Pride Month is here, and theres no question weve come a long way since the first Pride events, which advocated for collective solidarity, individual identity, and resistance to discrimination and violence. Yet we still have much further to go.
According to one recent report from the University of California at Los Angeles, nearly half of LGBTQ workers have experienced workplace discrimination or harassment at some point in their professional lives. Add in microaggressions, or the everyday slights that happen in plain sight in front of colleagues and managers, and the number is even higher.
Heres where allies can make a differenceand there are plenty of them. One PRRI public opinion report indicates that three-quarters of Americans support policies that protect LGBTQ Americans from discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodation.
But being an ally to any minority is hard, especially when its not always obvious when someone identifies as LBGTQIA+.
So how can you be a better ally and bolster inclusion at work? Here are three ways (plus a bonus!) to be a more effective ally to the LGBTQIA+ community, from a business leader who also happens to be a lesbian.
1. Educate yourself
Allyship isnt a passive thing that shows up without effort. Take it upon yourself to understand the struggles of your LGBTQIA+ colleagues and actively try to create change in your workplace.
The LGBTQIA+ label is a huge catchall (and a long acronym by any measure). Learning about the everyday experiences of even part of this community is a great starting point to better understanding the struggles we face. In turn, you can take steps to become a more effective ally and drive informed change. At the very least, itll help you recognize when you have the opportunity to stand up for, or against, something on our behalf.
Checking unconscious biases is also part of this narrative. Being self-aware to identify behaviors were not usually conscious of is the first step in learning how to avoid unintentionally acting on them.
2. Recognize your privilege and use it for good
You dont have to apologize for it, you dont have to hide it, but you do need to understand your privilege and the power it bestows.
Being a heterosexual person in the workplaceand in the worldgives you the chance to make a difference. It allows you to challenge bias, tackle unfairness, and effect change. And for a heteronormative individual, you can often do those things with far lesser risk. So be vocal. This doesnt have to be in a big, highly visible wayit can be as simple as respecting someones chosen name or pronouns, and encouraging or gently correcting other people if they defer to the traditional he/she binaries.You have the armor of privilege. Embrace it and then use it to open doors for those who dont have that same protection.
Incidentally, having these conversations outside of the workplace with family and friends educates them on what being an effective ally can look like and what they can do to help. The more people we can bring to a place of understanding and support, the deeper the change.
3. Change the culture
Consistency is a major win when it comes to good allyship. Its essential to building trust and driving lasting change, so model inclusive behaviors.
How? Good allies share opportunities with others: they cut out (and call out) microaggressions thinly disguised as banter; they use inclusive language with intention and sincerity; they listen to a member of the community over coffee and welcome someone into their space.
It can be as simple as being the voice against presumptions in the workplace. Ive seen this myself when colleagues default to gendered generalities. For example, theres using he/him pronouns when referring to generic or hypothetical humans (Whoever we bring onboard, he should be highly skilled). Or assuming someones gender on the basis of their name when you dont actually know the person or how they identify (I havent met Ryan, but I hope hes top-notch). By gently correcting (Whoever we bring onboard, they should be highly skilled or I havent met Ryan, but I hope theyre top-notch), you remind others that gender isnt always what it seemsand that not everyone fits neatly into a gender normative box.
It can also be about consciously changing patterned social behaviors. For example, if a coworker mentions that theyre married, dont assume they have a husband or wife of a different gender. I cant count the number of times colleagues and clients have asked me What does your husband do? over the years. Ive had to come out again and again over the span of my career.
Instead, consider asking about who they most enjoy spending time with outside of work or who the important people are in their life. Its an open question that, when asked in an authentic and respectful way, invites the other person to share within their own level of comfort.
Continue to challenge the microaggressions. Culture change doesnt come solely from the top. It comes from repetition, from small corrections, and from people like you choosing to do the right thing consistently.
The bonus: Dont beat yourself up
The ever-evolving language of inclusion means we all trip up occasionally, even with the best of intentions. No one expects you to get it right every time. Dont sweat it.
Even we trip up within our own community, be it over chosen names, pronouns, or how we support our loved ones who are transitioning. Give yourself some grace. If you make a mistake, apologize, learn, and keep going. Dont let a slip-up stop you from showing up.
Allyship isnt about being perfect. Its rarely about big gestures. Its about showing up, paying attention, and doing what you can consistently. Sometimes it means speaking up. Sometimes it means stepping forward on someone elses behalf. And sometimes it just means being someone others know they can count on. The small, everyday actions add up. And when enough people do them, thats when real change happens.
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This years spring selling season didnt meet expectations, Toll Brothers CEO Douglas Yearley told a group of institutional investors gathered at Bank of Americas 2025 Housing Symposium earlier this month.
The spring selling season, which is really a winter selling season, is when most new homes are sold in this country, Yearley said. This was not a good spring . . . it still was, overall, a soft spring season.
Yearley said February marked the spring season low point, with some improvement in March and Aprilbut not enough to call it a rebound.
Regionally, Yearley painted a picture of a highly bifurcated market. The best-performing areas for Toll Brothers include Boston and Northern Virginia, where land is scarce, resale inventory is tight, and competition from large public builders is limited.
Through the COVID years, you know, the Northeast and Atlantic, all across and down through Northern Virginia, did not fare well, as everybody could go remote and leavethey were chasing the sunshine and chasing a lower cost of living. And so home price appreciation through COVID wasn’t as much in Boston and Northern Virginia because demand wasn’t as strong. Now that has completely flipped, and our strongest corridor is Boston, Yearley said.
