it means to be a human being.” What questions do you ask yourself every day to uncover the heart of that? What answers have you discovered? 

If I’m talking about me as an individual, or anybody as an individual, it’s one set of questions. If we’re talking about society at large, it’s a different set of questions. 

With me, it’s: What is it that I actually want? If I can answer that question honestly, then pair it with who it’s for, it’s a unique way of understanding my own set of circumstances: Why am I doing any of this? What is it for?

The question that I get asked when I’m speaking at art colleges with young adult students is: What do you do when you’re trying to find your style? Or, when you face rejection or artist’s block? 

When you really sit down and question—Whose validation is it you’re seeking?—you probably can’t come up with an answer with a person. If you can, you probably won’t like that answer. 

You only get one crack at this business of being alive. So, the question to yourself is: What do you want to do with that time? What is it all for? Who is it all for?  

When you were talking about your books, you shared that they are “distilled down to such a pure form that I have to know what they’re saying . . . What is the fewest amount of words you can use and the sparsest artwork that fully conveys the emotion and structure of the story?” What is essential in the art of simplicity? How do you practice that discipline? 

By thinking a lot about: What is the why behind the why? What is the simpler way to say this? What is the feeling that I’m trying to convey, with as little information as possible, but with as little distortion as possible?

There’s the classic line about storytelling: Give the audience what they want, just not the way they expect it. Whenever you pander to what you think people want, you end up making work that’s derivative or dry. Making art is effectively about being very, very openly vulnerable. 

When I’m thinking about the books that aren’t simple stories, but about my observations in the world, say it’s a book about greed that’s a comment on capitalism like The Fate of Fausto. It’s not really about that. It’s about: Why do we have that in the first place? Why is more always better? What is our fundamental relationship with nature all about? 

It’s getting deeper and simpler to the point of the cogs of the wheel—the center of the wheel so to speak—where any little movement at that zoomed-in level has a massive amplification when you magnify it.

You shared a great mantra: Be the river, not the rock. What does this mean to you and how does it guide you? 

It’s the comparison between the river and the rock specifically, because the rock is unbending and unwilling to move. It seems strong and rigid. But, the water, in its own meandering way, will find a way around it and the rock will eventually get eroded down. 

Do you have other mantras? 

Another one is when I get creative block, how I get over it is to remember that I’ll be dead soon. That’s the creative kick in the arse that anybody ever really needs. Nobody is going to do the work for you. If you want it to happen, what are you waiting for?

In describing your portraiture work, you said “every time I start a new painting or go into a direction of a body of work, I say: I’m going to be loose this time. I want to be big and loose. I invariably keep getting back to being tighter at that skill. I somehow can’t find the freedom and energy that happens intuitively with the book art on a large scale painting. I’m still learning to trust myself.” What have you learned about staying loose in the creative process, especially when you’re simultaneously trying to improve? 

It was a comment on when I first set off post university. In my final years at art college, I wanted to be a painter. I wanted to be in the fine art world. That’s what I set off to do.

Then, the books were a tangent from that, but the books exploded. I wanted to prove to the art world: Look, I’m a real artist. So, the early paintings I was making, I discovered that I did have a talent for figurative painting. I used that to my advantage quite well. But, then I couldn’t escape from that, because I kept trying to prove to people that I can paint. 

The looseness and freedom is not just a visual aesthetic term. It’s about the process and the project as well. I’ve been getting that with worrying less about the outcome and enjoying the act of making. So, it’s starting to happen. A big part of it is both literally using a bigger paintbrush. But, trusting myself and trusting the right moment, because some days it flows and some days it doesn’t; And, not beating myself up on the days when it doesn’t. 

Let’s talk about your Dipped Painting Project: You paint a portrait of someone in your studio. Then, conduct a performance where you dip it into paint for a small audience. They’re the only people who ever see the painting. It evokes the nonattachment notions of Buddhist sand mandalas, when they create sand art and then destroy it. Tell us about the value of nonattachment in creativity and in life. How do you cultivate it?

A lot of people did compare the Dipped Paintings to the monks and the sand. But, there’s one difference: They intentionally said that they destroyed the work afterwards, whereas that’s not what I’m doing. There’s a fine line between creation and destruction. What I’m actually doing is completing the creation, because it was always the intention to do that. There is still a thing that you look at. It just has a very different set of expected properties. It still looks like a beautiful object in the end, as opposed to the sand, which is scattered to the wind. 

I consider those paintings incomplete until they’re dipped, not completed and destroyed. It’s all about intent and motivation. Language is a funny thing. Motivation can often be the nuance in language.  

