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Inc.com columnist Alison Green answers questions about workplace and management issueseverything from how to deal with a micromanaging boss to how to talk to someone on your team about body odor. Heres a roundup of answers to three questions from readers. 1. Ive fired my new employee before I recently took a new job in my same industry and city. In my new role, Ill have a team of eight reporting to me in various capacities and functions. During the interview process, I got a brief read-out on the team and a high-level talent assessment. Nothing stood out as an issue. On my first day, I met the team reporting to me. One of the people on the team is someone who worked for me before and whom I terminated for cause because of performance at my previous company. What do I communicate to my management team or HR about this situation? It feels weird to say nothing because ultimately this could be a management issueIm sure this employee doesnt feel great about the situation. On the other hand, I dont want to risk harming this persons reputation at this company if they are doing a good job so far. This person is pretty new here too, and my impression is they are either doing a better job in this role or management has not yet identified an issue with their performance. Green responds: Have you talked to the employee yet? Thats important because they are undoubtedly really uncomfortable, if not outright panicking. Ideally, youd tell them that youre happy to be working with them again, youve heard good things about the work theyve been doing (if thats true), and while you know your last time working together didnt go the way either of you wanted, this is a different situation and, as far youre concerned, both of you are starting fresh. I do think youre right that you need to mention it to your management team or HR. Its unfortunate, because this person is entitled to a fresh start without the firing following them to a different job, but its relevant not as a predictor of the persons work now, but because it could affect the dynamic between the two of you, and either of you could struggle not to interpret things through that old lens. You can keep it very briefI managed Jane at a previous company, and unfortunately the fit wasnt right and we ended up parting ways. Im very willing to start fresh with her and Im hopeful the role shes in could be a great match, but I wanted to flag the prior work relationship. Also, if its been a while since you worked together, stress that, too. 2. Why do people respond to emails with a phone call? Whats the etiquette on responding to people youve emailed who respond with a phone call? I understand there are times when a phone call is necessary. Ive been getting dozens of phone calls (after sending out a ton of emails on a certain work issue) and they all ask me to call them back. Im just frustrated because if I email someone, its because I dont want to talk on the phone. And the question is usually easily answered via email. Whats the best way to respond? Green responds: I get being annoyed, but its not always up to youand sometimes it makes sense. Sometimes people will call you back because they thinkoften rightlythat itll be faster. They might not be sure about the meaning of your email and they want to clarify before responding, and figure theyll just jump on the phone rather than going back and forth. Or their answer might take a long time to write out but be easier to deliver over the phone. Or they just prefer the phone, just as you prefer email. And not everyone feels they communicate as well in writing as they do out loud. For an email fan, this can be annoying. When you like email, it feels efficient and convenient and respectful of everyones time. Plus, sometimes its helpful to have a written record of what was discussed as a reference you can look back at later if needed. And if youre having an especially busy day or suspect a call will be 30 minutes when it should be five, it might be fine to let the call go to voicemail, and then email later with, Got your voicemail. Im in back-to-back meetings and will be hard to reach todayany chance email will work? Maybe it will, and theyll tell you if it wont. But save that for when you really need itbecause while you get to have your preferences, they get to have theirs, too. 3. Setting boundaries on requests for help from your significant others network I am engaged to a wonderful person. We both work in the same field, though for different organizations. We are working to create healthy boundaries between our personal and professional lives and it is important to both of us that we are able to pursue careers independently. My organization is bigger and engages in some grant-making activities. A coworker of my fiancés recently reached out to me for more information on how their organization could acquire funding. I directed her to publicly available resources, but she responded seeking a personal introduction to our grant officer. This made me uncomfortable; Im happy to connect anyone who asks to see public information, but it felt like she was leveraging my personal relationship to gain access. I know the importnce of networking and personal connections, but I have no professional relationship with this person and weve met only once in passing. My fiancé and I discussed the need for a policy on how to deal with these kinds of inquiries as we see this being a recurring issue as we move forward in our careers. I would love advice on how to navigate these kinds of requests. Green responds: The way you handled it sounds just fine. When she asked for an introduction to the grant officer, you could have said, Oh, we get such a high volume of interest in funding that we ask all grant applicants to follow the process listed on our website. And