Yearley added: There’s less competition [in the Northeast]. The big public builders aren’t here. There’s very little land. So when you get the land, it’s gold, and the resale markets are much tighter. I live on the Main Line of Philadelphia, in the suburbs of Philly. There’s no inventory [here]. That’s not true in Texas and Florida and other places where you have a lot of big public builders and a lot of land. So there’s much more supply [in Texas and Florida]. But in the Boston and Northern Virginia corridor, it’s very supply-constrained, and we [Toll Brothers] are doing really well [in the Northeast].
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On the flip side, Toll Brothersa publicly traded luxury homebuilder with an $11 billion market capitalizationis seeing the most softness in pandemic-era boomtowns across the Sun Belt, where unsold completed spec inventory has surged. Spec homesshort for speculative homesare built without a buyer lined up, with the builder betting the home will sell once finished.
On the softer side, you know, Florida inventories are up . . . parts of Texas inventories are up. Phoenix is still adjusting a bit with high inventories. A lot of that inventory for existing homes is builder spec, because all those markets have a lot of big builders there who are committed to a spec strategy, Yearley said.
Yearley doesnt think this spec overhang in boomtown areas in Arizona, Florida, and Texas will last forever. Hes already starting to see some homebuilders pull back.
As many as a third of the overhang on the resale market right now is actually new unsold spec. That’ll clean up [over time] because the builders are starting fewer spec homes in the softer market, and I think that will naturally work its way out, Yearley said.
Despite near-term softness, Yearley remains bullish on the long-term fundamentals driving housing demand. We have 4 to 6 million too few homes in this country. We havent built enough homes in the last 15 years to come close to satisfying demand,” he said. “The tailwinds for the industry are great, but short-term pressure is real.
In many ways, the world is a much friendlier place for members of the LGBTQ+ community on this, the 56th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, than it was a lifetime ago.
But that doesnt make navigating American life while queer any less frightening. In addition to the federal government making overt attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, many of the same invisible barriers that kept the LGBTQ+ community impoverished a lifetime ago are still at work today.
Financial marginalization may seem like small potatoes compared to fighting for the right to exist, but the unacknowledged systems keeping the LGTBQ+ wealth gap in place are the same systems working to erase queer history.
Illuminating these hidden financial systems is the first step toward bridging the wealth gap.
The problem: family estrangement
Gay and lesbian young adults are 86% more likely to report estrangement from their fathers than their straight counterparts, according to a 2022 National Institute of Health study, and a recent U.K. survey found that 46% of LGBTQ respondents between the ages of 18 and 25 are estranged from at least one family member.
Estrangement is painful enough, but it can also put queer kids at serious financial risk. LGBTQ+ youth have a 120% higher risk of experiencing homelessness compared to the general population.
But even if coming out doesnt completely sever the familial relationship, it can change family dynamics, including financial expectations. In the 2023 LGBTQI+ Economic and Financial (LEAF) Survey, 38% of those surveyed said they lost the option of relying financially on their families after coming out. This leads to things like a significantly higher likelihood of carrying student debt into adulthood and more than double the rate of bank overdrafts compared to the general population.
The early loss of direct financial assistance may be the most obvious obstacle to LGBTQ+ wealth building, but Dr. Jenna Brownfield, a queer Licensed Psychologist based in Minnesota, suggests looking at the less clear-cut financial barriers that come with estrangement.
Its more than just passing down wealth, Dr. Brownfield says. Its also the knowledge of how to navigate finances. If you dont have a relationship with an older family member to demystify and guide you through things like insurance and taxes, youre left to learn that on your own.
Unlike learning how to change a tire, roast a chicken, or apply a perfect smoky eye-shadow effect, it can be more difficult to find reputable and trustworthy financial information on YouTube or TikTokand the lack of this knowledge really hurts anyone who falls afoul of Lady Luck or Uncle Sam.
The work-around: chosen family
Parents have been cutting off their LGBTQ+ kids from time immemorial, and the queer community has responded by creating a culture of chosen family. Leaning into the cultural legacy of multigenerational queer friendship and found family is an excellent way to help bridge the financial knowledge gap.
Though discussing money is typically a taboo topic for discussion, openly sharing hard-won money skills with the younger generation is an excellent way to fight back against marginalization.
The problem: lack of access to healthcare
Approximately 17% of LGBTQ+ adults do not have any health insurance, which is a major improvement over the 34% of queer adults who were uninsured in 2013, just before the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. But having insurance doesnt necessarily equate to receiving care.
A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that LGBTQ+ adults faced higher rates of discrimination and unfair treatment at the doctors office compared to non-LGBTQ adults. Queer adults were also more likely to report going without needed mental health care because of affordability or accessibility.
But even finding a caring doctor in network doesnt guarantee affordable healthcare, especially for transgender individuals: 82% of LEAF survey respondents who received gender-affirming care reported spending some money out of pocket. Nearly half (46%) of those respondents spent $5,000 or more, while 33% spent at least $10,000 of their own money.
But whether its paying out of pocket for affirming care or avoiding the doctor because of cost (or bad experiences) until the only choice is the emergency room, cutting the LGBTQ+ community out of healthcare becomes another invisible financial drain.
The work-around: medical allyship
The American system of health insurance doesnt really work for anyone, but it seems to make a special effort to work especially badly for marginalized groups like the LGBTQ+ community. While there is very little that cishet friends of queer folks can do about the obscenely high insurance copays and deductibles, a friend can potentially ride along to doctors visits.
There are two good reasons for roping a friend into a doctors appointment. First, since LGBTQ+ folks are more likely to face discrimination and unfair treatment in healthcare settings compared to straight patients, the presence of a friendly ally
It can be enthralling to watch artificial intelligence models progress toward a mastery of deep learning. But are we as equally invested in our own abilities to think and learn? The human capacity to think deeply, find meaning, and apply wisdom is what makes us unique. Yet, it is increasingly tempting and easy to rely on the fast, accessible answers that AI provides.
