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When I was a product marketing leader for a corporate regional bank, I found myself getting annoyed during an all-day strategy meeting. My frustration came from hearing the same voices, sharing the same old ideas. I wondered why other people, especially the women in the room, werent speaking up. I remember thinking, Well, you could be the one to speak up. I felt nerves jump in my throat and doubt sink heavily in my stomach. Who was I to speak up? I thought that others in the room were smarter than me since they had higher titles and more experience. Looking back now, I realize that I had a big problem, a Pedestal Problem. I silenced my ideas because I was intimidated by the HiPPO in the room, the highest-paid persons opinion. I had them on a pedestal, thinking they knew better than me, therefore there was no room for my ideas or expertise Since that day, I have seen this play out among thousands of leaders. One example is my client Melinda, an executive director who silenced her gut and trusted her CEOs judgment on hiring a new sales leader for the organization. One year in, after various missed sales targets and employee complaints, she realized her gut was right all along. AUTHORITY BIAS STIFLES INNOVATION A very human instinct to defer to the person who seems smarter can quickly become a structural issue within organizations. Psychologists call this authority bias, which leads us to accept information or instructions from perceived authority figures without critically evaluating the content. Pedestalling leaders can lead to dangerous outcomes, like Theranos and Ubers corporate scandals. Superhumanizing their founding CEOs, Elizabeth Holmes or Travis Kalanick, actually led to them being dehumanized. It created an allure of perfection that prevented employees from seeing and connecting to their leaders as real people. One study found that when employees strongly deferred to leaders’ authority (or viewed leaders as untouchable), they were more likely to go along with unethical behavior rather than speak up. This problem can also interrupt feedback loops that fuel brand identity snafus like the billboard ad for Match, which advertised a woman with freckles and the tagline, If you dont like your imperfections, someone else will. If someone spoke up before the ad went live, it may have prevented them from offending millions of people with freckles and the inevitable public apology. To pull down the pedestal and bring people together to the table as equals, its not about training our teams to present more confidently. Instead, leaders need to recognize the authority bias they carry, simply because of their position, title, or even their charisma. Here are three ways that leaders can foster genuine team connection, and unlock the ideas that keep organizations relevant. RECONNECT WITH YOUR CURIOSITY I have studied this pedestal problem for nearly a decade, and I still have to be careful not to fall into the trap myself. In the past, during the Q&A portion of workshops or speaking events, I would simply answer the questions presented to me. However, I realized that participants could put me on a pedestal, without stopping to consider that I often knew little about them or their situation. Now, when they ask me a question, I curiously respond with questions like, Whats been your current approach? or What options are you considering? Nearly every time they respond with a unique idea or insight that benefits the entire room, and they get a boost of confidence to trust their gut and try the idea. Transferring this to your everyday 1:1 meetings, how often are you simply answering questions from your team? What new ideas could be heard if you responded curiously, starting with the two questions above? DON’T BE THE EXPERT, FACILITATE THE EXPERTISE My client, Kara, a chief marketing officer, frequently complained that her team was too quiet during feedback and brainstorming meetings. Kara was a founding employee known for ideating a billion-dollar product in the organization. While she was burned out from carrying the creative load, her team always deferred to her judgment. I challenged Kara to see that her team had put her on a pedestal. I encouraged her to shift away from being the expert, and instead facilitate the expertise in the room. Kara knew shed hired great talent, and so she implemented some approaches to cultivate greater involvement. Before meetings, she invited quieter team members to share publicly in the meeting, she started rotating who led meeting agendas, and she started allowing for uncomfortable silences in meetings to benefit those who needed reflection or courage to speak up. In just one month, Kara already noticed a shift. Her load was reduced, new voices were emerging, and her team was energized because they now had ownership over the new marketing strategies they would be testing and implementing. EQUALIZE YOUR CONNECTION WITH OTHERS One f the biggest near-failures in my career came from assuming that because I had a good relationship with my team, the new training team members from the two banks we acquired would naturally align with our existing chemistry and processes. After several weeks of urging new team members to