More than two decades of researchfrom Harvard professor Amy Edmondsons pioneering studies to Googles landmark Project Aristotlehave found that the strongest predictor of high-performing teams isnt talent or strategy, but psychological safety. As Edmondson defines, its a shared belief held by team members that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. Its what gives people the confidence to speak up, take creative risks, and learn from failureand its foundational to innovation.
But one critical truth is often overlooked: Leaders cant create psychological safety for others if they havent first cultivated it within themselves.
I learned this the hard way.
While earning my MBA at Stanford, I cofounded Embrace, a social enterprise that created a low-cost, portable incubator for premature babies in underserved communities. Our device has now helped to save over 1 million newborns. As CEO, I was praised for my vision and tenacity. I moved to Indiahome to over 20% of the worlds premature babiesand routinely worked 80 to 100-hour weeks.
Over the years, we saved thousands of lives. We were recognized by President Obama, received funding from Beyoncé, and were featured in media around the world.
On the outside, I appeared unstoppable.
On the inside, I was running on fumes.
One day, in the middle of a team meeting, amid an endless string of fires, I broke down in tears. Mortified, I thought I had failed as a strong leader. But the next day, my head of operations pulled me aside and said: Thank you for being so open yesterday. You seem superhuman to us. You never sleep. You never stop. Seeing you be vulnerable allows us to be, too.
He went on to share how exhausted the team was. By hiding my own fatigue and pretending to have it all together, I had unknowingly created a culture of burnout. My team didnt feel safe to speak up or admit strugglebecause their leader didnt either.
That moment cracked something open in me.
Achievement as currency
Raised in a first-generation Taiwanese-American household, I had learned early that love was conditional and achievement was the currency that earned it. When I failed to meet expectations, I was punishedsometimes violently. So I became a perfectionist. I learned to work harder, aim higher, and never show weakness. As a leader, I held my team to the same impossible standards I held myself to. I avoided discomfort, rewarded overwork, and unintentionally reinforced burnout and emotional suppression.
When Embrace nearly collapsed after a decade of challenges, I was forced to confront the pain that had long driven me. I finally realized that feeling so powerless throughout my childhood had driven me to help the most powerless people in the world. But my drive was also fueled by fear.
Fear of not being enough.
Fear of letting others down.
Fear that if I stopped striving, I would lose my value.
Many high-achieving leaders are driven by a deep desire to make an impactand an equally deep fear that they are not enough. From an early age, we learn that achievement earns approval, so we keep raising the bar. But the very qualities that fuel success can also become liabilities: overwork that burns out teams, perfectionism that stifles innovation, control that suffocates creativity. Over time, these behaviors create cultures where exhaustion and disengagement take root.
The antidote is not more strategy. Its self-awareness.
As I began doing my own inner workthrough leadership coaching, therapy, and mindfulnessI started to recognize the unconscious patterns that had long gone unquestioned. I learned to honor my emotions, listen to my body, and lead from a place of balanceone that makes impact not only meaningful, but sustainable.
When leaders build inner safetyby acknowledging emotions, setting boundaries, and extending compassion to themselvesthey make it safe for others to do the same. Thats where empathy and authentic connection begin. Its how trust takes rootand how cultures of innovation and resilience are built.
In a world of accelerating change, where AI is transforming industries, the leaders who will build lasting impact arent those who power through at all costs. Theyre the ones who pause, reflect, and build safety from the inside out.
The Action Plan
So what can leaders do?
Feel your feelingsand listen to your body. Leaders often suppress uncomfortable emotions to appear strong or composed. But unprocessed feelings dont disappearthey resurface as tension, anxiety, or burnout. When you pause to fully feel your emotions, you can lead from awareness rather than reactivity.
Your body often signals what youre feeling before your mind catches up. Tight shoulders, shallow breathing, or fatigue are quiet cues that something needs attention. Learning to notice and respond to these signals with care strengthens emotional intelligencethe ability to recognize, understand, and manage emotions in yourself and others.
Practice self-compassion. Research shows that self-compassionnot self-criticismis what fuels resilience and growth. Treating yourself with the same understanding youd offer a friend allows you to recover faster from setbacks and lead with greater empathy and authentic connection.
Cultivate self-awareness. A powerful tool for this is parts work, which helps you identify the different inner voices that drive youthe perfectionist, the critic, the people pleaser. When you begin to understand these parts, you can lead from your center instead of your fears. This awareness helps to cultivate inner psychological safety. Download a free parts work exercise here.
Model vulnerability. When leaders are open about mistakes, fears, uncertainty, or difficult emotions, it creates permission for others to do the same. This builds trust and encourages psychological safety at every level. True leadership is not about control or perfection. Its about the courage to face discomfortin ourselves and others.
Let go of outcomes and focus on values. Were conditioned to define success by results. But outcomes are not always within our control. Leading from your valueslike compassion, service, or growthkeeps you grounded and connected to why you do the work. Outcomes may change, but values endure. Theyre what sustain both purpose and mental well-being over the long run.
Its an experience almost everyone is familiar with: that moment after youve been mindlessly snacking on a bag of Cheetos, when you realize that your fingers are now coated in a gritty, fluorescent orange dust. The finger dust phenomenon is so ubiquitous that Doritos and Cheetos have each run their own ads centering on the topic. Now, PepsiCo is debuting a version of both iconic snacks that come sans artificial orange.
