Taylor Swifts highly anticipated 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, is here. And this might be Swifts biggest release yet, given that along with an album, shes also premiering a film on the same day.
Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl features a new music video for the album’s single The Fate of Ophelia, lyric videos, and exclusive behind-the-scenes footage and commentary. Its being hosted as a companion event by AMC, Cinemark Theaters, and Regal Cinemas.
The catch? Its showing in theaters for just three days: October 3 to 5.
The brief theatrical window follows the same pattern Swift has used to release limited-edition versions of her past albums and merch that are often available only on her site for a short amount of timecreating a sense of urgency for fans.
According to some analysts, replicating the strategy of generating fast ticket sales in a limited timeframe is beneficial not only for Swift but also for the major movie theater chains.
Who wouldn’t want to cut out the middleman these days? Brandon Katz, director of insights and content strategy at Greenlight Analytics, posited to Fast Company. AMCs unique distribution deal with Taylor Swift allows them to bypass film studios and create more tailored deal terms. It represents a unique new business model for theaters, though one that isn’t easily repeatable. Exhibitors will also receive a new theatrical product headlined by the most famous entertainer on the planet at a time when wide-release volume is still lagging behind pre-pandemic levels. That’s helpful. Even without a traditional marketing runway, Showgirl will attract attention.
The Taylor Swift effect
The Life of a Showgirl is an appropriately named album for arguably one of the worlds biggest pop stars, who has built an empire from her music since she was 16 years old, creating a devoted fandom of “Swifties.”
In the past few years, Swift seems to have been busier than ever. She rerecorded her first six albums, reclaiming her music after the original masters were sold by her first record label (she eventually was able to buy the original masters back). She performed around the world on her 21-month-long Eras tour. And in August, she got engaged to Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce after a whirlwind two-year romance that saw her become a fixture at NFL games, including Super Bowl LVIII. She also teased the new album in her appearance on Jason and Travis Kelces New Heights podcast).
Her impact on any business she’s involved with has been so significant that it’s been given a namethe Taylor Swift effect,” which experts say reflects the singer-songwriter’s strong economic force.
Companies have been keen to take advantage of that Swift effect whenever they can. For instance, when The Life of a Showgirl was announced, many immediately adopted the albums orange aesthetic and font style in their own social media posts. Spotify launched a pop-up merch shop in New York, while other brands, including Uber Eats, are hosting special deals and pop-up events to celebrate the release.
This isnt the first time Swift has released a theatrical film. Following the end of the Eras tour in 2023, she released Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour film, bypassing traditional studios and instead signing a deal directly with AMC Theaters. The film went on to earn roughly $261 million at the global box office, making it the highest-grossing concert film ever. Later, Swift struck a deal with Disney for the films streaming rights.
This is the first time, however, that Swift is premiering a movie to coincide with a new album on the same day. Again, shes skipping studios and releasing the film through AMC, Cinemark, and Regal Cinemas. Last month Deadline reported that the film had already raked in $15 million in first-day presales and that sources were projecting it to make between $30 million and $50 million over the October 3 weekend.
A Swift business model
According to data from Greenlight Analytics, the concert films Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (with willingness to pay, or WTP, at 53%) and Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé (with WTP at 52%) generated fan enthusiasm on par with Elvis (with WTP at 63%), suggesting that live-music experiences for big-name artists can generate long tails of monetization opportunity.
Katz said that while releasing the film is a good idea for Swift, exhibitors, and the domestic box office, he emphasized that this isnt going to usher in a new genre of film, since only stars at Swifts level will be able to generate respectable box office revenue or streaming interest.
For the majority of artists thinking about chasing a similar goal, the juice would not be worth the squeeze, Katz said.
However, Swift is clearly continuing to move into the movie industry: In addition to the Eras Tour and Party of a Showgirl films, shes reportedly developing a feature project for Searchlight Pictures.
How can you get ahead in your career and still enjoy the ride?
One solution offered in business books, LinkedIn posts, and team-building manuals is to use humor. Sharing jokes, sarcastic quips, ironic memes, and witty anecdotes, the advice goes, will make you more likable, ease stress, strengthen teams, spark creativity, and even signal leadership potential.
We are professors of marketing and management who study humor and workplace dynamics. Our own researchand a growing body of work by other scholarsshows that its harder to be funny than most people think. The downside of cracking a bad joke is often larger than what you might gain by landing a good one.
Fortunately, you dont have to tell sidesplitting jokes to make humor work for you. You can learn to think like a comedian instead.
Humor is risky business
Comedy works by bending and breaking normsand when those rules arent broken in just the right way, its more likely to harm your reputation than to help your team.
