 |
|
|
|||||
Chances are youve had a bad boss at some point in your career. Research shows that up to 65% of employees would take a new boss over a pay raise, and roughly half of people who quit their jobs cite their manager as the main reason for leaving. Bad bosses are not just annoyances; theyre productivity drains, engagement killers, and mental health hazards. They create toxic cultures, stifle growth, and often drive the best people out while promoting dysfunction. So why do we keep ending up with them? Companies have long tried to solve the “bad boss” problem. They spend billions on leadership development programs, executive coaching, and increasingly, AI-powered feedback tools promising to “upgrade” managers. These efforts are not entirely futilesome leaders do improvebut the overall return on investment remains disappointing. Gallup data still shows that the majority of managers are ill-equipped to lead. Why? Because leadership, like character, is hard to changeand even harder to scale. But maybe weve been asking the wrong question all along. Instead of trying to fix bad bosses after the fact, why dont we focus on choosing better ones from the start? Just as we put considerable thought into selecting a romantic partnerconsidering compatibility, values, and long-term potentialwe should approach choosing a boss with similar care. After all, your boss will profoundly influence your well-being, career trajectory, and daily experience. Mistakes can happen, but they are often avoidable if we learn to recognize the right signals. Here are three evidence-based principles for picking the closest thing to a perfect boss, or lets just say a decent, good, beneficial boss . . . Forget charismaembrace boring competence Charisma is the dating-app profile picture of leadership: seductive, memorable, and often misleading. It dazzles in job interviews, town halls, and all-hands meetings. But over time, the same charm can morph into attention-seeking, volatility, and narcissism. Many of the most inept and destructive bosses Ive encountered (and studied) had an abundance of confidence and not nearly enough competence. They were high on style, low on substanceand their teams suffered for it. So how can you spot them? Watch for grandiosity (I transformed the whole department), name-dropping, and overconfidence in interviews. They often talk more about themselves than the team. They may even be entertaininguntil you’re the one cleaning up the mess after their impulsive decisions. Now contrast this with the “boring but effective” boss. Theyre calm, measured, and often underwhelming in first impressions. They may not blow you away in the interview, but they show deep knowledge of their domain. They talk about collective achievements, not personal triumphs. They ask questions, take notes, and actually listen. Competent bosses focus on execution, alignment, and people developmentnot just self-promotion. They might not get all the credit, but they usually deserve it. If charisma is what you want on day one, competence is what youll thank yourself for choosing on day 100. Find someone who will make you better The best bosses act more like coaches than commanders. They dont just assign tasksthey challenge, stretch, and support their people. As leadership expert and scholar Herminia Ibarra put it, modern leadership is less about giving answers and more about asking the right questions, enabling others to learn, and creating a space for people to grow. If your prospective boss cant describe how they develop their team, its a red flag. Here are a few questions you can ask in interviews or informal chats to gauge their orientation toward people development: Can you tell me about someone on your team whos grown significantly under your leadership? How do you help people identify and build on their strengths? What does success look like for someone in this role six months from now? Great bosses will answer with specific stories, not generic platitudes. Theyll talk about feedback, mentorship, stretch assignments, and talent reviews. Mediocre ones will deflect or talk mainly about output and control. A boss whos committed to your growth is worth their weight in stock options. Prioritize personality over raw talent We often assume that because someone is highly talented, they must be great to work for. But talent may have gotten them the jobnot kept them good at it. Their personality, however, will determine your everyday experience. Thats why personality should matter more to you than their résumé. What traits should you look for? Empathy, emotional intelligence (EQ), integrity, curiosity, humility, and self-awareness. These are the foundations of psychological safety, trust, and good judgmentall of which drive high-performing teams. Fortunately, you can assess many of these in a conversation: Empathy: Do they ask about your interests, listen actively, and respond to your cues? Integrity: Do they credit others, admit mistakes, and avoid overpromising? Curiosity: Do they ask insightful questions, or pretend to already know everything? Humility: Do they share what theyre still learning or areas theyre working on? Self-awareness: Do they acknowledge past feedback or their leadership style, do they know how they are seen by others? A talented boss may impress you in a presentation. A great personality will make every meeting more humanand every tough moment more bearable. In the end, personality is the key to predicting your boss in the future: we are what we repeatedly do, and if you can work out what makes your boss tick, you will be better at dealing with them in the future, even if you have to make an effort to adjust. The perfect boss may not existbut the right boss for you does. Choosing wisely can mean the difference between dreading Mondays and loving what you do. So dont just focus on salary, benefits, or brand names. Consider the person who will shape your day-to-day experience and your long-term growth. Remember: charisma fades, competence compounds. Find a boss who builds others, not just their own reputation. And never underestimate thepower of empathy, integrity, and humilitytheyre not soft skills, theyre superpowers. After all, your boss may not be your spouse, but youll probably spend more waking hours with them than almost anyone else. Choose accordingly. A boss isnt just a job titleits a lifestyle choice. Pick the wrong one, and youll spend your best years decoding passive-aggressive emails and starring in a workplace reality show where the villain wins every episodeand you’re the unpaid emotional labor.