PepsiCo recently announced a product line called Simply NKD, a new sub-category of Doritos and Cheetos that come with no artificial flavors or dyes, rendering them completely colorless. The collection will include orange-dust-free versions of Doritos Nacho Cheese, Doritos Cool Ranch, Cheetos Puffs, and Cheetos Flamin Hot, set to arrive on shelves starting on December 1.
[Photos: PepsiCo]
PepsiCo already sells a line of Cheetos and Doritos called Simply that are made with no artificial colors or flavors, but they come in separate flavor offerings like white cheddar. Simply NKD, on the other hand, are supposed to taste exactly like the classic Doritos and Cheetos you know and love, just with a less vibrant appearance.
[Photo: Brielle Patton/D3 Studio/PepsiCo]
For PepsiCo, the Simply NKD line is part of a larger effort to expand the companys focus on health and nutrition, as a growing number of customers (especially young people) become more invested in wellness. It also signals a broader trend across the snack and beverage industry, as major corporations rush to replace artificial food dyes amidst new legislation from the Trump administration designed to phase out certain artificial dyes.
PepsiCo’s next move
PepsiCo has recently been on a mission to shift its brand toward a healthier product lineupincluding, most recently, by rebranding its corporate identity to resemble stalks of grain and a droplet of water.
In a February earnings call, PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta explained that the company has seen a higher level of awareness in general of American consumers toward health and wellness, which he said was driving shifts in how consumers approach snacking. PepsiCo has followed that trend by pouring more investment into health-conscious moves, including by acquiring the grain-free, healthy tortilla chip brand Siete Foods and the prebiotic soda brand Poppi, as well as prepping to launch its own prebiotic cola brand this fall and introducing Lays and Tostitos with no artificial colors or flavors by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, PepsiCo is facing another external pressure to change some of its core offerings: Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.s plan to phase out eight petroleum-based artificial colors from the nations food supply. Already, many major companies have pledged to remove synthetic dyes from certain snacks and candies, including Kraft Heinz, General Mills, Nestlé, and Campbells.
PepsiCo announced in April that it would accelerate a planned shift to using natural colors in its foods and beverages. As of now, about 40% of its U.S. products use synthetic dyes, including Doritos and Cheetos, which both rely on a combination of Yellow 6, Yellow 5, and Red 40 to achieve their iconic hues.
Right now, PepsiCo is actively working on finding natural alternatives to color its core products like Gatorade and Cheetosa process that could take several years. In the meantime, the company is betting that some customers will prefer a new version of their favorite snacks without any color additives at all.
[Photo: Brielle Patton/D3 Studio/PepsiCo]
How PepsiCo designed dust-less chips
Simply NKD are Doritos and Cheetos as youve never seen them beforeboth in and out of the packaging.
Compared to their electric orange original counterparts, these naked versions of the snacks are both a light yellow hue. In an interview with Bloomberg, Rachel Ferdinando, CEO of PepsiCo Foods U.S., said that expert tasters tried the chips under special red lights that prevented them from seeing the chips color in order to ensure that the NKD versions are just as tasty as the orange ones.
The chips packaging has similarly lost its quintessential color. Both the Cheetos and the Doritos bags are mostly white, with pops of orange, red, and blue depending on the specific flavor.
To communicate that the new products are free from artificial flavors and dyesmaking them colorlesswe intentionally stripped away the classic bright hues that consumers expect, starting with a blank canvas, a PepsiCo Foods U.S. spokesperson told Fast Company, adding that the design differentiation is enhanced by incorporating elements like a matte finish, metallic accents, and a simplified presentation. And in case anyone is still confused, every bag comes with the phrase, Naked of dyes alongside an arrow pointing to an image of the chip.
When you see the Simply NKD bag on the shelf against the sea of colorful bags, its hard to miss, the spokesperson says.
The visual identity is obviously walking a fine line between communicating the nakedness of the chips while also steering clear of any visual signals that would consign them to the health food category. In other words, these arent healthy Cheetos and Doritos; theyre just colorless.
A few days ago, I wrapped a coaching call with a senior executive navigating a complex restructuringwork that demands steadiness in ambiguity, patience when emotions rise, and the discipline to stay grounded while others are spinning. Minutes later, I walked into my kitchen and found my child in a mismatched Halloween costume, eating shredded cheese out of the bag, and crying because her Lego creation was too wobbly to be art.
The contrast was sharp, but the underlying lesson was familiar. Parenting and leadership rarely feel similar in form, but they draw on the same internal architecture. Both require influence without force, emotional regulation under pressure, and the ability to create clarity in chaotic, unpredictable environments. Both ask us to decide when to step in, when to step back, and what it means to act with intention instead of urgency.
Across my work with senior leaders, and in my own life as a parent, Ive seen these patterns repeat. The skills we associate with leadership are often forged in everyday family life, and the habits that make parenting sustainable often strengthen our leadership. Here are six lessons that cut across both domains.
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1. Emotional steadiness is a leadership skill
Composure is often misunderstood as restraint or politeness. In reality, it is the capacity to tolerate emotionyour own and otherswithout reacting impulsively. At home, this can look like staying calm through a meltdown or responding thoughtfully to a childs frustration. At work, it means anchoring your team when uncertainty is high or when interpersonal tensions flare.
Across settings, emotional steadiness supports psychological flexibility: the ability to remain centered enough to think clearly, consider options, and choose a productive response. The more leaders practice this, the more they can navigate ambiguity without defaulting to control, reactivity, or avoidance.