In a recent McKinsey study of organizations that use generative AI, only 27% said that employees review all content created by gen AI before it is used. One-third of respondents said that only 20% or less of gen-AI-produced content is checked before use.
The antidote in this moment is critical thinking. Critical thinking is sometimes called careful thinking, as it involves questioning, interpretation, and discernment. Critical thinking is not always our default mode, and its already under siege from frequent AI usage. However, critical thinking skills can be taught. Moreover, according to our latest research, leaders with strong critical thinking skills have better outcomes, such as confidence in their ability to lead and lower burnout.
Thinking Slow or Not at All
Whether it’s a matter of being lazy or economical, humans dont think a lot if we dont have to. This isnt necessarily a bad thing. Researchers estimate that our conscious brains process information at a rate of 10 bits per second. (AI models process data at trillions of bits per second.) So, we conserve our limited mental horsepower for complex tasks rather than wasting it on simple or repetitive tasks. This is why we go into autopilot mode when we drive familiar routes or rely on mental shortcuts to make decisions. (For example, we are prone to judging a persons trustworthiness based on appearance instead of interactions.)
Our slow brains have a new, fast friend called AI. Thats a good thing, right? It can be. AI can rapidly process vast amounts of information, recognize patterns that lie beyond human reach, and provoke us to consider new angles. AI-based tools will expand our understanding of business performance, team dynamics, market trends, and customer sentiment.
But our new friend can also exacerbate our tendency for cognitive laziness. Remember those mental shortcuts we take? In one shortcut, we overtrust answers from automated systems and dont pay attention to contradictory information, even if its correct. As AI tools become even smarter and slickerand answers are delivered in highly confident tonesthis automation bias can grow. The downside to all of this is the risk of losing ones own capacity for thinking, learning, and reasoning.
Guillaume Delacour, global head of people development at ABB, a technology leader in electrification and automation, spoke to us about the importance of critical thinking for leaders in the age of AI. One of the big benefits of AI is that it always has an answerbut this is also a major challenge,” he noted. “It can be too easy to accept the outcomes it generates. Good leaders have always needed critical thinking, but in our AI-enabled workplace, where every question has an instant answer, this skill is even more important.
Are You a Strong Thinker?
Critical thinking is the ability to evaluate situations objectively and make informed, well-reasoned decisions. It requires us to consider biases, question assumptions, and incorporate multiple perspectives. With critical thinking, its like your brain is doing a workout rather than just lounging on the couch. And, like a physical workout, critical thinking requires discipline, self-awareness, and effort. But the payoff is pretty significant.
We recently assessed 227 leaders on their level of critical thinking and divided the group into high and low critical thinkers. We assessed how well each group is likely to operate in the new world of AI, as well as their overall experience as a leader. The differences are striking.
Leaders Who Dont Think Will Struggle
In a world in which answers can come fast and easily, leaders who score low on critical thinking are at greater risk of letting machines do the thinking for them and becoming increasingly less sharp.
Low critical thinkers are 18% more likely to have confirmation bias than high critical thinkers. Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for or favor information that confirms our existing beliefs.
Low critical thinkers are 32% more likely to over-rely on gen AI for answers.
Low critical thinkers are 36% more likely to demonstrate cognitive failures. Cognitive failures are everyday lapses in memory or functioning during situations we normally are on top of, such as forgetting where you put the car keys.
Leaders Who Think Will Thrive
Strong critical thinkers have a protective shield against the threats of AI. Critical thinking balances the pull toward cognitive laziness and guards against our natural tendencies to accept and rely on what AI tells us. Moreover, these thinkers have a better experience as a leader.
High critical thinkers rate themselves 14% higher than low critical thinkers on their ability to perform well in their roles.
High critical thinkers rate themselves 13% higher than low critical thinkers on their ability to lead others effectively.
High critical thinkers rate themselves 10% higher than low critical thinkers on their ability to lead confidently into the future.
Additionally, high critical thinkers report 21% less burnout in their roles and 16% higher job satisfaction. In important ways, thinking can be a secret weapon for leaders, enabling them to be better at and happier in their jobs.
Strengthening Your Thinking Muscle
The encouraging news for leaders is that critical thinking is not a you have it, or you dont proposition. Each of us can be a critical thinker, but we need to intentionally rewire our relationship to thinking in order to cultivate this vital leadership skill. Here are a few things to try.
Think about your thinking. In the course of a day or week, try taking a mental step back to observe how you think. You could ask yourself questions such as:
What is a belief or assumption that I questioned?
Did I change my mind about something important?
Did I avoid any information because it challenged me?
Did I feel uncomfortable in any ambiguous situations?
The underlying skill you are practicing here is the ability to observe how you think and to discern what may be influencing your thoughts. Is there a past experience or possible bias that is playing a role? How much does stress or the need for speed factor in?
Practice why questions. When looking at a situation, ask yourself why it happened, why it matters, and/or why a particular conclusion was reached. This habit encourages second looks and slows us down to uncover underlying assumptions, potential biases, and hidden logic. This approach not only deepens our understanding but also tretches our ability to evaluate information from multiple perspectives.
Make AI your thinking partner. If we are not careful, our predisposition to cognitive laziness will drive us to pick the fast answers that come from AI models versus the deeper mental workout that comes from wrestling with complex ideas or considering underlying assumptions. But that doesnt mean AI cant play a role.
When used well, AI tools can be very effective critical thinking coaches, nudging us to consider new angles or refine our arguments. Always make sure you challenge AI by asking questions such as: How did you come up with that result? Why should I believe that what you are suggesting is correct? What questions should I ask to improve my critical thinking?