Category:
E-Commerce
Getting dressed for work in the morning can be complicated. Gone are the days of the office dress code. While most of us are happy that our bosses no longer dictate that we wear collared shirts, heels, or shift dresses to work, this means the burden of figuring out what is appropriate now lies squarely on our shoulders. As corporate culture has become increasingly more relaxed, with denim often replacing trousers, finding the right balance between formal and casual can be tricky. If you show up to work in a three-piece suit, you might look like you don’t understand your company’s values. But if you wear your favorite baggy jeans, you might come off as unserious. And looking out of place can have negative consequences on your career. Citizens of Humanity, a denim label, and Argent, a workwear brand, are deeply familiar with this sartorial confusion. Both brands regularly field questions about how to put together an outfit that will allow someone to look polished but also creative and unpretentious. “This is not a trivial issue,” says Sali Christeson, Argent’s founder and CEO. “Our goal is to make sure that women show up to work feeling confident, so they can do good work.” The brands have joined forces to create a Citizens of Humanity x Argent collection of garments called “Good Work” that epitomizes the modern work wardrobe. Thanks to Citizens of Humanity’s expertise, it is full of denim pieces that are elevated and elegant, telegraphing professionalism. But taken as a whole, the capsule is meant to be versatile, helping the wearer transition from formal moments to casual ones, since work today often requires moving between diverse environments. “With these pieces, we’re trying to give women a formula for getting dressed for the many different parts of their work life, which could mean going from a board meeting to a creative brainstorm in a single day,” says Amy Williams, Citizens of Humanity’s CEO. The pieces in this collection offer a useful blueprint for how to style denim for the office today. [Photo: Argent x Citizens of Humanity] Consider The Cut and Color Jeans have become an office staple, but the key to finding the appropriate pair for a given occasion depends on the cut and rinse. If you’re anxious about appearing too casual, one good solution is to find jeans that are cut like traditional suiting trousers. For this collection, Citizens of Humanity developed a pair called the Beverly Trouser made from non-stretch denim that has an elegant drape and a wide leg silhouette. It comes in two shadesvery dark blue and whitethat also give them a more formal look, since they are reminiscent of traditional suiting. [Photo: Argent x Citizens of Humanity] But there are moments when you might deliberately want to look more relaxed. In Williams’s case, this might be when she’s working with her designers or creative teams, who tend to dress more casually. So Citizens of Humanity has included the Ayla jeans in this collection. These are baggier than the Beverly, with a roomy leg that can be cuffed to give them more structure or left to pool a little to give them a more laid-back look. To give the outfit a more polished look, Williams says you might wear them with, say, a button-down shirt or a waistcoat. (The Good Work capsule includes a black one.) [Photo: Argent x Citizens of Humanity] Consider Denim Dresses and Skirts One way to bring denim into office wear is to go beyond the jean altogether, and consider other kinds of garments. The Citizens of Humanity x Argent capsule includes the Farrow Denim Dress, which has a structured fit that accentuates the waist and buttons that go down the entire front. Another material, such as crepe, might make the outfit look more prim, but denim fabrication offers versatility. You could wear the dress with a blazer to the office, and wear it on its own for a more casual lunch or dinner. The Gwynn denim skirt is similarly versatile. It comes in a dark wash and reaches the calf, a length that is work appropriate. But it also has a stylish slit in the front, that also makes it easier to walk around in. The skirt can be easily dressed up or down. With a button-down, you could wear this to meet with a client; with a tank top, you could wear it on a casual Friday. [Photo: Argent x Citizens of Humanity] What About Denim Jackets and Shirts? If you’ve been used to wearing blazers to the office, but find that they’re increasingly feeling too formal, a good swap could be a denim jacket. For the Citizens of Humanity x Argent collection, the two brands developed the Abra Work Jacket, a silhouette that is in vogue. It comes in a dark indigo rinse, which is reminiscent of a traditional navy blazer. But the denim material and the contrast stitching makes it undeniably inspired by heavy-duty workwear. The jacket front also has staggered patch pockets, which transform it into