2. Clarity beats complexity
Parents learn quickly that children thrive with specific expectations and simple instructions. Adults are no different. Leaders often overexplain to project expertise or avoid difficult conversations, but complexity usually obscures rather than illuminates.
Clarity requires the discipline to say: Here is what were doing. Here is why. Here is what success looks like. Clear communication reduces cognitive load, increases accountability, and strengthens follow-through. When leaders simplify the path, teams can focus on execution instead of interpretation.
3. Boundaries are care, not control
In family life, boundaries allow routines to run, needs to be understood, and conflicts to be resolved without constant negotiation. They protect rest, attention, and relationships. At work, boundaries function similarly. They create predictability, prevent burnout, and help teams focus on what matters most.
Many leaders struggle more with boundaries at work than with children at home. Over-functioning often comes disguised as praise: Youre the only one I trust with this. But taking on too much erodes capacity and models unhealthy norms. Boundaries are not barriers; they are structures that support shared responsibility and mutual respect.
4. Repair matters more than perfection
Parents inevitably make mistakesraising their voices, rushing through routines, reacting too quickly. The critical practice is repair: circling back, naming what happened, and reconnecting. Repair teaches accountability, empathy, and relational safety.
Organizations benefit from the same ethic. Leaders sometimes avoid repair because they fear it signals weakness, but unaddressed ruptures undermine trust. A brief acknowledgmentI want to revisit that; I didnt handle it as well as I could havecan diffuse tension, clarify intent, and rebuild confidence. Repair is the foundation of psychological safety, which drives performance far more reliably than perfection.
5. Autonomy develops courage
Watching a child wobble on a bike for the first time is uncomfortable, but it builds resilience. The workplace equivalent is resisting the urge to overmanage. Empowering people to make decisions and learn through experience expands their competence and confidence. Micromanagement, by contrast, signals fearfear of failure, judgment, or loss of control.
Autonomy is not abdication. It requires clear expectations, appropriate guardrails, and support when needed. But real leadership involves stepping back enough for others to step forward. Growth happens in the wobble.
6. Purpose lives in the mundane
Parenting quickly teaches that meaning is built less through big milestones and more through accumulated micro-moments: answering questions while cooking dinner, revisiting hard conversations, showing up consistently even when enthusiasm is low. Steadiness matters more than spectacle.
The same is true in organizational life. Culture is shaped not by strategy decks or keynote speeches but by everyday interactionshow leaders greet people, how they listen, how they give feedback, how they respond on difficult days. Purpose is expressed through small behaviors that signal what the organization values and how people should treat one another.
The contexts are different, but the core work is the same. Leadership, in any environment, asks for clarity, steadiness, and intentional action. The setting changes, but the work is the same: stay steady, stay human, and lead with intention wherever you are.
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Youve decided to start a solo business. Congratulations! Ive been a solopreneur for years and love being my own boss.
My decision to become a full-time freelance writer happened overnight. I lost my full-time job at a marketing agency. Looking around, the job market seemed bleak. Working for myself was a way to start earning money immediately to pay bills.
However, Id been thinking about a solo business for months. So while the timing wasnt my decision, it was a direction I was headed anyway.
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I had been freelancing alongside my 9-5 job for a few years, so I had the infrastructure in place to turn my side hustle into a full-time business. What you need on Day 1 is a lot different than what you need on Day 1,001.
Here are some of the minimum things you need to get started.
1. Pricing
Before you even start talking to potential clients, you need to know what youll charge for your services. Will you charge by the hour? By project? On a retainer?
Pricing is one of the hardest things to figure out when you start your own business. You often dont have a good benchmark to know what you should charge compared to other solopreneurs doing similar work.
You can start with your salary if you were working full-time at a company. Break it down into an hourly rate (even if youre charging on a per-project basis). Keep in mind that youll also be paying taxes and covering your own business expenses.
In addition to determining pricing, youll also need a way to present pricing to a potential client. You might want to consider software that lets you put together polished proposals for clients. Some can even collect e-signatures and payments as an all-in-one tool. But this isnt necessary. You could also put together a proposal in a tool like Canva.
Youll also want to have clients sign a contract, agreeing to your pricing and terms. You could pay a lawyer to draw up a contract for you, but thats often cost-prohibitive for new solopreneurs. Instead, you could look for a template that you can modify, or use this free one from the Freelancers Union.
2. A website
Im a big advocate for launching a website for your solo business. It doesnt have to be fancy. Mine isntit simply provides some information about my background and the services I offer. It includes a link to my portfolio of work and a Contact Me form.
A website, even if its a one-pager, gives your business credibility. It also provides more information than you can showcase on a site like LinkedIn.
Ideally, you would connect your website to your own domain. If youve never done this before, it sounds scarier than it actually is. Most website builders will provide step-by-step instructions to connect to a domain you buy from a company like GoDaddy or Cloudflare.
If you want to take it a step further, you can connect your domain to Google Workspace so that your email address is @yourdomain.com. However, Google Workspace isnt free. If youre not ready to pay for it, you can always connect your domain to your email later.
3. An invoicing and payment tool
My first invoices were created in Google Sheets. I was lucky that my clients paid me via check, because otherwise, Im not sure how I would have collected payments.
Youll want to make it easy for clients to pay you, in the method of their choosing. Some may want to send you a bank transfer, while others want to use a credit card. Ive even worked with companies outside of the U.S. and needed to collect international payments. Payment should never be a point of friction.