Bigger Comprehension
Thinking has always set humans apartsomething to be taught, mastered, and celebrated. In 1914, IBM founder Thomas J. Watson declared THINK as the mantra for the struggling machine organization, saying I dont think has cost the world millions of dollars.
We have arrived now at an incredible point when machines can think and learn in ways far surpassing human abilities. There are benefits to thisways in which AI can make us all smarter. The key is to stay alert and grounded in what is uniquely human: the ability to examine an answer with clarity, to grasp whats around and underneath it, and to connect it to a bigger comprehension of the world around us.
The biggest technology game changers dont always grab the biggest headlines. Two emerging AI developments may not go viral on TikTok or YouTube, but they represent an inflection point that could radically accelerate the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Thats AI that can function and learn like us.
Coming to our senses: WildFusion
As humans, we rely on all sorts of stimuli to navigate in the world, including our senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, smell. Until now, AI devices have been solely reliant on a single sensevisual impressions. Brand-new research from Duke University goes beyond reliance only on visual perception. Its called WildFusion, combining vision with touch and vibration.
The four-legged robot used by the research team includes microphones and tactile sensors in addition to the standard cameras commonly found in state-of-the-art robots. The WildFusion robot can use sound to assess the quality of a surface (dry leaves, wet sand) as well as pressure and resistance to calibrate its balance and stability. All of this data is gathered and combined or fused, into a single data representation that improves over time with experience. The research team plans enhance the robots capabilities by enabling it to gauge things like heat and humidity.
As the types of data used to interact with the environment become richer and more integrated, AI moves inexorably closer to true AGI.
Learning to learn
The second underreported AI technology game changer comes from researchers at the universities of Surrey and Hamburg. While still in the early stages of development, this breakthrough allows robots that interact socially with humans (social robots) to train themselves with minimal human intervention. It achieves this by replicating what humans would visually focus on in complex social situations.
For example, we learn over time as humans to look at a persons face when talking to them or to look at what they are pointing to rather than at their feet or off into space. But robots wont do that without being specifically trained. Until now, the training to refine behavior in robots was primarily reliant on constant human monitoring and supervision.
This new innovative approach uses robotic simulations to track, monitor, and importantly, improve the quality of the robot interactions with minimal human involvement. Robots learn social skills without constant human oversight. This marks an important step forward in the overall advancement of social robotics and could prove to be a huge AGI accelerator. Self-teaching AI could lead to advancements at an exponential rate, a prospect some of us view as thrilling, others as chilling.
AI signal over noise
Amazing as they may be to watch, dancing humanoid robots and mechanical dogs can be characterized as narrow AIAI designed only for a specific task or purpose. The feats of these purpose-built tools are impressive. But these two new developments advance how AI experiences the world and how it learns from those experiences. They will dramatically change how technology exists (and coexists with us) in the world.
Taken together, these breakthroughs and the work of other researchers and entrepreneurs along similar paths are resetting the trajectory and the timetable for achieving AGI. This could mark the tipping point that turns the slow march toward AGI into an all-out run.
Whether weather is always on your radar or merely a passing front of occasional interest, having an on-demand eye on the world around you is one of the most powerful slices of sorcery you can set your sights on today.
And this week, I want to introduce you to a worthwhile new weather app I recently encountered thats decidedly different from the others. It isnt meant to replace whatever weather app youre already using, whether thats the one that came preinstalled on your phone or another favorite youve found over time (maybe even one that serves up the forecast with a hilarious side of sass?).
Rather, it serves one super-specific purposeand serves it impressively well. And it might just be worth your while to keep around as a complement to whatever other weather wesource resource youre using.
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Your personal precipitation station
Most weather apps aim to do it allto be your one-stop spot for every manner of weather info you could possibly wonder about.
This weeks Cool Tool is more of a specialist. It does just one extremely specific weather-related thing, but good golly, does it do it well.
The app is called Precip. Any guesses about its purpose?
If you said it knits you sweaters whilst preparing delightfully steamy stews, (a) excellent guessbut (b) unfortunately, that isnt correct.
Precip, as perhaps mightve been your next guess following sweaters n stew, measures the rain and other precipitation around you.
It isnt offering up a forecast like most weather apps, in other words.
Its actually telling you how much moisture came down in any given areaover any time period you want.
And it lets you zoom into a narrow area for supremely detailed and precise info, too, even going down as far as to a specific address.
Precip shows you precise precipitation totals for any area you open.
Theres just one asterisk: Precips data is limited to the U.S. and Canada, at least for the time being. (Sorry, international pals!)
If youre in one of those areas, though, itll take you all of a single minute to start using:
For the best and most robust experience, youll want to snag the mobile appavailable on Android as well as on iOS.
You can also check rainfall totals by zip code on the Precip website, but you wont be able to zoom in any further to exact locations or to access any of the more advanced data.
In the apps, you can search by city, zip code, or street address, and you can see rain totals from the past 12, 24, or 48 hours. You can also save specific locations and then easily track their rain totals over time.
You can track rain totals from locations down to a specific street address.
Precip offers even more info as a part of its premium subscription, for 20 bucks a year and up. But the apps free version is plenty powerful, and odds are, itll be all you need. (That version also doesnt even seem to have any ads present, as far as Ive seen so far.)
Its like having your own personal rain gauge on the groundonly it exists entirely in your purse or pocket, all inside your favorite device.
Not too shabby, Id say.
Precip is available on the web in a limited form or in a native Android app and iOS app for a more complete experience.
Its free at its base level, with optional subscriptions starting at $20-a-year for a variety of extra abilities.