a statement piece. And if you feel like your traditional Oxford button-down shirt makes you look too dressy, you might consider replacing it with a denim shirt. The Harris shirt in this collection is oversize, with a high low hemline. Williams points out that there are many ways to wear this piece. You can layer it over a tank top. You can pair it with trousers. Or, if you want to stand out, you could wear it with jeans to create a full denim look. [Photo: Argent x Citizens of Humanity] What if I want to be more dressy, but not too formal? The Citizens of Humanity x Argent capsule is designed to have an outfit for every occasion, including more formal ones. Here’s where Argent’s expertise comes in. For this collection, Argent reimagined one of its suits, comprised of its Chelsea blazer and Park trousers, in a denim blue linen. Both the material and the color give the suit a more breezy feel that allows you to blend seamlessly into relaxed or formal scenarios. Another way to dress up without looking overly starchy is to swap a blazer for a waistcoat. Argent designed a linen twill waistcoat in black that you can pair with matching black trousers or shorts. It comes with a matching blazer that can elevate the look, so you can wear the entire three-piece suit to a talk or a board meeting, then remove the blazer for date night.
Category:
E-Commerce
Last week, President Donald Trump sat for an interview with Time magazine to reflect on the first 100 days of his second term in the White House. Trump, as he tends to do when discussing himself, let the superlatives fly. I feel that weve had a very successful presidency in 100 days, he said. Weve had people writing it was the best first month, and best second month, and really the best third month. Although the fourth month has not yet concluded, I am confident I can guess how hell characterize it when the time comes. Normal people do not concur with his self-assessment, to put it gently. Trumps approval rating at the 100-day mark is the lowest of any newly elected president dating back to Dwight D. Eisenhower, who took office before the widespread availability of color television. More than half of voters say the country is headed in the wrong direction, which is generally not the sort of first impression that politicians aspire to make. Support for his trade war is hovering in the mid-30s, and that was before merchants began passing along the costs of tariffs to their baffled customers, who were suddenly getting hit with import fees that often cost more than the items in their carts. (Just in time for the shelves in big-box stores to start emptying out!) Even Trumps anti-immigrant agenda, traditionally a source of strength with his Republican base, is underwater these days: 53% of voters, including 61% of independents, disapprove of his handling of the issue, and almost half believe his deportations of undocumented people have gone too far. His penchant in recent weeks for illegally deporting U.S. citizens, too, including a toddler receiving cancer treatment, is unlikely to reverse this trend anytime soon. For any other president, numbers like these would be disastrous, and would prompt frantic hand-wringing about the continued viability of their policy agenda, to say nothing of their fitness to serve for 45 more months. But to date, the defining feature of Trumps second term has been his utter disinterest in what the polls, popular opinion, his advisers, fellow Republicans, and even the courts say about him. He seems to perceive his performance only through the distorted lens of a right-wing media ecosystem that amplifies voices that flatter him and filters out those that do not. The result is the most unabashedly venal presidency in recent memorythe beginning of a four-year victory lap during which Trump intends to enjoy the perks of the office to the fullest extent, whatever the consequences for everybody else. No one would mistake Trump as embodying the spirit of humble, selfless public service during his first term. But he has been even more cavalier about using the presidency to enrich himself this time around, and his hands-off approach to cryptocurrency in particular (on the campaign trail, he promised to make the U.S. the crypto capital of the planet) has been great for business. World Liberty Financial, a Trump family-controlled crypto venture, has done a brisk trade since the inauguration, pulling in more than half a billion dollars in sales in recent months. He has dangled the promise of dinner at the White House to juice interest in the $2.7 billion market for his eponymous memecoin, most of which is controlled by members of his inner circle. And he remains the single largest shareholder in the Trump Media & Technology Group, the share price of which jumped earlier this month after the company announced plans to expand intoyou guessed itcrypto-adjacent