Some tools provide invoicing, payment, and accounting all in one. Or, you can use a standalone product like Stripe to create invoices and collect payments. Platforms like Stripe will charge you a fee (a percentage of the invoice), but they will handle the payment processing for you. They collect money from the client using whatever payment method the client choosesand then send it to your bank account.
4. A plan to find clients
Once you have the foundational things in place (pricing, a website, and invoicing/payment), you can start to think about how youll find clientsor how theyll find you.
This is not a single-day activity. Everything else Ive mentioned can be pretty quick to set up. Marketing yourself is a long-term strategy.
When I first started freelancing full-time, I was desperate for work (Id just lost my job!). I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn. I joined several Slack communities and networked with potential clients. I was a guest on podcasts to get my name out into the world.
Effective tactics will depend on the services you offer, but youll need to do some hustling to find your first few clients. Your approach will likely evolve as your business grows. What worked for me in my first few months looks very different now. Over time, I learned which clients and projects aligned best with my skills and servicesand which ones didnt.
Starting a solo business can feel overwhelming at first, especially in the early days. However, you get to design and build something thats fully your own. Start with the foundation you need on Day 1, and youll figure out the rest as you go.
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Earlier this year, TikTokers declared the start of the Great Meme Depression of 2025. In the months since, things havent picked up much.
As 2026 approaches, some internet users have decided to take matters into their own hands rather than risk yet another year of AI slop and brainrot humor. Its time to take it back to 2016.
The Great Meme Reset of 2026 was first proposed by TikTok creator joebro909 in a video from March, according to KnowYourMeme, in the thick of The Great Meme Depression. In the clip, he suggested that all memes be wiped from memory in an effort to rescue TikTok from the drought.
In September, TikTok creator golden._vr took up the call, proposing a time and a date for what they dubbed, The Great Meme Reset.
“The last resort for memes,” the video’s caption read. “The Great Meme Reset. December 31st, 2025, 11:59. Memes are rising from the grave.”
Since then, internet users have been reup0ping classic memes, like Nyan Cat and Harambe, made popular before TikTok was even a glint in millennials eye, thus wiping clean the last decade of internet culture.
With Elon Musk threatening to bring back Vine but in AI form and a new six-second app backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey reviving more than 100,000 archived Vine clips, now seems as good a time as ever to introduce such classics as FRE SH VOCADO” and Damn Daniel to the youth of today.
Everything old is new again. The appeal of a return to an internet undiluted by AI slop is undeniable, but is 2010 humor really so much better than the brainrot trends of today? Awkward Turtle and Annoying Orange just dont hit the same in the cold light of 2025.
With the rapid pace of the meme cycle these days (who even remembers the Conclave memes earlier this year?!), the pull of nostalgia for a time where memes evolved at a slower pace is strong.
Yet, the algorithm marches onwards, in some cases eating itself in its insatiable demand for viral content. Trying to force it backwards is futile. Inevitably, The Great Meme Reset Of 2026 will soon meet the same fate as Evil Kermit and Big Chungus before it.
Its the circle of life.
Stories about AI-generated fabrications in the professional world have become part of the background hum of life since generative AI hit the mainstream three years ago. Invented quotes, fake figures, and citations that lead to non-existent research have shown up in academic publications, legal briefs, government reports, and media articles. We can often understand these events as technical failures: the AI hallucinated, someone forgot to fact-check, and an embarrassing but honest mistake became a national news story. But in some cases, they represent the tip of a much bigger icebergthe visible portion of a much more insidious phenomenon that predates AI but that will be supercharged by it. Because in some industries, the question of whether a statement is true or false doesnt matter much at allwhat counts is whether it is persuasive.
While talking heads have tended to focus on the post-truth moment in politics, consultants and other knowledge producers have been happily treating the truth as a malleable construct for decades. If it is better for the bottom line for the data to point in one direction rather than another, someone out there will happily conduct research that has the sole goal of finding the right answer. Information is commonly packaged in decks and reports with the intention of supporting a client narrative or a firms own goals while inconvenient facts are either minimized or ignored entirely. Generative AI provides an incredibly powerful tool for supporting this kind of misdirection: even if it is not pulling data out of thin air and inventing claims from the ground up, it can provide a dozen ways to hide the truth or to make alternative facts sound convincing. Wherever the appearance of rigor matters more than rigor itself, AI becomes not a liability but a competitive advantage.
Not to put too fine a point on it, many knowledge workers spend much of their time producing what the philosopher Harry Frankfurt calls bullshit. And what is bullshit according to Frankfurt? Its essence, he says, is not that it is false but it is phony. The liar, Frankfurt explains, cares about truth, even if only negatively, since he or she wants to conceal it. The bullshitter, however, does not care at all. They may even tell the truth by accident. What matters to bullshitters isn’t accuracy but effect: how their words work on an audience, what impression they create, what their words allow them to get away with. For many individuals and firms in these industries, words in reports and slide decks are not there to describe reality or to conduct honest argumentation; they are there to do the work of the persuasive bullshitter.
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Knowledge work is one of the leading providers of what the anthropologist David Graeber famously called bullshit jobsjobs that involve work that even those doing it quietly suspect serves no real purpose. For decades, product vendors, analysts, and consultants have been rewarded for producing material that looks rigorous, authoritative, and data-driventhe thirty-page slide deck, the glossy report, snazzy frameworks, and slick 2x2s. The material did not need to be good. It simply needed to look good.