We developed the benign violation theory to explain what makes things funnyand why attempts at humor so often backfire, especially in the workplace. Essentially, humor arises when something is both wrong and OK at the same time.
People find jokes funny when they break rules while seeming harmless. Miss one of those ingredients when you tell a joke and your audience wont appreciate it. When its all benign and theres no violation, you get yawns. When its all violation and not benign, you could end up triggering outrage.
Its hard enough to get laughs in the darkness of a comedy club. Under fluorescent office lights, that razor-thin line becomes even harder to walk. What feels wrong but OK to one colleague can feel simply wrong to another, especially across differences in seniority, culture, gender, or even the mood theyre in.
The hit sitcom The Office pokes fun at the cringeworthy jokes cracked by a hapless boss.
An advertising study
In our experiments, when everyday people are asked to be funny, most attempts land flat or cross lines.
In a humorous caption contest with business students, described in Peter McGraws book on global humor practices, The Humor Code, the captions werent particularly funny to begin with. However, the ones that were rated by judges as the most funny were often also rated the most distasteful.
Being funny without being offensive is of paramount importance. This is particularly true for women, as a robust literature shows women face harsher backlash than men for behavior seen as offensive or norm-violating, such as expressing anger, acting dominantly, or even making asks in negotiations.
Dont be that guy.
You might end up getting no respect
Research by other scholars who examine leader and manager behavior in organizations tells a similar story.
In one study, managers who used humor effectively were seen as more confident and competent, boosting their status. Yet when their attempts misfired, those same managers lost status and credibility. Other researchers have found that failed humor doesnt just hurt a managers statusit also makes employees less likely to respect that manager, seek their advice, or trust their leadership.
Even when jokes land, humor can backfire. In one study, marketing students instructed to write funny copy for advertisements wrote ads that were funnier, but also less effective, than students instructed to write creative or persuasive copy.
Another study found that bosses who joke too often push employees into pretending to be amused, which drains energy, reduces job satisfaction, and increases burnout. And the risks are higher for women due to a double standard. When women use humor in presentations, they are often judged as being less capable and having lower status than men.
The bottom line is that telling a great joke rarely gets you a promotion. And cracking a bad one can jeopardize your jobeven if youre not a talk show host who earns a living making people laugh.
Flip the script
Instead of trying to be funny on the job, we recommend that you focus on what we call thinking funnyas described in another of McGraws books, Shtick to Business.
The best ideas come as jokes, advertising legend David Ogilvy once said. Try to make your thinking as funny as possible.
But Ogilvy wasnt telling executives to crack jokes in meetings. He was encouraging employees to think like comedians by flipping expectations, leveraging their networks, and finding their niche.
Comics often lead you one way and then flip the script. Comedian Henny Youngman, a master of one-liners, famously quipped, When I read about the dangers of drinking, I gave up . . . reading. The business version of this convention is to challenge n obvious assumption.
For example, Patagonias Dont Buy This Jacket campaign, which the outdoor gear company rolled out on Black Friday in 2011 as a full-page ad in The New York Times, paradoxically boosted sales by calling out overconsumption.
To apply this method, pick a stale assumption your team holds, such as that adding features to a product always improves it or that having more meetings will lead to smoother coordination, and ask, What if the opposite were true?
Youll discover options that standard brainstorming misses.
Create a chasm
When comedian Bill Burr has his fans in stitches, he knows some people wont find his jokes funnyand he doesnt try to win them over.
Weve observed that many of the best comics dont try to please everyone. They succeed by deliberately narrowing their audience. And we also find that businesses that do the same build stronger brands.
For example, when Nebraskas tourism board embraced Honestly, its not for everyone in a 2019 campaign, targeting out-of-state visitors, web traffic jumped 43%.
Some people want hot tea. Others want iced tea. Serving warm tea satisfies no one. Likewise, you can succeed in business by deciding whom your idea is for, and whom its not for, then tailoring your product, policy, or presentation accordingly.
Cooperate to innovate
Stand-up may look like a solo act. But comics depend on feedbackpunch-ups from fellow comedians and reactions from audiencesiterating jokes in the same way lean startups may innovate new products.
Building successful teams at work means listening before speaking, making your partners look good, and balancing roles. Improv teacher Billy Merritt has described three types of improvisers. Pirates are risk-takers. Robots are structure builders. Ninjas are adept at both: taking risks and building structures.
A team designing a new app, for instance, needs all three: Pirates to propose bold features, robots to streamline the interface, and ninjas to bridge gaps. Empowering everyone in these roles leads to braver ideas with fewer blind spots.