The apps do require you to sign in with an email address to use many of their features, but they dont require any other personal infoand the developers say they dont share any data with anyone.
Check out my free Cool Tools newsletter for even more useful software surprisesstarting with a standout audio app thatll tune up your days in some delightful ways.
Leadership used to be a role people aspired to. But today, employees are increasingly avoiding leadership positions or even stepping out of leadership roles. In fact, 40% of leaders have considered leaving their role to improve their work-life balance and well-being according to a survey of almost 11,000 leaders by DDI. A comprehensive survey by Rand across 34 countries involving 27,000 adults found that 39% didnt want career progression and 57% would reject a job if they thought it would have negative effects on their work-life balance. And according to a separate survey by DDI, Gen Z is 1.7 times more likely than other generations to consider leaving leadership roles because they want to protect their well-being.
However, there are still compelling reasons to seek leadership. And there are great reasons to stick with it if youre already in a leadership role.
1. Making a positive impact
Leadership is the most direct route for making a positive impact on an organization. Leaders have a broader range of influence, because of the number of people who report to them, the practices they adopt, and the decisions they make.
Leaders also have a big impact on others. Demonstrating respect and empathy, focusing on well-being, and inspiring performance and results can all have positive outcomes for people. And these leadership behaviors can have a ripple effect in terms of how people treat each other and hold each other accountable in the organization and the community.
As a leader, youre likely to work on issues that are more strategic than tactical, which can have a domino effect on the business. For example, decisions by the product leader can impact how the brand team markets the product and the sales team positions it with customers.
2. Pay and marketability
Another reason to lead is because of the rewards. Leadership is worth the effort because it pays you back in tangible ways. In most companies, leadership responsibility is still the fastest way to increase your pay and advance your career.
But in addition, youll also be likely to amplify your personal brand and increase your marketability. Leadership is one of the most sought-after skills among hiring managers and organizations. When youre able to demonstrate that you have experience with leadership and youre skilled in directing, coaching, decision-making, inspiring, and motivating others, youll set yourself up to shine in future roles. And youll be able to advance within your current organization or in a new company.
Its an excellent time to pursue leadership since fewer people are interested, meaning theres less competition and more opportunities.
3. Autonomy
No matter what your role, you have to answer to someone. Even senior leaders or founders of companies have to answer to boards of directors or customers. But in leadership roles, you typically make decisions about what gets done and how its prioritized. You may also benefit from greater variety in your work, and less redundancy. Youll have more control over what you do, which can be empowering.
Having choice and control can be especially fulfilling, and it can also reduce stress. In two separate studies by Indiana University in 2016 and 2020, people who were in jobs that were very stressful and who had little decision-making power tended to be less healthy and had reduced longevity. On the other hand, when people were in stressful jobs but had more autonomy and control over how they did their work, they didnt have the same negative health outcomes.
4. Growth
Another great reason to lead is the opportunity for growth. The process of learning new things is significantly correlated with happiness, according to a study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies. Leadership challenges your capabilities as you navigate all the needs of the team, the organization, and the competitive environment.
As a leader, you may be called on to do new projects, take on additional initiatives, or expand your responsibilities. All of these are great ways to build your skills for your current job and your next job to create a career thats satisfying and meaningful.
The U.S. House of Representatives Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), Catherine Szpindor, informed congressional staffers this week that WhatsApp is now banned from government phones. The move came after the CAOs Office of Cybersecurity deemed the Meta-owned app to be high-risk to usersa claim that WhatsApp quickly rebutted.
But the CAO is correct. While WhatsApp is one of the more secure messaging apps out there, it does have some privacy and security risks. Users can mitigate some of these risks, but others are beyond their control. Heres why WhatsApp is now banned in the U.S. House of Representatives and how you can make the app more secure on your phone.
What the Office of Cybersecurity said, exactly
The news that the CAOs Office of Cybersecurity had announced a ban on WhatsApp this week came from Axios. On Tuesday, the publication published parts of an internal CAO memo it received, which was sent to congressional staffers on Monday, announcing that WhatsApp was now verboten on government phones.
The memo stipulated that “House staff are NOT allowed to download or keep the WhatsApp application on any House device, including any mobile, desktop, or web browser versions of its products. It went on to add: “If you have a WhatsApp application on your House-managed device, you will be contacted to remove it.
The reason? According to the memo, “The Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high-risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks involved with its use.
The CAO didnt provide further details in the memo regarding the above risks. Still, it’s easy to interpret some of the things that may have made the CAO leery about the continued use of WhatsApp by Congressional staffers.
WhatsApp’s transparency issue
WhatsApp, like competing secure messaging apps including Apples iMessages and Signal, is end-to-end encrypted, meaning that no parties other than the ones in the chat, even including Meta, can read the chat messages. But WhatsApp collects a lot more metadata from each chat than other secure messaging apps do, and it sends this info to Meta
A chats metadata includes information such as the identities of the chat participants, IP addresses, phone numbers, and the timestamps of messages. No one knows exactly what Meta does with this metadata. Still, it is shared with Metas other platforms, including Instagram and Facebook. It is likely used to help the company build social graphs of users, leveraged for advertising purposes, and analyzed by the company to understand who is using their apps, and when and where. This opaqueness is likely some of the lack of transparency risk that the CAO was referring to.
As for the absence of stored data encryption, the CAO may have been referring to the default method by which WhatsApp backs up a users chats. While WhatsApp chats are end-to-end encrypted, if a user backs up those chats to the cloud, the backup itself is not end-to-end encrypted by default. This means that if a bad actor gains access to a WhatsApp users cloud backup, they could read all of that users messages. Its no wonder the CAOs Office of Cybersecurity finds this worrying.