And if that is the goal, if words are meant to perform rather than inform, if the aim is to produce effective bullshit rather than tell the truth, then it makes perfect sense to use AI. AI can produce bullshit better and more quickly and in greater volume than any human being. So, when consultants and analysts turn to generative AI to help them with their reports and presentations, they are obeying the underlying logic and fundamental goals of the system in which they operate. The problem here is not that AI produces bullshitthe problem is that many in this business are willing to say whatever needs to be said to pad the bottom line.
Bullshit vs. quality
The answer here is neither new policies nor training programs. These things have their places, but at best they address symptoms rather than underlying causes. If we want to address causes rather than apply band-aids, we have to understand what we have lost in the move to bullshit, because then we can begin figuring out how to recover it.
In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig uses the term quality to name the property that makes a good thing good. This is an intangible characteristic: it cannot be defined, but everyone knows it when they see it. You know quality when you run your hand along a well-made table and feel the seamless join between two pieces of wood; you know quality when you see that every line and curve is just as it should be. There is a quiet rightness to something that has this character, and when you see it, you glimpse what it means for something to be genuinely good.
If the institutions that are responsible for creating knowledgenot just consulting firms but universities, corporations, governments, and media platformswere animated by a genuine sense of quality, it would be far harder for bullshit to take root.
Institutions teach values through what they reward, and we have spent decades rewarding the production of bullshit. Consultants simply do in excelsis what we have all learned to do to some degree: produce something that looks good without caring whether it really is good.
First you wear the mask, they say, and then the mask wears you. Initially, perhaps, we can produce bullshit while at least retaining our capacity to see it as bullshit. But over time, the longer we operate in the bullshit-industrial complex, the more bullshit we produce, the more we tend to lose even that capacity. We drink the Kool Aid and start thinking that bullshit is quality. AI does not cause that blindness. It simply reveals it.
What leaders can do
Make life hard. Bullshit flourishes because it is easy. If we want to produce quality work, we need to take the harder road.
AI isnt going away, and nor should we wish it away. It is an incredible tool for enhancing productivity and allowing us to do more with our time. But it often does so by encouraging us to produce bullshit, because that is the quickest and easiest path in a world that has given up on quality. The challenge is to harness AI without allowing ourselves to be beguiled into shortcuts that ultimately pull us down into the mire. To avoid that trap, leaders must take deliberate steps at both the individual and organizationl levels.
At the individual level. Never accept anything that AI outputs without making it your own first. For every sentence, every fact, every claim, every reference, ask yourself: Do I stand by that? If you dont know, you need to check the claims and think through the arguments until they truly become your own. Often, this will mean rewriting, revising, reassessing, and even flat out rejecting. And this is hard when there is an easier path available. But the fact that it is hard is what makes it necessary.
At the organizational level: Yes, we must trust our people to use AI responsibly. Butif we choose not to keep company with the bullshitters of the worldwe must also commit and recommit our organizations to producing work of real quality. That means instituting real, rigorous quality checks. Leaders need to stand behind everything their team produces. They need to take responsibility and affirm that they are allowing it to pass out of the door not because it sounds good but because it really is good. Again, this is hard. It takes time and effort. It means not accepting a throwaway glance across the text but settling down to read and understand in detail. It means being prepared to challenge ourselves and to challenge our teams, not just periodically, but every day.
The path forward is not to resist AI or to romanticize slowness and inefficiency. It is to be ruthlessly honest about what we are producing and why. Every time we are tempted to let AI-generated material slide because it looks good enough, we should ask: Are we creating something of quality, or are we just adding to the pile of bullshit? That questionand our willingness to answer it honestlywill determine whether AI becomes a tool for excellence or just another engine that trades insight for appearance.
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Early this year, Mark Zuckerberg made headlines by saying corporate culture needs more masculine energy. This sentiment was echoed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseths call for the militaryan employer of 2.1 million Americansto return to a warrior ethos, promoting traditional masculine standards like aggression and athleticism.
And yet, according to recent news reports, recruits at ICE (another workplace) are struggling to pass basic fitness tests, and Hegseth allegedly installed a makeup room at the Pentagon. Such contradictions remind me of a former manager who once criticized a potential hire for being kind of girly, yet spent most of his free time online researching spa treatments and shopping for floral polos.
Masculinity standards can be nebulous and conflicting. GQs 2025 State of Masculinity Survey asked 1,929 American men their thoughts and beliefs on masculinity, and men surveyed defined masculine as strong, protective, and toughbut when asked how theyd like to be described by a friend, they said respectful, honest, and responsible.
It seems even men themselves are confused about what masculinity is. Meanwhile, the GQ survey also found that 68% of men think about how to be masculine every single day.
Men are navigating mixed messages, says gender equality and masculinity researcher Dr. Sarah DiMuccio, Head of Research and Development at Above & Beyond, a DEI consultancy and leadership academy based in Copenhagen.
Be more open and empathetic. But also: ‘man up’ and be decisive.
In todays world, workplace leaders are doubling down on a narrow, quasi-toxic version of masculinity, determining who gets heard, who gets promoted, what behaviors are rewarded and what the tone of the organization is. This impacts the way men behave, define success, and shapes business, as well as larger culture. The consequences are real: Economically, harmful behaviors associated with masculine stereotypes cost the United States over $15.7 billion each year.
Masculine performanceand anxiety
As a gay man, Ive never been naive about how masculinity is used as currency. But because I was raised in what I now realize was a very progressive household, it wasnt something I worried much about. I started rethinking how I performed it after being passed over for a work promotion.