Gifts arent universal
Telling someone to be funny is like telling them to be musical. Many of us can keep a beat, but few have what it takes to become rock stars.
Thats why we argue that its smarter to think like a comedian than to try to act like one.
By reversing assumptions, cooperating to innovate, and creating chasms, professionals can generate fresh solutions and stand outwithout becoming an office punchline.
Peter McGraw is a professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Adam Barsky is an associate professor of management at The University of Melbourne.
Caleb Warren is a professor of marketing at the University of Arizona.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
From on-again-off-again tariffs, economic uncertainty, and layoffs, fresh graduates are in one of the toughest job markets in recent history. More than half do not have a job lined up by the time they graduate, and the unemployment rate for young degree holders is the highest its been in 12 years, not counting the pandemic. Fast Company writer María José Gutierrez Chavez breaks down the 5 ways recent grads can break through the entry-level job “glass floor.”
Taxpayers in the Empire State will soon receive a refund to help offset rising living costs.
Part of the 2025-2026 New York State budget allocates funds for inflation refund checks. The onetime payments offer relief to New Yorkers who have incurred increased sales tax costs due to inflation. According to the state, 8.2 million households will receive payments.
Governor Kathy Hochul announced that as of September 26, inflation refund checks have started to be mailed to taxpayers. Checks will continue to be issued throughout October and November.
Here’s what to know about whether you’re eligible, how much you’ll receive, and more.
Am I eligible for an inflation refund check?
Yes, if for tax year 2023 you:
Filed Form IT-201, New York State Resident Income Tax Return
Reported income within the qualifying thresholds
Were not claimed as a dependent on another taxpayers return
Theres no need to apply to receive a refund check. Checks will be mailed out automatically to those who meet the above eligibility requirements.
What are the income thresholds, and how much will I receive?
Check amounts are being issued in the range of $150 to $400; amounts vary by tax filing status for the 2023 tax year and your 2023 New York Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), found on Form IT-201, line 33.
For single filers:
2023 AGI of $75,000 or less:
Refund amount of $200
2023 AGI of more than $75,000, but not more than $150,000:
Refund amount of $150
For married joint filers:
2023 AGI of $150,000 or less:
Refund amount of $400
2023 AGI of more than $150,000, but not more than $300,000:
Refund amount of $300
For married separate filers:
2023 AGI of $75,000 or less:
Refund amount of $200
2023 AGI of more than $75,000, but not more than $150,000:
Refund amount of $150
For head of household filers:
2023 AGI of $75,000 or less:
Refund amount of $200
2023 AGI of more than $75,000, but not more than $150,000:
Refund amount of $150
For qualifying surviving spouse filers:
2023 AGI of $150,000 or less:
Refund amount of $400
2023 AGI of more than $150,000, but not more than $300,000:
Refund amount of $300
How can I make sure I receive my check?
Due to the high volume of checks being processed, it may take time to receive your refund. If you’re eligible, your check will be mailed to the address associated with your most recently filed tax return.
If youve moved since filing your 2024 return, or you haven’t yet filed a return for tax year 2024, you can update your address with the New York Department of Taxation and Finance through your Individual Online Services Account. (If you dont have an Individual Online Services Account, you can create one.)
Watch out for scams
If someone contacts you about your refund check, it’s likely a scam. Hochul cautioned New Yorkers to be alert to scammers who are sending voice messages, text messages, emails, and direct mail to taxpayers in an attempt to defraud them.
New Yorkers do not have to do anything to receive an inflation refund check outside of meeting the eligibility requirements, Hochul said in a news release.
With scams targeting the state’s inflation refund initiative, let me be clear,” she continued. “The Tax Department and the IRS do not call or text individuals for personal information. My administration urges New Yorkers to remain vigilant and report these scams to the Tax Department to protect yourself from being a victim.”
Scams can be reported to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance.
Creating a standout résumé or cover letter is your first (and sometimes only) chance to make a strong impression with prospective employersto really sell yourself. But theres a caveat, HR experts say: dont sound desperate.
While were taught to tailor résumés for the job and really showcase accomplishments, experts argue theres such a thing as going overboard. Employers could find it off-putting. Or worse, they could think youre overrepresenting your credentials.
According to job search platform FlexJobs 2025 Job Search Trends Report, one in three professionals admitted to lying on a résumé or cover letteroften to appear as the “perfect fit” or to meet perceived expectations. Unfortunately, HR decision-makers can see through the fake hype, even if you have the most honest of intentions.