if she still pushed: Im sorry I cant help. Were really rigorous about asking everyone to use the process on our website so that everyone is treated the same. Thanks for understanding! In other words, not so different from how youd probably handle it if your fiancé werent in the picture. Explain what the person should do, and then reiterate that if necessary. Be warm and friendly, but hold firm on what you are and arent willing or able to do. My answer would be different if the person had been requesting something different. If she were asking for something like an informal chat about moving into your fieldas opposed to this kind of special treatmentId encourage you to consider that, like you presumably would consider other similar requests that came through a mutual contact. Want to submit a question of your own? Send it to alison@askamanager.org. Alison Green This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
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Reducing the visibility of polarizing content in social media feeds can measurably lower partisan animosity. To come up with this finding, my colleagues and I developed a method that let us alter the ranking of peoples feeds, previously something only the social media companies could do. Re-ranking social media feeds to reduce exposure to posts expressing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity affected peoples emotions and their views of people with opposing political views. Im a computer scientist who studies social computing, artificial intelligence, and the web. Because only social media platforms can modify their algorithms, we developed and released an open-source web tool that allowed us to re-rank the feeds of consenting participants on X, formerly Twitter, in real time. Drawing on social science theory, we used a large language model to identify posts likely to polarize people, such as those advocating political violence or calling for the imprisonment of members of the opposing party. These posts were not removed; they were simply ranked lower, requiring users to scroll further to see them. This reduced the number of those posts users saw. We ran this experiment for 10 days in the weeks before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. We found that reducing exposure to polarizing content measurably improved participants feelings toward people from the opposing party and reduced their negative emotions while scrolling their feed. Importantly, these effects were similar across political affiliations, suggesting that the intervention benefits users regardless of their political party. This 60 Minutes segment covers how divisive social media posts get more traction than neutral posts. Why it matters A common misconception is that people must choose between two extremes: engagement-based algorithms or purely chronological feeds. In reality, there is a wide spectrum of intermediate approaches depending on what they are optimized to do. Feed algorithms are typically optimized to capture your attention, and as a result, they have a significant impact on your attitudes, moods, and perceptions of others. For this reason, there is an urgent need for frameworks that enable independent researchers to test new approaches under realistic conditions. Our work offers a path forward, showing how researchers can study and prototype alternative algorithms at scale, and it demonstrates that, thanks to large language models, platforms finally have the technical means to detect polarizing content that can affect their users democratic attitudes. What other research is being done in this field Testing the impact of alternative feed algorithms on live platforms is difficult, and such studies have only recently increased in number. For instance, a recent collaboration between academics and Meta found that changing the algorithmic feed to a chronological one was not sufficient to show an impact on polarization. A related effort, the Prosocial Ranking Challenge led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, explores ranking alternatives across multiple platforms to promote beneficial social outcomes. At the same time, the progress in large language model development enables richer ways to model how people think, feel, and interact with others. We are seeing growing interest in giving users more control, allowing people to decide what principles should guide what they see in their feedsfor example, the Alexandria library of pluralistic values and the Bonsai feed reranking system. Social media platforms, including Bluesky and X, are heading this way, as well. Whats next This study represents our first step toward designing algorithms that are aware of their potential social impact. Many questions remain open. We plan to investigate the long-term effects of these interventions and test new ranking objectives to address other risks to online well-being, such as mental health and life satisfaction. Future work will explore how to balance multiple goals, such as cultural context, personal values, and user control, to create online spaces that better support healthy social and civic interaction. The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work. Tiziano Piccardi is an assistant professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The next big meeting on your calendar might not have any other attendeesit might just be you. A growing number of high-performing leaders, including managers at Google and other Fortune 100 companies, are carving out protected focus blocks and treating them like mission-critical meetings. With constant pings, shallow tasks, and back-to-back calls, this might be the only way to produce strategic, high-value work. Google and Microsoft have even rolled out Focus Time features that automatically block off calendars to protect deep