WhatsApp also doesnt have other privacy and security features on by default, including the ability to lock the app behind biometrics and requiring two-step verification when a WhatsApp account is installed on another phone.
If you dont work in the House of Representatives, you can still keep WhatsApp on your phone. But you might want to mitigate its privacy and security risks. Heres how.
How to make WhatsApp more secure on your phone
Unfortunately, theres nothing you can do about WhatsApps metadata problem. Meta designs WhatsApp so that the metadata of your chats is sent directly to the company. Theres no way you can turn this data collection off. But you can make the app more secure on your phone by following some simple steps, including:
End-to-end encrypt your WhatsApp backups: In WhatsApp, go to Settings>Chats>Chat Backup>End-to-End Encrypted Backup and turn this option on. Now your chat backups saved in the cloud will be end-to-end encrypted.
Lock WhatsApp: You can set WhatsApp to refuse to open without further authentication by locking the app. This means that even if someone has access to your unlocked phone, they wont be able to open WhatsApp unless they know your phones PIN, or have your face or fingerprint. To lock WhatsApp, go to WhatsApps Settings>Privacy>App Lock and toggle the feature on.
Enable two-step verification: If someone logs into your WhatsApp account on their phone, theyll be able to see your messages. Thats why you should set up two-step verification for your account. This will require a PIN that you set to be entered whenever an attempt is made to log into your WhatsApp account on a new device. If the PIN isnt entered correctly, the new device wont have access to your account. To enable two-step verification, go to WhatsApps Settings>Account>Two-Step Verification and toggle the feature on.
Apps the CAO suggests using instead
When reached for comment on the CAOs decision to ban WhatsApp, the organization’s chief administrative officer, Catherine Szpindor, told Fast Company, “Protecting the People’s House is our topmost priority, and we are always monitoring and analyzing for potential cybersecurity risks that could endanger the data of House Members and staff. We routinely review the list of House-authorized apps and will amend the list as deemed appropriate.”
In the past, the CAO has banned or imposed partial bans on various foreign apps, including those from ByteDance, such as TikTok. But the CAO has also previously announced bans or restrictions on apps made by American companies, including Microsoft Copilot and the free versions of ChatGPT.
As for Meta, a company spokesperson told Fast Company that it disagrees with the CAOs characterization of WhatsApp in the strongest possible terms. The spokesperson also asserted that, when it comes to end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp offers “a higher level of security than most of the apps on the CAOs approved list that do not offer that protection.”
In the Office of Cybersecurity’s memo, the agency provided guidance on alternative secure messaging apps that House staffers could use now that WhatsApp had been banned. According to Axios, those apps include Apples iMessage and FaceTime, Microsoft Teams, Wickr, and Signal.
House workers have no choice in the matter, but you still do. If you decide to continue using WhatsApp, consider enhancing the privacy and security it already offers by enabling the optional protections described above.
For the first time ever, you can eat a real fish that was never alive.
In early June, Wildtype, a San Francisco-based lab-grown meat company, received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to sell its cultivated sushi-grade salmon saku after a yearslong waiting game. The company is only the fourth to receive FDA approval for cultivated meat in the U.S., joining Upside Foods and Good Meat, which both sell laboratory-grown chicken, and Mission Barns, which focuses on pork fat. Wildtype, meanwhile, is the only company of its ilk focusing on replicating seafood.
Wildtypes salmon is not a plant-based meat alternative; its actual salmon, derived from Pacific salmon cells that have been fed with nutrients like protein, fat, and salt. The end product is a cut of meat that the company says looks like salmon, tastes like salmon and, nutritionally, is like a fraternal twin to the real thing. This new form of lab-grown meat is debuting just as the budding cultivated meat industry has become a political flashpoint among some conservative dissenters.
[Photo: Wildtype]
How a former brewery became a lab for growing fish
Wildtype was founded in 2017 by Justin Kolbeck, a former diplomat, and Aryé Elfenbein, a cardiologist. Kolbeck says the two shared an interest in entrepreneurship, as well as a desire to pursue new solutions to global food insecurity. At the time, Elfenbein was working on a project that involved the regeneration of damaged human heart tissuea process that led him to wonder how a similar process might be used to create meat products without actually harming any animals. From there, the idea for Wildtype was born.
For nearly a decade, Kolbeck and Elfenbein have been working on perfecting their cultivated seafood concept, building out a staff of around 80 employees along the way. Wildtypes cultivation facilitywhich Kolbeck believes to be the only cultivated seafood manufacturing facility anywhere in the worldis located in a former San Francisco brewery. Its an ideal location, Kolbeck says, because, as it turns out, growing fish in a lab is fairly similar to brewing beer.
To date, the company has raised $139 million, according to PitchBook, with investments from Maven Ventures, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bezos, and food giant Cargill.
Wildtype cofounders Justin Kolbeck and Aryé Elfenbein [Photo: Wildtype]
All of the fish that Wildtype is currently making starts with the copies of one set of Pacific salmon cells harvested back in 2018Kolbeck says you can imagine this almost like a sourdough starter, which can be used over and over again for new loaves of bread. The first step of the cultivation process involves growing those cells in increasingly large vessels, starting at the 75-liter size and going up to several thousand liters. To stimulate growth, the salmon cells are fed with a nutrient mix that Kolbeck says is not much more complicated than Gatoradea combination of amino acids, vitamins, proteins, and fats.
[Photo: Wildtype]
The reason it’s a lot like brewing is because in brewing, you need to keep a nice, contained environment that, in the case of beer, keeps the yeast and other things actively growing and converting the feedstock into beer, Kolbeck says. In our case, we need to keep our salmon cells at a consistent temperaturefish are cold-blooded, so we need to keep them cool. We need to control the oxygen level, because cells need, just like in our body, they need oxygen to keep growing healthy. We need to control the pH, keep it in balance, similar to what you’d find inside the fish.