financial services products in the near future. Not all of Trumps income streams are quite so sophisticated; you can still buy an ostensibly hand-signed Trump Bible for $1,000, a price that does not include shipping. But his powers as president to manipulate markets and simultaneously dictate the governments regulatory agenda (or lack thereof) makes this source of his wealth especially valuable. Bloomberg estimates the combined paper gains of Trumps crypto projects at close to $1 billion, which is a pretty nice return on an asset class that he was deriding as a scam as recently as 2021. In previous decades, a president splitting his time between making money, playing golf, and persecuting his political adversaries would read about his unpopularity in the newspaper every day, and hear about it on the news every night. Back in 2017, when Trump routinely announced U.S. government policy while tweeting from the toilet, he was at least aware of which aspects of his agenda qualified as controversial with the public, because he could see real-time feedback from Democratic lawmakers and irate Krassenstein brothers alike. In 2025, however, there are no remaining institutions capable of checking Trumps apathy toward the plights of the people around him. The increasingly insular nature of conservative mediaTrump posts primarily on Truth Social, a platform built around his political movement, and occasionally on X, a cesspool of conspiracy theories curated by his wealthiest supportermakes it rare for him to even encounter meaningful criticism, let alone digest and respond to it. Meanwhile, his administration is reshaping the White House press corps, elevating sympathetic reporters whose idea of a difficult question is asking Trump whether Democratic politicians are merely wrong, or also treasonous. In his mind, legacy media outlets exist mostly to sue for billions of dollars anytime they have the temerity to report stories he doesnt like. The upshot of all this is that Trump effectively spends 24 hours a day in an information bubble f his own creation, surrounded by people who only tell him how great he is and what a great job hes doing. He views skeptics of all types, from immigrants asserting their constitutional rights to corporate executives begging him not to sink the economy, as voices he can safely ignore, if not enemies whom he has an electoral mandate to humiliate and defeat. Those first-term hour-by-hour sparring matches with opponents are far less common now, in part because Trump has the luxury of not knowing or caring what the haters are saying about him anymore. Perhaps the most unsettling lesson of Trumps first 100 days is that to the extent that he is willing to second-guess himself on anything, it is only when his financial interests are at stake. His decision in April to delay the planned implementation of most reciprocal tariffs is perhaps the most significant concession hes made on his campaign promise to tariff the hell out of insufficiently cooperative trading partners. But he did so not because the reciprocal tariffs would constitute a self-inflicted financial disaster that could cost working families an average of $2,100 per year, according to the Yale Budget Lab, but because news of the tariffs triggered a sell-off in the bond market, which he described as getting a little yippy. In a remarkable coincidence, the value of Trumps investments in bonds could be close to half a billion dollars, according to The New York Times. The potential implosion of ones own portfolio has a funny way of putting things in perspective. In his Time interview, Trump downplayed his concerns about volatility in the bond market, his earlier admissions to the contrary notwithstanding, and said that he didnt pause the tariffs for that reason. He then pivoted back to calling Joe Biden the most incompetent president in history, which is the same basic comms strategy my 4-year-old uses when I ask if her little brother is crying because she took his stuffed giraffe, and she responds by hiding it behind her back and asking me to read her a book. It is of course good that Trump, at least for the time being, backed off a proposal that prompted JPMorgan to raise its projected odds of a global recession from 40% to 60%. But even though Trumps financial interests in this case happened to align with those of everyone looking nervously at their retirement accounts, what is best for normal people will rarely be best for an elderly television personality obsessed with holding down a spot on the fringes of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Every decision Trump makes during his remaining time in office will be about doing what is best for himself and his friends, because his only interest in public service is and has always been about how much he can profit from it.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||