When a résumé feels too polished or too perfect, it can raise red flags for recruiters, leading them to question authenticity rather than recognize potential, says Jill Chapman, who leads the strategy and execution of companywide talent initiatives at HR services company Insperity. The best résumés balance impact with honesty.
But in a competitive job market like this one, in which many are out of work for months and bills are piling up, it can be tempting to ratchet up the sensationalization or fudge the facts. Heres how to craft a winning application: one that keeps you honest and authentic, even when youre desperate to be hired.
Use confident, credible language
Its expected that youll tout your accomplishments. But sometimes, the words you use to play up your experience can actually weaken your message. The goal: avoid sounding overly self-promotional, says Chapman. When writing a résumé, use language that demonstrates self-awareness, clarity, and purpose, she suggests.
One way to highlight contributions honestly is to avoid claiming sole credit for team accomplishments.
Instead of single-handedly led, maybe try played a key role in, says Chapman.
Also, steer clear of adding fluffy language for its own sake, or including unrelated experience. Listing responsibilities or accomplishments ad nauseum doesnt make you sound more impressive, it makes you sound more long-winded. Smart brevity is best, and a focused, relevant résumé beats a long one every time, notes Chapman.
Let your impact speak for you
Use results-driven language: metrics, growth, and outcomes.: Led a marketing campaign that increased enrollment by 20% is far more effective than marketing expert, says Traci Wilk, chief people officer at The Learning Experience, a Florida-based early education company in Florida.
Cut out the clutter
Desperation often shows up as clutter, cites Keith Spencer, a Pennsylvania-based career expert at Resume Now, an AI resume-building company. When you list every job you’ve ever had, no matter how unrelated, it feels like you’re throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks, he says.
Aim to tailor your résumé to the job you want, highlighting the most aligned experience. Itll come off as more authentic, and less desperate.
Highlight impact, not just effort
In job applications, focus on what you accomplished rather than how badly you want it, says Spencer. Metrics, results, and outcomes speak louder than adjectives, he says. When you show what you delivered, employers see your value.
Temper your excitement
Hiring managers are looking to recruit candidates who are both excited about the opportunity and confident. But be mindful about allowing excitement to become desperation.
Desperation can signal insecurity, lack of self-awareness, or even a lack of selectivity in what roles youre targeting, explains Wilk. She says HR managers can see desperation in phrases such as open to all opportunities or give me a chance to prove myself. Your messaging can also lower your credibility when you use overly dramatic language like, Im the missing piece your company needs.
These kinds of statements feel more like a plea than a pitch, and that could be a red flag for me, Wilk emphasizes. At the end of the day, it can be easy to feel like you need to do whatever it takes to land on your next life raft. But sometimes, its better not to sound desperate . . . even if you really are.
If you handle hiring, generic AI-generated cover letters are probably a familiar foe by now. Nearly two-thirds of job seekers are using AI to help craft their applications.
Its understandable. In a world where some job seekers are having to send up to 50 applications to land a role, tools like ChatGPT enable them to cast their net wide and increase their chances.
But this spray-and-pray approach to job hunting is a headache for hiring managers. Its driving the volume of applications up and the quality down, making it harder to spot great candidates.
The natural knee-jerk reaction from HR is to start playing a game of I spy AI. If we can just root out the automated applications, we can keep it fair and find the genuine players, right?
The problem is that this approach can give employers a false sense of security. Hiring teams assume that deploying AI detection tools means theyve solved the problem, and it stops them from digging deeper.
Robust AI detection tools have a role to play in certain situations; and the tech that powers them is rapidly improving. But they should be just one tool, not the only tool, in hiring managers toolkits.
If we want to hire the best humans, we need a deeper fix. We need to evolve our hiring processes, and this starts by removing the elements of the hiring process that AI can easily automate.
CVs and cover letters are the worst offenders, and should have been scrapped long before the advent of ChatGPT. Research shows that the information they present, like names, pronouns, and career gaps, tells us very little about a candidates aptitude or skill. What they can do is trigger unconscious bias around what good looks like. AI CV screeners carry the same risks: Unless trained on ethical datasets, they can perpetuate historical inequalities.
One solution is to switch up this process, introducing new ways to screen and assess candidates by objectively testing for role-relevant skills.
A skills-based hiring process, which uses skills tests such as work samples and cognitive ability assessments, demands deeper engagement from candidates. This means that unless specifically designed to evaluate AI skills (which they can be), they tend to be harder for AI to game.