This question may be irrelevant, given that it’s your intention. But, after working so hard on it, does it hurt when you dip it into paint?  

It doesn’t, because at that point it’s a piece of performance, almost like a theatrical ceremony where there’s a lot that I’m thinking of. There’s a poem that I recite and a speech that I give. There’s a lot of choreography. I’m not thinking about the painting. I barely look at it during the ceremony.

No photographs ever exist, but I have my moments with it during the process of the creation. I’ll be painting a hand, finger, or ear. I know it’s going to get covered. I’ve learned to appreciate that one little moment in that time. It’s like watching a sunset. There’s no point in taking a photograph of the sunset: A) Because they’re very hard to photograph; B) You never look at them again; C) That’s not what it’s about. It’s not about how it looks. It’s about how it feels.  

You talked about that earlier, where you’re trying to find these beautiful moments throughout the week. I’ve always been like this, where I see beauty all around me, all the time. There could be myriad reasons for that. I’m very comfortable with my own mortality. I’m very comfortable with having everything or having nothing. I’m very comfortable with change and other people’s expectations. Hell, I’m just along for the ride.  

Shifting gears to your mission, this Wayne Dyer quote feels reflective of your work and the questions you have us ask: “When you change the way you see things, the things you see change.” What does that mean to you and what helps you embody that? 

It’s absolutely right. It’s about perspective. There’s the theory of duality, which is a mathematical equation that shows that light, if it’s measured in particles, becomes a particle. If it’s measured in waves, it becomes a wave. How can light be both a particle and a wave? What this is really saying is: By how we choose to look at something, we define what it is. Perspective is everything. 

It reminds me of when I was doing research for Here We Are and looking into the overview effect and cosmology. The astronauts on Apollo 8—they were the ones who took that famous Earthrise photograph—when they turned the camera around and looked at Earth, what’s less talked about is that they saw this giant landmass. But, they couldn’t work out what landmass they were looking at. It was the entire bottom half of Africa, but they didn’t recognize it because it was sideways.

We’ve been so conditioned to think of the map with north at the top and south at the bottom. But, that’s a perspective. The reality is that Earth is a ball floating through space. There is no up and there is no down. Therein, if you take a map of the world, turn it upside down, and label everything the right way up, which I have done, it makes everything that seems very familiar suddenly seem very foreign. It’s an exercise that you can do at any point.

You described that your book Begin Again was saying: “Here’s a key. You can get inside yourself and turn the steering wheel a little bit.” Expand on that intention for us. 

If you go back to: What is it that you’re doing and why? If you were to take, say the division in America right now, a lot of it is about building the wall and other people—What do you want? Why do you feel that this is so important? Is it because you don’t like the people that you’ve defined as your enemy and that they might be right? Or, is this what you actually want your fight to be about?

When you think about: If this is the one goal that I get of being alive, do I want to spend my time proving somebody wrong? Or, do I want to spend my time enjoying beauty? When you think about it in those simple terms, what are these fights about? 

That’s what I mean. It was: You alone have access to that steering wheel of what your goals and motivations are. Nobody else will ever know. What does it matter that you change that? It’s not about being right and wrong. It’s about being better.  

Let’s expand on that, because you created an entry point to have a different conversation about the moment that we’re in when you said: “We prioritize being right over wrong more than anything else. But, if we replace the words right or wrong in any conflict or debate with better or worse, it suddenly becomes very clear what needs to happen. It’s not about the ego, self, or justifying the past. It’s about: What do we do now? How do we make this better?” Tell us about the power of the questions that we ask to shape our conversations and the outcomes of those conversations. 

Most people in the USA, if you ask them what is the world that they want, without mentioning anything that they don’t want—anybody who is a Democrat, Republican, or anywhere in between. No matter where they’re from, people tend to answer the same things when they talk about what they do want, rather than what they don’t want.

So, if that is where we want to be, that would be better. What are the practical ways to get there? Forgetting about right and wrong, how do we get to better? It massively changes the discourse and the route that we’re currently on.  

An important lesson you’ve learned is to ask people more questions. You said: “Ask people things about themselves and their lives, as you never know how they will reveal their story and what you might possibly learn from it.” What is your favorite question to ask people?

It depends on who it is. I got to know Brandon, who started Humans of New York. He said that he can get people to sing like a canary, complete strangers, just by asking them: What’s your biggest struggle right now? 

People are just waiting to reveal their vulnerable underbelly in a way that they feel seen and heard. That’s a nonjudgmental way to ask that question, where I’m not trying to prove you right or wrong. I’m interested in you as a person.   