follow our long-standing training methods, and missing their feedback, one member invited me to pay a site visit to watch their training operation in action. I was humbled. They had several more creative training techniques and they were more efficient than us. This experience taught me that while I had relationships with my team, we werent on equal footing. To truly connect, I needed to get out of my office more and into their world. This is why CEOs of Uber and Starbucks frequently visit the frontline, to reestablish a more equal connection to team members that facilitates two-way feedback. When leaders connect with their teams as equals, they dismantle the pedestal that keeps honest feedback and innovation out of reach. CONNECT OTHERS TO THE FUTURE One of the best CEOs I worked under viewed the team as people who would cocreate the future with him, not simply execute his vision. I distinctly remember his self-awareness, because during town halls, he acknowledged that while he had a vision, he didnt know exactly how wed get there. In these town halls, he called out team members by name, recognizing that their unique perspectives were essential to making the vision successful. When leaders over-plan the future, they unintentionally send the message that theres no space for input. In my work, I have found that the most impactful leaders dont sell the how, they sell the what. He called others to focus their energy on how they could contribute to shared future goals instead of pointing their attention toward achieving his goals. To prevent smart people from quieting their ideas, which leave products undeveloped, policies outdated, status quos unchanged, and cultures mediocre, leaders hold the responsibility to pull the pedestal. Equalizing their connection with their teams creates a safer place for new voices to emerge because they feel seen, heard, and understood.
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E-Commerce
Last year, various surveys, including reliable indicators, have highlighted a significant decline in reading habits over the past decades. The most striking evidence is not simply that people read less, but that their capacity for deep reading is weakening. According to OECD data, the proportion of 15-year-olds who fail to reach minimum reading proficiency has now risen to nearly one in four across advanced economies, with sharp declines in tasks requiring inference, evaluation, and integration of information across texts. In the United States, NAEP scores show that average reading performance among 13-year-olds has fallen to its lowest level in decades, reversing long-standing gains. Laboratory studies mirror these trends: experiments comparing print and screen reading consistently find that readers of digital texts score 1030% lower on comprehension and recall, particularly for longer and conceptually demanding material. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} Eye-tracking and cognitive load research further indicates that frequent digital readers engage in more skimming, less rereading, and shallower semantic processing. Crucially, these effects are not confined to weaker readers. Even highly educated adults now report shorter attention spans for long-form text and greater mental fatigue when reading complex arguments, suggesting that the decline of reading reflects not a loss of literacy, but an erosion of the cognitive endurance and attentional discipline that deep reading uniquely develops. Not just children To make matters worse, various robust data indicators show that adults are spending less time reading, especially for pleasure. For instance: (1) A large time-use study analyzing diary data from over 236,000 Americans found that the share of adults who read for pleasure on an average day dropped from about 28% in 2003 to just 16% in 2023, a roughly 40% decline over two decades. (2) That same research showed a steady annual fall of about 3% per year in the prevalence of daily leisure reading among U.S. adults. (3) An earlier report by the World Economic Forum indicated average daily reading time in the U.S. declined from about 23 minutes per day in 2004 to around 16 minutes by 2019, even before the most recent decades drop. (4) In the U.S., fewer adults now report reading books for pleasure: about 48.5% of adults said they read at least one book in the past year in 2022, down from 54.6% in 2012. A real concern? Should this really concern us? Perhaps not. After all, reading is just one medium through which humans have ingested information and exercised their minds, including for deep thinking. For most of history, knowledge travelled orally rather than silently on the page. Ancient cultures relied on storytelling, poetry, and song to preserve and transmit complex ideas: Homers epics were memorized and performed long before they were written down; Greek philosophy unfolded through dialogue rather than textbooks; and entire moral, legal, and scientific traditions were passed across generations through ritualized speech, music, and debate. From this perspective, the book is a relatively recent cognitive technology, not an eternal prerequisite for intelligence (consider that Socrates and his fellow philosophers were concerned by the invention of