Theyre also far better at predicting an applicants future performance than proxies on CVs, and can help tackle the application volume problem: The extra engagement that skills tests require is the antithesis of the spray and pray approach. It acts as a filter, with only those who feel invested in the role going on to apply.
An honest, crystal-clear employer brand does something similar. It enables employers to attract fewer, but better-suited candidates. So, employers should ask themselves: Is it currently clear to candidates what you represent, how the team is structured and what benefits you offer? Do job seekers know whether your company is office based, hybrid, or remote? Being transparent on your company website, social media, and job adverts about the whole packageincluding salary expectationscan help narrow your candidate pool to applicants who want what the company offers.
HR managers should also consider how else they can leverage AI to their advantage. There are plenty of ways it can support hiring teams beyond detecting candidates’ AI usage; for example, to help with accurate candidate scoring, automate interview scheduling, and analyse data to predict future job performance. Just be careful that the models youre using, particularly to screen candidates, arent trained on a singular image of success.
Above all, its important to remember that even if we can catch AI-wielding applicants, are we sure using AI is a skill we want to penalise? Im not advocating for generic AI slop applications. But since approximately 30% of work activities could be automated as early as 2030, taking a leaf out of Anthropic’s book and testing applicants’ AI literacy as part of the hiring process for relevant roles is savvy.
We may not be able to eliminate poor-quality AI applications altogether, but acting like detection is the sole solution to our broken hiring processes is a false economy. It risks blinding us to the deeper work that needs to be done to get hiring right. By establishing stronger, more targeted pipelines and robust assessment practices, hiring teams will be able to find and attract top talent with the skills needed to thrive in the modern world of work.
Small talk can be awkward and boring. Its also a requisite skill to learn to participate as a socially adept person in societyas well as the workplace. But mustering So, where are you going for lunch? to that one guy from sales in the elevator might be a no-go for the workforces youngest members.
In a discussion sparked by a viral TikTok, many have dubbed the ritualistic nicety as cringeGen Zs go-to dig for anything perceived as try-hard or uncool. In the TikTok skit (with nearly 3 million views), the user acts out a conversation in which every attempt at small talk is brusquely shut down, mixed with plenty of drawn-out umms and eye rolls.
“POV: You’re trying to talk to people in 2025, the text over the video reads. Off camera, a chipper voice asks the woman on-screen: So what do you do for work? Ummmm . . . stuff, she replies.
The skit struck a chord.
Some users related to the reluctance to shoot the breeze. This is what they meant by the Gen Z stare, guys. We do in fact do this, one commented. Another chimed in: WRAP IT UP. And another, simply: I hate everyone.
But not all were on board with the message. In fact, most people in the comments expressed frustration with the woman on-screen; even other Gen Zers in the comments said this behavior among their peers is odd.
Why do they always think basic human interaction is so embarrassing. They’re the ones making it embarrassing, one user commented. Me, an old Gen Z, talking to young Gen Z, wrote another. Another asked: Is talking cringe now?
On the subreddit r/TikTokCringe, more people confirmed witnessing this behavior in their coworkers, employees, or students. I am an assistant teacher at a college, and I can confirm half of the students I have that are 18-20 are like this to talk to, one wrote.
Some speculated if the bad small talk skills are a growing-up-during-COVID symptom, a growing-up-on-the-internet symptom, a state-of-the-world symptom, or a combination of all of the above.
It’s a nonchalant epidemic, one Reddit user wrote. They can’t seem like they enjoy anything or have a personality because that would be cringe. Another said: An entire generation socially crippled with debilitating fear of ‘cringe.
Older generations taking umbrage with the youth of today is nothing new. In fact, it is a rite of passage. But this idea of Gen Z having complicated feelings about small talk has started to trend, from talk shows to news sites.
Ocean Vuong, the poet and essayist, recently declared that cringe culture is holding young people back from enjoying life and pursuing their goals, whether that be in their careers or personal lives.
In January, a survey of 2,000 working adults in the U.K. found that 40% of Gen Z struggle with light conversation at work, preferring to communicate online. This suggests that Gen Zs aversion to small talk goes beyond just thinking its inauthentic or lame.
The consequences of this fearparticularly in the workplace, which rewards visibility, risk-taking, and speaking upare clear. A 2024 survey found that Gen Z workers are at higher risk of being fired, and 1 in 6 employers are reportedly hesitant to hire Gen Zers. The survey cites poor soft skills, like communicationpossibly a result of isolation during the pandemicas being one of the main issues.
Plus, young people who have grown up watching others scrutinized and torn apart online for putting themselves out there have been conditioned to avoid the appearance of earnestness or efforteven for an act as simple as conversing with a coworker . . . which they feel can come across as “cringe.”But as every millennial well knows: To be cringe is to be free.