Once the cell-growing process is complete, the cells are rinsed and combined with a mixture of plant-based ingredients to lend them both structure and some additional flavor. Kolbeck says the actual tasting process required countless rounds, which includes himself, Elfenbein, Wildtypes wider staff and, in later stages, outside chefs.
When you’re starting to make a food literally from the ground up, there’s just a lot of work to be done, Kolbeck says. Like, where do you even start? How do you build that into a product that looks and tastes like people would expect for a seafood product? That took a long time and, honestly, it was trial and error. I have eaten so many things over the last three years, some of them really delicious . . . a lot of them not. But that’s like any kind of food development space. I imagine the process for developing new Doritos is probably pretty similar.
[Photo: Wildtype]
Designing an entirely new kind of food
Making a new Dorito flavor, though, likely doesnt present quite as many regulatory obstacles as designing an entirely new category of food. Kolbeck says the FDAs approval process was rigorous, often requiring the team to compile data that would take months to collect.
From our perspective, it is totally appropriate for a process like this to take a long time. Because we should have our food regulators feeling comfortable, like they can ask us any question they want, and we’ll answer it with data, Kolbeck says. All of the analytical testing that we did was done by third parties, so that takes time. From a startups perspective, that was a really painful process, but a really important one.
[Photo: Wildtype]
The result of Wildtypes yearslong efforts is a meat product that has the same amount of omega-3s and omega-6s as regular salmon, without any risk of mercury, microplastics, or parasites. (Kolbeck admits, though, that his team is still working on boosting the protein content.) Instead of trying to make the product available commercially, Wildtypelike other cultivated meat companieshas decided to debut it at high-end restaurants.
Currently, it is available for around $32 at Kann, a Haitian restaurant in Portland, Oregon, and is coming soon to Otoko, an omakase (chef’s choice) spot in Austin. And, Kolbeck adds, Wildtype is already in the process of perfecting its existing recipe and bringing new and improved products to the market.
[Photo: Wildtype]
How lab-grown meat became a conservative target
Wildtype is making its debut as lab-grown meat has become a point of contention for some conservative lawmakers over the past several months.
Last March, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis approved a bill to ban and criminalize the production and sale of cultivated meat in the state. That May, DeSantis said of the bill: Florida is fighting back against the global elites plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals. Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, whose state has passed a similar prohibition, described the effort as a way to battle fringe ideas and groups to defend our way of life.
Along with Florida and Nebraska, the states of Alabama, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, Texas, and Wyoming have all either attempted or succeeded in passing legislation banning lab-grown meat. Conservative arguments against lab-grown meat tend to frame the idea as both a woke proposition and a threat to existing meat industries.
But even some ranchers are pushing back against the dissent. This February, a group of ranchers and meat industry groups in Nebraska formed a coalition to oppose Pillens ban, arguing that consumers should be the ones to choose whether the product is available.
[Photo: Wildtype]
Kolbeck tends to agree. I feel like most Americans would not be happy that state governments are trying to tell them what they can and can’t eat because of special interests. It’s just not who we are as a country, he says. The market needs to decide these thingsnot lobbyists in smoky back rooms.
Furthermore, while critics might argue against lab-grown meat to protect the poultry and beef industries, about 80% to 90% of seafood is actually imported to the U.S, he adds. In fact, this April, the White House issued an executive order to find new ways to make more seafood domestically.
It’s, like, hey, we get it if you want to protect domestic industries. But this is not a domestic industry, Kolbeck says. We import almost all of the seafood in this country. And we are doing exactly what you’re trying to do, which is getting small businesses in this country to create more food domesticallyand it has all these other add-on benefits. Can you imagine the carbon fooprint of overnighting bluefin tuna from Tokyo to San Francisco? . . . Not low.
Bill McGowan is the founder and CEO of Clarity Media Group. He is a two-time Emmy Award-winning correspondent who now coaches everyone from CEOs to celebrities on how to captivate audiences. Juliana Silva is a journalist with vast experience in global media brand strategy who acts as a communications specialist at Clarity Media Group. As a media coach, she has transformed experts from a variety of professions into on-air network contributors.
Whats the big idea?
One of lifes great gifts is to have what we say remembered because, when our words stick with people, we have a golden opportunity to persuade, influence, motivate, or inspire. But every day, in offices all over the world, businesspeople squander those opportunities by speaking in bland, boring, and forgettable ways. Speak, Memorably outlines a host of techniques designed to help you captivate an audience by making your message so distinctive that it rises above the incessant noise swirling all around us these days.
Below, coauthors Bill McGowan and Juliana Silva share five key insights from their new book, Speak, Memorably: The Art of Captivating an Audience. Listen to the audio versionread by Bill and Julianain the Next Big Idea App.
1. Location, location, location
Where you place your big ideas matters in public speaking. This concept is called the primacy/recency effect, and it says that what you communicate at the beginning and end of a learning episode tends to be retained better than information presented in the middle. This theory has been validated in memory experiments.
The great filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola uses this concept for making movies. He starts by identifying his three top storytelling points, takes the best one, and puts it at the end. He places the second-best point at the beginning and then finds a place in the middle to insert his third-best point. He may be talking about storytelling, but the same idea can be applied to your presentations at work.
Throughout our years of coaching, we frequently see people missing the opportunity to capture the audiences attention. Unfortunately, presenters often resort to the dreaded agenda slide deck. It is the most overused and underwhelming tool in any public speakers arsenal. The scourge of telling people what youre going to tell them is rampant. We call this signposting, meaning warning your audience of what youre about to tell them.