work. Paige Donahue is a product marketing leader at Google who helps YouTube creators grow their communities and monetize their followings. She says shes started using the Focus Time feature inside Google Calendar to carve out protected blocks for deep work. Before, my day was really just a stream of constant meetings, and I think a lot of people can relate to that, she says. It was meeting after meeting, ping after ping, and I was finding that I didnt have a lot of time to do the deep work thats really important to move things forward. Now, she notes, its much easier to see forward momentum. [The focus time feature] is really helping me get in the groove and tackle projects . . . instead of getting bogged down by endless meetings. Deep work has become a job requirement While the idea of deep work isnt new, the urgency around it is. Leaders can no longer treat focus as a luxury. In todays reactive workplace, carving out uninterrupted time for thinking and creating has become a core leadership responsibility. And employees want this just as much as executives. According to a recent Twilio survey of over 1,200 UK workers, 47% said they prioritize distraction-free focus time, and 36% said theyd like their employers to formally schedule such quiet periods. This suggests that protecting focus isnt a personal quirkits a cultural shift waiting to happen. But its all too easy to let your week get sucked up by shallow work, the work that may appear urgent (such as last-minute requests and fire drills) but rarely move you towards the end-of-year KPIs that determine your bonus and future promotion potential. At Lifehack Method, where we coach executives and teams on productivity, we see this firsthand: when leaders skip focus time, teams flounder in shallow work. When they protect it, they model a culture of depth, clarity, and results. Every Friday, our clients practice a Weekly Planning ritual where they calendarize the entire week, ensuring strategic work has nonnegotiable slots before the week fills up with reactive tasks. Forget time management, start managing your attention The calendar is a useful tool, but the deeper shift is about what we choose to protect. As organizational psychologist Adam Grant points out, the old paradigm of time managementsqueezing as much as possible into the dayhas limits and can even be detrimental. The new frontier is attention management: the art of focusing on getting things done for the right reasons, in the right places, and at the right moments, as Grant defines it in a New York Times essay. When we coach leaders in our programs, we encourage them to embrace this mindset shift. The question isnt How do I fit this in? but Does this deserve my attention? That pivot can mean the difference between a week lost in shallow work and a week that produces breakthrough outcomes. Use your deep work blocks to empty your mind of those pesky urgent tasks and give yourself the gift of diving into your most leveraged activities. These are often not even on your to-do list, thats how little attention they tend to get! When a calendar block isnt enough, bring a buddy Of course, protecting time on a calendar doesnt always mean using it well. Getting forward momentum is tough when youre facing procrastination and anxiety about how to start. Thats where accountability comes in. Enter virtual coworking, a rising trend that pairs you with a partner online to ensure you show up and do the work. Many of our clients here at Lifehack Method rely heavily on coworking sessions as a force multiplier to speed through otherwise procrastinated tasks. Science backs this up. A 2024 study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that real-time, subtle feedback during lapses of attention helped participants regain focus. The researchers concluded that it may be more effective to intervene during low-focus moments than to simply enforce long, uninterrupted blocks. For high-stakes or creative work, this suggests that lightweight accountability systemslike coworking sessions or structured check-inscan serve as the feedback nudges that keep people in the zone. Virtual coworking platforms are seeing traction among enterprise employees. Taylor Jacobson is the Founder & CEO of Focusmate, the worlds No. 1 virtual coworking community. He shares that Fortune 500 Focusmate members currently average 31% more sessions than the average user, and 13% more time spent on the platform. Donahue shares that at work, she uses both virtual and in-person coworking to ensure she says on task. I am a big fan of coworking. I feel that it adds a layer of accountability and its just nice to sit around the campfire with other people who are in it as well. Its a great way to do deep focused work almost like a sprint. How to make focus time impactful Protecting focus blocks isnt just about willpower. It requires communication and culture change. Leaders who succeed tend to: Treat focus time like a sacred meeting. Dont reschedule unless its truly urgent. Communicate clearly. Let your team know when youre offline for focus and when youll be available again. Pair protection with accountability. Use tools like Focusmate, oras we do at Lifehack Methodstack focus time with rituals like our Winning the Week Method planning process, which makes deep work part of the weekly rhythm. Model the behavior. When managers visibly protect focus, employees feel empowered to do the same. Protect your focus to future-proof your job As tools evolve and workplace demands intensify, the rarest resource is no longer money, ideas, talent, or even time. Its unbroken attention. Leaders who defend it will drive innovation; those who dont risk drowning in noise. Focus time is not indulgent. Its the only way to do the kind of workcompanies actually pay leaders to do.
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