A decade ago, fresh out of business school, I joined a tech company in my first business development role in Singapore. Within the first quarter, I had closed two quarters worth of sales targets. But the environment was abusive. The CEO yelled regularly. Personal and sexist remarks were common, on body, appearance, even what women ate or wore.
It was triggering. Having lived through a previous abusive situation, I found myself in constant flight-or-freeze mode. Every time I saw an email from my manager, my heart raced. I struggled to breathe in meetings. Despite my outward success, internally I was unraveling. Finally, I quit.
That experience changed the course of my career. For the next 10 years, I delved deep into how trauma shows up in people, teams, and organizations and eventually founded a global social enterprise focused on resilience-centered leadership. Because the truth is, people dont leave jobs, they leave managers and cultures that make thriving impossible.
There is a significant cost to this kind of emotional shutdown. Gallup estimates actively disengaged employees cost U.S. companies up to $8.8 trillion each year. A 2022 McKinsey Health Institute report found that one in four employees worldwide experience burnout symptoms, with women and younger workers disproportionately affected. These are signals that our leadership training is incomplete.
While HR manuals continue to discuss things like performance management, whats often missed is the fact that people will escape environments where emotional strain is ignored or misunderstood. At the center of this gap is something we rarely train for: trauma literacy.
What is Trauma Literacy?
Trauma literacy is the ability to recognize that unhealed past experiences show up in daily behavior and to respond in ways that foster safety and resilience. You dont need to know someones history to be mindful of trauma’s effects. You just need to assume that trauma exists, and that it may be shaping how people show up at work.
When employees withdrawsilent in meetings, missing deadlines, avoiding collaborationmanagers often misinterpret the signs. Silence gets labeled as disinterest; anxiety looks like incompetence; over-functioning is praised until collapse. In reality, these are often trauma responses: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Without trauma literacy, managers miss the signals until its too late.
Why Managers Need Trauma Literacy
Managers are trained in financial strategy, forecasting, and performance management. But few are trained to recognize the external manifestations of what I felt back in that tech office: the racing heart, the sense of dread, and the silent withdrawal.
Most workers are taught to push harder instead of pausing to hold space for emotions. Emotions are messy, and it often feels safer to stick with technical tasks and leave feelings unaddressed.
But the results of pushing through that discomfort speak for themselves: A Harvard Business Review study found that employees who feel psychologically safe show a 76% increase in engagement, a 50% increase in retention, and a 67% increase in referrals. Trauma literacy, in other words, is not extraits essential.
Three Trauma-Informed Practices for Managers
As a Harvard-trained researcher working with leaders across six countries, Ive seen how even small shifts make a difference. Teams once struggling with silence or high turnover begin to build trust and resilience. Here are three trauma-informed practices any manager can implement:
1. Treat Emotions as Real-Time Data
Start meetings with an honest check-in: not a general Hows everyone doing? but How are you truly? Emotions offer real-time information about morale, energy, and team capacity.
Of course, people wont open up just because you ask a deeper question. You need to create the conditions where it feels safe to answer honestly. That starts with you. As a manager, model emotional transparency in small, low-risk ways. Say things like, Im feeling a bit scattered today, but Im here, or I had a tough morning, so I might be quieter than usual. This signals that real emotions, not just polished updates, are welcome.
Once someone shares something vulnerable, dont rush to fix it or dismiss it. Just reflect it back: Thanks for sharing that, I hear you, or That makes a lot of sense. From there, you might ask, Is there anything you need from me today? or Would it help to adjust your workload this week?
You dont need to solve every emotional need. One of the pillars of being trauma-literate is holding space with boundaries. Trauma literacy isnt about absorbing everyones pain. In fact, its the opposite: Effective leadership requires responding to emotions without becoming consumed by them. When boundaries are missing, managers often swing to extremes, either getting too entangled in others emotions or avoiding them altogether. Im advocating for the middle: responding with care, with boundaries. This is what builds trust, morale, and sustainable leadership.
2. Adopt a Coaching Mindset
Replace judgment with curiosity. Instead of Whats wrong with you?! when an employee misses the mark ask Whats happening for you right now? or How could I better support you in succeeding?
The 5W1H method is another great way to explore challenging moments. It stands for six simple but powerful questions to ask: what, why, when, where, who, and how. For example, What part of this task felt unclear? or When did you start feeling stuck? These open-ended prompts help team members reflect and problem solve without feeling interrogated or blamed and avoids shutdown. This shift in tone also helps managers better understand the root of challenges before jumping to conclusions.