My then manager (the floral-polo-bedecked one) encouraged me to apply for this interview, telling me I was a natural fit. While Id never mentioned being gay to him before, it somehow came up during an interview hed sat in on. The unofficial, non-HR-sanctioned feedback I got from him when I didnt advance? I think they were just looking for, like, a sports-and-beer guy.
Can I absolutely prove it was being gay? No, but Id bet money on it.
A 2022 study published in Sex Roles: a Journal of Research found that both gay and straight men tend to prefer gay colleagues who are in leadership roles to present as masculine. And while I subjectively feel I present pretty masculine, masculinity and sexuality are routinely conflated. Even at more progressive companies, I now strategically choose when to acknowledge my sexuality. Its hard to blame me, when work culture (and the wider culture) rewards a very narrow idea of masculinity, putting it on a pedestal for others to conform to.
Dr. Travis Speice, a sociologist specializing in gender and sexuality studies, says, Sometimes, it doesnt actually matter how we perform our gender or our sexuality in the workplaceit’s other people who decide whether its acceptable or not. This can lead to some absurd-seeming contradictions. One might think Pete Hegseths installation of a makeup studio in the Pentagon flies in the face of warrior ethos, but if others have already deemed him (or any man) the right kind of masculine, it might not matter.
And yet: I dont know that any performance is absurd if the performer feels like there is a social advantage by following through with that performance, Speice says.
On top of the muddied definitions and public displays of masculinity, the pressure for men to perform as masculine at work worryingly has an adverse effect on everyone involved.
A 2018 study published in the Journal of Social Issues, entitled “Work as a Masculinity Contest,” found that workplaces prevalent with men attempting masculine performance tend to be ones also filled with toxic leadership and bullying, as well as fewer opportunities, more burnout, and worse wellbeing for the women in the office.
Success comes to focus not on meeting performance goals, the study says, but on proving you are more of a man than the next guy. Thus, being a top performer is tantamount to being a manor for the winners, the man.
The need to prove masculinity at work can cause men to behave aggressively, embrace risky behaviors, and sexually harass others. Half of men have taken time off from work to cope with mental health struggles, but less than one in ten would disclose said struggles.
DiMuccio was a researcher on a 2021 study entitled Masculine Anxiety and Interrupting Sexism at Work, which found that 94% of men at work experience masculine anxiety: the stress men feel living up to masculine expectations.
She points out how the way this anxiety manifests doesnt always look like nervousness: Sometimes it looks like bravado, competition, or withdrawal. Speice adds that In some work environments, straight men may feel even more pressure to perform traditional masculinity, desperate to prove their real man status.
The tech bro: Our loudest archetype
At the moment, few industries capture the celebrated absurdity of masculinitys narrowest view more than Big Tech.
Silicon Valley is embracing a new era of masculinity, Zoe Bernard wrote in her 2023 piece for Vox entitled Silicon Valleys very masculine year. (An award that Silicon Valley is about to win for the third year in a row, and maybe then we can retire the trophy.) Tech’s “leaders are powerful, virile, and swole,” Bernard writes. Todays tech brosMark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Mukhave become the unofficial poster boys for performative masculinity, trading in hoodies and office foosball tables for MMA and bow hunting.
Nick Clegg, former Meta Vice President of Global Affairs, recently critiqued the tech bros (though it should be noted he spoke highly of Zuckerberg as a colleague), in an interview with The Guardian, hinting at the fragility of performative manliness. He called the trend cloyingly conformist, adding: I couldnt, and still cant, understand this deeply unattractive combination of machismo and self-pity.
Dr. Peter Glick, a Professor of Psychology at Lawrence University (and co-author of the Work as a Masculinity Contest study) told me that traditional masculine roles provided men with a set of privileges that some feel are slipping away due to gender equality and DEI advances.
My own sense is that if anything, we have moved into a phase of highly reactive, defensive, aggrieved masculinity, he says, especially among many men who resent loss of status, power, purpose, and clarity with respect to how to fulfill masculine identity. DiMuccio agrees, citing the influence of the manosphere: a loose, online network of blogs, forums, and social media promoting traditional masculinity and highly critical of anything it deems feminist.
Men are promised belonging and purpose, but in a way that is deeply problematic, misogynistic, and reinforces narrow versions of masculinity even more, she says, noting that these spaces thrive on masculine anxiety. They turn the fear of losing status or identity in a changing world into resentmentand performance.
If youre accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression, says Clegg.
Rethinking masculinity
Growing up, being perceived as masculine wasnt something I worried about. I attribute that to my father, who, on paper, embodies traditional masculinity: Hes tall, not super emotive, and possesses the authoritative air befitting a retired Marine Colonel. But his is actually a more nuanced version of masculinity: While he certainly has protective and imposing traits, hes neither aggressive nor bombastic, embodying a quiet confidence that seeks neither attention nor approval. He modeled being a decent guy, not arbitrarily proving he was the man.
Perhaps those qualitiesa steadying, grounded presence that doesnt default to performing toxic traits or demanding others to comply with themis what masculinity in the workplace could look like instead.
DiMuccio thinks that deep down, Most men do know, at some level, that these [toxic] behaviors silencing others, overcompensating, refusing to ask for helpundermine teamwork and performance. But she points out that, in many workplaces, the social rewards of being perceived as masculine still justify the performance.
Its not that men dont care about the greater goal. They do. But the cultural script of masculinity is so strong that it can override logic. Changing that requires shifting what we reward and recognize as leadership and success at work, DiMuccio says.