This doesnt just happen at the beginning of a presentation. It often happens at the beginning of each and every slide. The strategy you should embrace in public speaking is inform, dont warn.
2. Learning is a laughing matter
Humor plays an important role in delivering memorable remarks. There has been extensive research on the power of levity in public speaking. Research from both the University of Pennsylvania and Ohio State University has shown that humor is a key contributor to both virality and retention. When 18- to 34-year-olds were shown both humorous and non-humorous news stories about politics and government policy, the viewers remembered and shared the funny stories more often.
There is a wrong way to go about inserting humor into your presentations. If youve ever been told to start with a joke, unfortunately, thats probably the worst piece of advice. Leave the joke telling to professional comedians and instead think of your job as finding a humorous lens through which you want the audience to view your content.
If youve ever been told to start with a joke, unfortunately, thats probably the worst piece of advice.
Levity is the ultimate high-wire act of public speaking. Its high risk, but its also high reward. There are physiological benefits to using humor in public speaking. Not only does it make the speaker calmer and more confident, but it also boosts the audiences dopamine levels.
Dopamine is the hormone in our bodies thats been called the pathway to pleasure. When dopamine hits our brains, it generates pleasure and makes us feel good. Laughter can also minimize stress. Studies at the Mayo Clinic have found that laughter can relieve stress by increasing the release of endorphins. They concluded that laughter stimulates circulation and muscle relaxation, both of which can help reduce stress.
Reluctance to be clever or funny in a business setting is completely understandable. Everybody feels anxiety due to the nature of the risk, but research clearly shows that the payoff in terms of being memorable can be enormous.
3. The Magnificent Seven
The Magnificent Seven is a series of linguistic devices that you can use to convert your ideas into punchy and memorable messages.
1. Analogy and Metaphor: These make it possible for your audience to understand a complex concept quickly and easily by comparing it to something common to all of us. For example, Sitting is the new smoking. Or, describing the supply chain crisis as a six-lane freeway trying to merge into a one-lane country road.
2. Creative Label: A pithy expression that you coin. The Great Resignation is a creative label. Quiet quitting is also a creative label. Or The Goldilocks Economy. You can see the viral nature of all these.
3. Twisted Cliché: When you take a very common expression and alter it slightly to turn it into something brand new. For instance, in 2023, when there was an oversaturation of startup investors in Silicon Valley, we called it a seating frenzy.
4. Wordplay: Perhaps the most famous example is from Martin Luther King Jr.s I Have a Dream speech when he said, I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
5. Data with Context: Overloading an audience with numbers and statistics is not memorable unless you bring some context and meaning to it. If you tell me that a windmill farm generates over 1,800 megawatts of power, I might not be impressed or interested. But if you tell me that it creates enough energy to power over a million homes, now I sit up and take notice.
6. Original Definitions: A fresh and different way to define certain terms. It is not the definition you find in the dictionary, but rather a complimentary meaning that helps you emphasize one of your points. For instance, you can redefine leadership as where empathy and vision meet.
7. Mathematical Equation: This actually requires no actual math. You could describe ratios in terms like the more you have this, the more you get that, such as the more conversational your tone becomes, the more confidence you exude. Or it could be an actual equation, like Authenticity = Passion + Warmth.
4. Zoomnesia and technostress
Nearly all of us have to cope with virtual communication on a daily basis. Zoom fatigue is real. It was validated in a European study titled Technostress in Organizations, which examined the effects of video conferencing on a group of college students attending lectures remotely comparedto those attending in-person classes. Fatigue levels and mood were measured with medical equipment, and researchers found notable differences between the in-person and online students. Fatigue levels grew for the video conference. In contrast, the in-person groups reported feeling more lively, happy, and active.
Another strange effect we discovered from our own daily online meetings was something we called Zoomnesia, which is a decreased ability to remember and differentiate between one Zoom call and another. In our own work, virtual meetings were starting to merge in our minds, and we asked ourselves what could be causing this. We realized that the setting for all these meetings was identical. Every day you sit in the same chair at the same desk, staring at the same computer screen, and you have a lack of audio and visual cues to help trigger your memories and distinguish them from one another.
In our own work, virtual meetings were starting to merge in our minds.
We had to validate our theory. Interestingly, we found a COVID-19-era study in which healthcare workers discovered this same phenomenon. The goal was to compare how well patients remembered medical instructions given during in-person consultations versus once given through telehealth. Participants were asked to recall the instructions immediately after the session, and then a week later. Overall, the number of details both younger and older patients were able to recall was significantly lower when they were provided through telehealth. This was true both immediately after the session and after one week.
5. Theft-tosterone
This is such a common problem that it deserves its own creative label. We call it theft-tosterone, which is what happens when a woman shares an idea with her colleagues and then later a man says almost the exact same thing and takes credit for it. It happens in all kinds of workplaces, even at the United States Supreme Court. Recently, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she frequently sees examples of theft-tosterone when court is in session.
Despite all the professional gains women have made over the past 20 years, episodes of theft-tosterone have increased 20% over the past several years. The roots of this phenomenon take hold early in life. A professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, Deborah Tannen, notes that research shows how young boys use language to maintain and negotiate status within a group. Boys gain status by taking center stage and holding it. They do this through speech, giving information, telling stories, and maybe even boasting. But according to Tannen, its frowned upon for a girl to seek center stage by acting the exact same way.
Equally interesting as theft-tosterones origins are effective ways women can cope with or prevent these episodes. After all, its impossible to be memorable if someone else is taking credit for your ideas. We detail strategies to combat theft-tosterone in the book.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