3. Embed Emotional Competence Into Systems
Trauma literacy isnt a one-off conversation; its a culture. Build in rituals for reflection, adjust workloads proactively, and allocate time and resources toward psychological safety. When resilience is designed into structures, managers dont have to rely on intuition alone.
That might mean adding five-minute emotion check-outs at the end of meetings, especially after intense sprints, high-stakes conversations, or moments of team transition, where each person shares how theyre leaving (energized, drained, hopeful, unsure, etc). As a manager, you treat that as data, just like you would performance metrics. If multiple people are feeling anxious or exhausted, thats a signal to adjust pace, revisit priorities, or check in one-on-one.
Some teams Ive worked with also use a One thing I didnt say earlier . . . round to close tough conversations or retrospectives. It gives people space to share truthfully without pressure. Others run short, anonymous pulse surveys with questions like, Do you feel safe being honest at work? and then actually discuss the responses as a team.
But rituals like this only work when people feel safe participating. Tht safety is shaped by what others observe. If one person opens up and is ignored, dismissed, or penalized, everyone else learns to stay silent. But if theyre thanked, respected, and supported, it opens the door for others to be honest too.
Managers who develop this capacity will build workplaces defined by creativity, trust, and resilience. As AI takes over technical tasks, it wont be spreadsheets or strategy that set leaders apart, but their ability to create psychological safety and lead with emotional literacy.
I should go to the dentist more often. I really ought to join a gym. I wish I had partied less in college and bought more Apple stock. Had I ditched the pint of Guinness and invested in Apple in the early 2000s, each pint worth of stock would now be valued at $3,500. Over those college years, I would have accumulated enough stock to buy a brownstone on New Yorks pricey Upper West Side. All cash.
Looking back, I probably still would have enjoyed that cold brew with my friends. A pint of Guinness felt just right in the moment. 2025 was far off. As the world gathered for the United Nations General Assembly to discuss climate change, among other global challenges, heres a contrarian take on whats just right for this moment.
The climate movement, by and large, embraced the mantra of reduce, reuse, recycle and banked on enough usvoters, policy makers, businesses, consumerscaring deeply about the future to change our daily habits to curb global warming. Its not happening. Carbon emissions hit a fresh record last year, according to EU data.
WE WANT IT NOW
Lets pivot. Reducing doesn’t deliver a dopamine hit, nor does thinking about tomorrow’s perils. Who genuinely wants less when they can have more? Who truly saves that rich chocolate cake for another day when it looks perfectly tasty right now? Lets get more of what we want today with the cash and the resources we have.
When I purchase a refurbished iPhone 13 for my daughter at a fraction of the cost of that new iPhone 17 that just launched, I am not reducing my consumption, I get more. She has the phone she (kinda) wants and I keep a few hundred dollars in my pocket. I can use that to buy her Robux, or invest it in her college fund. I can even afford a second iPhone for her brother, who will inevitably complain that her iPhone 13 camera is so much better than his iPhone 12.
American consumers are drowning in record debt, reports from the Fed show. Levels exceed $18 trillion, with average interest rates on credit cards soaring to 21%, and typical cash advances running even higher. Eleven cents for every dollar in after-tax income now pays off debt and interest. For low- and moderate-income households, its even more. A quarter of buy now, pay later users reported a late payment last year. Transunion data shows delinquencies on car loans now surpass 2009 levels, while a PYMNTS Intelligence study found that two-thirds of American households live paycheck to paycheck.
A perfect storm of rising prices, high interest rates, growing consumer debt, and tariff uncertainty creates ripe conditions to re-imagine our daily spending choices.
EMISSIONS AND BUDGETS GO TOGETHER
To date, one of the biggest winners of this financial squeeze are debt providers stepping in as consumers scramble to afford essentials. Klarna reported 24% gross merchandise value growth year-over-year for June and BNPL is now available virtually everywhere for virtually anything, from groceries to fast food. Affirm raked in $1.2 billion from interest payments in the year ending June, up 76%.
Facing the near-total reversal of hard-won policies designed to curb emissions, especially in the U.S, many in the climate movement have yet to capitalize on this opportunity hiding in plain sight: rewiring today’s spending to benefit consumers wallets and the planet. When every dollar counts, the choices that stretch our paychecks further often align perfectly with the ones that reduce our environmental footprint. We don’t need to care about 2050 to make smarter decisions today.