For better or worse, the concept of masculinity will continue to shape the ways we live and work. We can point out its hypocrisies and absurdities all we want, but the reality is that the ways men choose to telegraph masculinity shape who gets ahead, who gets heard, and how teams functionreflecting a broader cultural tendency to reward appearances, conformity, and social signaling over substance.
Recognizing this dynamic might empower individuals to identify and call out the smoke and mirrorsand allow more men to stop playing pretend.
If you work in an office, your next coworker might not be human at all.
Workers are already well-acquainted with artificial intelligence in the office, using AI tools to take notes, automate tasks, and assist with workflow. Now, Microsoft is working on a new kind of AI agent that doesnt just assist, but acts as an employee.
These Agentic Users will soon have their own email, Teams account, and company ID, just like a regular coworker. Each embodied agent has its own identity, dedicated access to organizational systems and applications, and the ability to collaborate with humans and other agents, states a Microsoft product roadmap document. These agents can attend meetings, edit documents, communicate via email and chat, and perform tasks autonomously.
The rise of AI has already spelled death for middle management, and is having a significant and disproportionate impact on entry-level workers in the American labor market, according to economists at Stanfords Digital Economy Lab.
Gartner projects that by 2028, 33% of enterprise software applications will incorporate agentic AI, and at least 15% of daily business decisions will be made autonomously by AI agents. If AI employees can soon take over the grunt work no one wants to do, like scheduling and reporting, leaving people to handle the big picture tasks, thats a win, right?
Yet it also raises questions like: whose job is it to supervise AI employees? How much can AI really be entrusted with? And what happens if, or when, something goes wrong?
Last year Deloitte surveyed organizations on the cutting edge of AI, and found just 23% of these organizations reported feeling highly prepared to manage AI-related risks. According to one study, 40% of agentic AI projects could be canceled by the end of 2027 due to inadequate risk controls, unclear business value and escalating costs.
As AI rapidly establishes itself as a workplace norm, 2025 will be remembered as the moment when companies pushed past simply experimenting with AI and started building around it, Microsoft said in a blog post accompanying its annual Work Trend Index report.
The rollout of Agentic users could start later this November, according to internal documents first reported by The Register. With Microsoft Ignite this week, stay tuned.
Our culture equates busyness with importance, overcommitment with achievement, and exhaustion with value. For high-achieving professionals, this belief system isnt just inconvenient, its quietly eroding energy, focus, and fulfillment. Meetings pile up, emails never end, and the pressure to do it all becomes a measure of worth. And yet, this version of productivity is deeply misleading.
The truth is, sustainable success doesnt come from cramming more into your day. It comes from aligning what you do with who you are, and giving yourself permission to prioritize energy, clarity, and presence over perpetual motion. Because motion for the sake of it is meaningless.
The Cost of Outdated Beliefs
Most of our thoughts are inherited patterns: echoes of beliefs we absorbed without realizing or having context. Many high achievers carry invisible scripts around their worth and value that may seem insignificant, yet arent harmless. They quietly shape decisions, drain energy, and fuel cycles of overcommitment. Left unchallenged, they keep us trapped in performance over presence, forcing a choice between professional success and personal fulfillment that shouldnt exist.
The data confirms the danger: Nearly 60% of professionals report negative stress impacts, including irritability, fatigue, and decreased motivation. Chronic stress is linked to over 120,000 deaths each year in the U.S. alone. Leaders who push past their limits not only compromise their own well-being, but they also set a tone for teams that normalizes depletion.
Rewriting Your Inner Story
The first step to changing the way you work and live is identifying the beliefs running the show. Ask yourself: Which internal narratives drive my decisions? Which of them are inherited, unexamined, or outdated? Do they still serve me, or do they keep me misaligned?
Once these scripts are visible, you can begin to rewrite them.
Old belief: I must prove my worth by doing more. New truth: My worth is inherent; I do not need to earn it through busyness.
Old belief: Busyness is a sign of importance. New truth: Stillness is a strategy, not a liability. Reflection and focus expand my impact.
Old belief: I can (and should) do it all. New truth: Freedom comes from focus, not volume. Saying no is wisdom, not weakness.
Even small shifts in thinking create space for bigger changes in behavior, energy, and presence.
Story in Action
Consider Laura, a senior leader at a fast-growing tech firm. On paper, she was thrivingleading teams, closing deals, and responding to emails at all hours. Yet she felt perpetually drained, anxious, and disconnected from both her work and her personal life. Every day felt like a treadmill she couldnt step off.
When she began questioning her internal narratives, she realized her default belief: If Im not constantly available, Im failing. With that recognition, she experimented with small rituals to reclaim her energy. She started each morning with a 10-to-20-minute walk, phone-free, allowing her to plan her day with clarity. Before meetings, she paused to breathe and set her intention. And in the evenings, she created simple rituals that increased her presence: journaling one win for the day as she stepped away from her laptop, a gratitude circle at dinner with family, and reading for pleasure.
These small, deliberate actions transformed her experience of her own life. Laura wasnt doing less; she was choosing differently. Her focus sharpened, her decisions felt clearer, and she felt more present in conversations with her team and family. By embedding rituals instead of relying on autopilot routines to just get through the day, she reclaimed control over her energy, rewrote the story she was living by, and discovered that sustainable success comes from alignment, not overextension.
Rituals, Not Routines: A Practical Tool
Changing beliefs is only the beginning. Without intentional action, old habits quietly reassert themselves. This is where ritualsintentional and meaningful rhythms unique to youbecome transformative.