Let’s bring this back to something that we talked about earlier. When you think about how many people, especially children, you have the ability to influence. Then, you think about creating like an artist, where you’re creating for yourself. How do you continue to create for yourself, without thinking about what other people are going to think, when you have that platform and success? 

Art is the one industry where the more selfish you are, the more generous you are.

I’ll take picture books, for example. If you think about—What stories do kids want to hear?—and then you try to make that story, it’s almost like what Henry Ford said about doing market research: If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. 

What tends to happen is if you think about: What has worked? I’ll do that again. The next big thing was never a repeat of the last big thing. You end up pandering and making work that’s derivative and dull. But, if you are being  publicly vulnerable by being selfish, like: Here’s what I want to do and see. I’m going to let everybody see me do it. You end up making work that’s way more accessible than if you make work that you think people want to see, because they’re like: Yes, that’s human. There’s a human sense of motivations here that I understand. That makes sense to me now.

Frustration is a common emotion. It’s a close cousin to anger, because both deal with your reaction to an obstacle that is preventing you from achieving your goals. Where they differ is that anger is (usually) directed outward at an external obstacle. The energy and rage that anger generates may be useful for trying to influence that external obstacle physically.

Frustration is often directed at an internal or systemic obstacle that you can’t do much about. You may be frustrated because you don’t have the capability or time to do something, or may feel like some aspect of your company (or society) prevents you from accomplishing a goal.

But frustration is often unproductive, because it gets you energized around something you can’t really fix. You may actually think less clearly if you get too energized and that might make it harder to move forward. Here are a few things you can do to handle frustration effectively, especially when it comes up in the workplace:

Take a step back

Research going back almost 120 years shows that there is a sweet spot for the amount of mental energy you need to operate effectively. When you have a low level of energy, you don’t think effectively, because you’re simply not engaged with the situation. As you get more energized, you get more effective in your thinking up to a point. However, additional energy will actually create too much arousal. At that point, you have a hard time staying focused.

A little frustration can be helpful, because it may actually get you to pay attention to something that might otherwise escape your notice. However, when a situation creates more extreme frustration, you’re going to have trouble addressing it effectively.

You need to develop strategies to dissipate that energy. Ideally, you would take a little time to disengage from the situation. Some physical activity can help. Taking a brisk walk or doing a workout can leave you calmer afterward. Techniques for calming yourself can also be valuable. Deep breathing exercises, yoga, and mindfulness meditations are options. Some of these techniques (particularly deep breathing) are also helpful when you can’t completely disengage with the situation.

Understand the root of your workplace frustration

When you’re feeling workplace frustration, it may not always be obvious what’s causing that emotion. That is, you may have the overwhelming feeling that you’re stuck without knowing why. It is valuable to think more about the nature of the obstacle and what would be required to overcome it.

In what ways do you feel unprepared to take on the task you’re doing? If you need assistance from someone else or an opportunity build your skills, then develop a proposal you can bring to a supervisor to be more effective in the future.

To what extent are there organizational structures that are getting in your way? Perhaps there is someone else making it difficult to complete your work. Perhaps you need permission from someone to move forward and can’t get the go-ahead.

A conversation with your supervisor can be helpful here, as well. If you’re not sure where the barrier is coming from, they may be able to help. If you do know the cause of the problem, they may also be able to clear it away. Bringing these sources of organizational frustration to the attention of a supervisor is also valuable, because if you’re having a problem, chances are there are other colleagues who are as well.

Get help

Occasional frustration is part of everyone’s personal and professional life. Developing strategies to deal with excess energy that I mentioned earlier help a lot. But, if you find yourself frustrated at work frequently, consider seeing a therapist or career coach.

It’s natural to think that the workplace frustration you experience signals a problem with the organization you’re working for. You might think the organization is poorly run, that your manager is a problem, or that you are just a bad fit for your current role. And, it’s entirely possible these are a big source of the problem. A good therapist or coach can help you to identify the source of the significant frustration you’re feeling.

An important reason to work with someone else, though, is that it is also possible that you are helping to make that sense of frustration worse through your own reactions to things happening at work. Perhaps you interpret other people’s actions in a way that makes them feel like obstacles when they are not intended that way. Perhaps you are overestimating your own abilities, and that puts you in situations that are ultimately overwhelming. You might want to please others and so you take on more work than you can handle. A therapist or coach may help you to see the ways that you are contributing to your feelings of frustration.

That is important, because you might think that changing jobs will alleviate your workplace frustration. But, if your actions or reactions are contributing to your sense of frustration, those won’t go away just by moving from one job to another.