I dont need to worry about my emissions profile to enjoy driving my ID.4 electric vehicle. Its got more horsepower than a Mustang or a Camaro. Its far cheaper to run. I avoid the queues at the gas station and charge for free at work. It parks itself. My kids no longer complain that the car is too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer.
Theres no difference in the quality of electricity that comes out of my sockets, except that it is generated by community solar, and I pay less for it. Taking the Metro from the airport to our offices in DC is frequently faster, more relaxing, and often less than a tenth of the rideshare price.
OFFER MORE
I am not alone. PBS reports that thrifting has exploded in the U.S. amidst high prices for fashion and tech. Reuters analysis showed that a popular basket of apparel at fast fashion leader Shein increased 123% between April and July this year.
Too Good To Go, which connects users with businesses that have surplus food, is now one of the top apps in the food delivery category, up there with Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub. Its surprise baskets, filled with unsold items like baked goods, takeout meals, or groceries, offer consumers great value at half price or less from Whole Foods, Cava, and other popular chains.
The climate movement spent decades asking people to sacrifice today for tomorrow. Lets flip the switch. Give people more todaymore money in their pockets, more value from their purchases, more control over their finances. Lets seize this moment to innovate and drive efficiencies that make daily essentials more affordable, without relying on costly loans. Lets shutter the failing business of offering people less and double down on optimizing what we have. Weve gotten good at it. This is our time.
For my family, the smartest financial movesbuying refurbished, driving electric, rescuing surplus foodhappen to be sustainable ones. We’re not saving the planet because we suddenly started caring more about the future. We’re doing it because we figured out how to make the most of what we have to live better today.
The greenest choice is often the one that keeps you out of the red.
Jean-Louis Warnholz is the cofounder and CEO of Future.
Berkshire Hathaway is buying Occidental Petroleum’s chemical division for $9.7 billion in what may be the last big acquisition involving the consummate dealmaker, Warren Buffett.
Buffett wasnt mentioned anywhere in materials released by Berkshire Hathaway discussing the deal Thursday, potentially signaling a passing of the torch to Vice Chair Greg Abel, to whom Buffet will hand the CEO title in January.
Buffett will remain chairman at Berkshire and will still be involved in deciding how to spend the conglomerates colossal pile of more than $344 billion in cash.
Berkshires cash reserves have been growing for years because Buffett has been unable to find any major acquisitions at attractive prices since completing the $11.6 billion acquisition of Alleghany Insurance in 2022. Prices for big acquisitions have been driven higher in recent years by the entry of more hedge funds in the market.
OxyChem makes things like chlorine for water treatment, vinyl chloride for plastics, and calcium chloride thats used to treat icy roads, along with an assortment of other chemicals. It will fit nicely within Berkshire alongside Lubrizol, a chemical company Buffett bought in 2011 for $9 billion.
Berkshire is acquiring a robust portfolio of operating assets, supported by an accomplished team, Abel said in a prepared statement. We look forward to welcoming OxyChem as an operating subsidiary within Berkshire.”
OxyChem generated $213 million in pretax earnings for Occidental in the second quarter, though that is down from last year, when it generated nearly $300 million for the company. This year, Occidental has been selling off some of its assets in the Permian Basin to generate $950 million to pay down debt. Since it completed the CrownRock acquisition in December 2023, Occidental has sold off roughly $4 billion worth of assets to help it pay down $7.5 billion in debt. This OxyChem deal will accelerate that.
Occidental expects to use $6.5 billion of proceeds from the Berkshire deal to lower debt and achieve the target of principal debt below $15 billion set following the announcement of its CrownRock acquisition.
Berkshire held more than 28% of Occidentals stock and had warrants to buy another 83,911,942.38 shares in the major oil and gas producer for $59.58 per share before this deal. And Berkshire held about $8.5 billion worth of preferred Occidental shares that it picked up in 2019, when it helped finance the oil producers purchase of Anadarko that Occidental has been paying 8% dividends on every year.
Buffett had previously told Berkshire investors that he wouldnt sell off the Occidental stake and he has been periodically buying more shares, but he also told shareholders in 2023 that he had no plans to buy all of Occidental.
Berkshire owns an eclectic assortment of dozens of companies, including Geico and several other insurers, BNSF Railway, a portfolio of major utilities, and some well-known brands like Dairy Queen and Sees Candy. Buffett has built up the conglomerate over the past 60 years. In addition to owning companies outright, Berkshire holds stocks worth more than $250 billion, including large stakes in Apple, Coca-Cola, Bank of America, and American Express.
The OxyChem deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.
By Josh Funk, AP business writer
AP Business Writer Michelle Chapman contributed to this report.