Unlike routines, which can be automatic and draining over time, rituals are infused with purpose. They create moments of renewal, grounding, and clarity. For example:
Starting your day with a five-minute reflection instead of jumping straight into email.
Brewing coffee or tea while you set an intention for the day or the next meeting.
Closing the workday with a transition ritual, signaling the shift from professional to personal time.
Winding down with reading, candlelight, journaling, or a hot shower.
These intentional pauses are strategic, not indulgent. They preserve energy, enhance focus, and allow you to operate from alignment rather than autopilot.
Presence as a Leadership Advantage
The most effective professionals arent necessarily those who work the longest hoursthats the old way of working. Theyre those who show up whole because theyre in alignment with who they are, inside and out. Presence is a competitive advantage. It fosters better decision-making, inspires teams, and creates ripple effects that extend far beyond individual performance.
Leaders who model energy stewardship and intentionality shift culture without a single memo. By choosing rituals that anchor them in alignment, they normalize boundaries, reflection, and focused contribution. And in doing so, they give others permission to do the same.
Practical Steps to Begin
Identify your top stress-beliefs. Notice moments you feel compelled to say yes or overcommit. Ask what underlying belief is driving the behavior.
Reframe them. Convert old stories of proving and performing into new narratives of presence, permission, and focus.
Anchor with rituals. Introduce small, meaningful practices that support the beliefs you want to live by. Examples include morning reflection, mid-day resets, or transition rituals between work and personal life.
Observe the ripple. Notice how these changes affect your energy, decision-making, relationships, and the culture around you.
Even small, consistent choices shift patterns over time. They turn pressure into presence, busyness into clarity, and stress into sustainable energy.
Redefining Work-Life Success
Utimately, high performance doesnt require sacrifice, but it does require alignment. When you stop measuring worth by how much you do and start measuring it by how intentionally and fully you show up, everything changes.
You dont have to do it all. You have to do what matters, and do it in a way that preserves your energy, your joy, and your ability to be fully present. The rest will follow.
The future of work starts now, and success is being redefined: Lead not from exhaustion, but from alignment. Lead not to impress, but to empower. Your rituals are the blueprint, not only for your own performance but for the culture you create.
Do you know that the longer a decision-maker views your résumé, the more likely it is that youll get an interview? Recent research combined eye-tracking and machine learning to understand résumé decisions better. The most actionable conclusion was that Experience section dwell time predicts interview invitations.
Thats next-level information. Weve had eye-tracking studies for years. They tell us what readers look at, but give no additional meaning. Now, by applying AI, we know which sections of the résumé matter the most for getting interviews.
I was a retained search consultant for 25-plus years. For the last 10 years, Ive been writing executive and board résumés. When I did search, the first question I asked candidates after interviews was, How long were you there? That was the best way for me to know how well the interview went. Thus, it makes sense that résumé dwell time also predicts success.
So, lets talk about how to make your résumés Experience section sticky to readers via design and content choices.
Eliminate Walls of Text
People dont read word by word. They scan, looking for information relevant to their needs. Large blocks of text lose readers because theyre hard to scan.
In How People Read Online: The Eyetracking Evidence Report, The Nielsen Norman Group, a user experience firm, described a wall of text as a major repellent that instantly makes users think twice about engaging. To avoid that, limit résumé text blocks to three lines, four if you must. Nothing else about your résumé matters if people wont read it.
Focus on Experience
Help readers navigate your résumé by providing clear section labels (Professional Experience, Education, Skills, Community Service, etc.).
Nielsen Norman also shared that many readers assess whether a page is worth any time in less than a second. They appraise before they even start the infamous six-second scan. Because the Experience section drives interviews, place it below the summary at the top of your résumé. You have to show your relevance immediately to earn deeper reader attention.
Use a Consistent Structure
Present your recent experience in a consistent structure. I include:
Company names
Company descriptions
The locations where my clients worked for companies
Job titles
Employment dates
Job scope descriptions
Impact statements.
I always place company names and job titles on left margins to help readers who are scanning. They want that information. Give it to them effortlessly.
Also, lighten readers cognitive loads by separating job scope information and impact bullets. Describe scope in a narrative paragraph. Follow that with impact bullets. Dont force your readers to do the scope and impact sort. They want you to tell them what your role was and how you performed in it. Make it easy for them if you want to keep their attention.
Rank Order Your Impact Stories Based on Your Readers Needs
Identify a jobs deliverables. To do this, use job postings, talk with insiders, and ask AI platforms questions. Then, write your impact bullets to convince readers you can succeed in their roles. Let go of what you think is important about you; youll have time for that later. To grab and keep your readers attention, align your bullets’ content and order with their most critical needs.
Provide White Space
White space makes résumés easier to read and understand. That ease increases dwell time because it makes readers more willing to engage. Use these minimum parameters:
Three-quarter-inch top and bottom margins
One-inch side margins
Half-point spaces between bulleted impact statements
If you need more room, edit your content; dont fudge the white spaceyoull lose readers.
When I see a crowded résumé, I think the person hasnt learned whats important to their audience. Because of that, theyre sharing everything they guess might be relevant. That erodes the likelihood readers will find what they need and, in turn, dwell time.
Readers Evaluate Résumés and Make Decisions
Ive talked a lot about readers here, but the reality is that the people who view your résumé are evaluators. They look at your presentation. Then they decide whether you appear to meet enough of their needs to merit more of their time. Make it easy for them to understand your relevance, and they will slow down to focus on you.