writing, thinking it may atrophy memory). And today, once again, new media promise alternative routes to learning and thinking: immersive simulations, virtual and augmented reality, AI tutors, and even speculative neuro-technologies all claim to enhance understanding, creativity, or memory without requiring sustained reading at all. Perhaps these tools will indeed make us more knowledgeable or even smarter. Needless to say, not all reading is cognitively ennobling. Wading through a disposable airport romcom is unlikely to stretch the mind more than an unscripted, curious conversation with a stranger at a bar. The real question, then, is not whether reading is declining per se, but whether whatever replaces it can cultivate the same depth of attention, reflection, and intellectual effort that serious reading has historically demanded. Digital diversions To be sure, every person is different and even among those who are reading less, former reading time may be recycled or reutilized in many different ways. That said, there is a clear trend to devote more time and attention to the very technologies that have increasingly monopolized our focus over the past two decades. Time-use and media-consumption data strongly suggest that leisure reading has been displaced not by other cognitively demanding activities, but by screen-based media. In the United States, Bureau of Labor Statistics time-use surveys show that average daily reading for pleasure fell from about 23 minutes in the early 2000s to roughly 16 minutes by 2019, while time spent on digital devices and television increased steadily. Over the same period, social media use expanded rapidly: Pew Research Center reports that adult social media adoption rose from around 5% in 2005 to over 80%, with many users spending multiple hours per day on these platforms. Globally, Digital 2024 data indicate that adults now spend about 2.5 hours per day on social media and more than 6.5 hours per day consuming digital media overall, compared with a small and declining fraction of time devoted to reading books or long-form text. While time spent reading traditional text has declined, many adults are substituting other sustained listening activites that share some cognitive benefits of reading; for example, Edison Researchs Infinite Dial reports that the share of Americans ages 12 and older who listen to podcasts weekly has grown from about 11% in 2013 to over 60% in 2024, with average weekly listening around seven hours, suggesting deeper engagement than typical short-form scrolling. Audiobook consumption has also risen sharply: the Audiobook Publishers Association and APA Foundation data show that nearly 50% of American adults listened to an audiobook in the past year, with frequent listeners averaging more than 6 hours per week, offering another way to engage with complex narrative and informational content. These trends indicate that although reading declines are real, listening to long-form spoken content (whether through podcasts or audiobooks) is increasingly filling part of the gap, providing extended attention to ideas, storytelling, and analysis in ways that resemble some of readings cognitive and reflective benefits. Unique benefits And yet, cognitive and developmental psychology remind us of the distinctive benefits of traditional reading, especially when it comes to thoughtful immersion and deep processing of text. Decades of research converge on at least five lessons worth remembering. First, sustained reading strengthens attention and cognitive endurance, training the ability to concentrate for extended periods without external stimulation, a capacity that is closely linked to academic achievement and complex problem-solving. Second, reading supports deeper comprehension and critical thinking: compared with fragmented or audiovisual media, linear text promotes inferential reasoning, abstraction, and the integration of ideas across time. Third, regular reading expands vocabulary and conceptual knowledge, which in turn predicts reasoning ability (especially verbal and crystallized intelligence), learning speed, and even long-term occupational outcomes. Fourth, reading fiction in particular has been shown to enhance perspective-taking and social cognition, improving peoples ability to understand others emotions, intentions, and mental states. Finally, early and sustained exposure to reading plays a foundational role in brain development, literacy, and self-regulation, with long-lasting effects on educational attainment and cognitive resilience across the lifespan. None of this means that reading is the only route to thinking, or that newer media are inherently inferior, but it does suggest that some cognitive benefits are unusually hard to replicate without sustained engagement with text. And if you made it this far, thank you for reading this. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-16X9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/tcp-photo-syndey-1x1-2.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"Get more insights from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic","dek":"Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of organizational psychology at UCL and Columbia University, and the co-founder of DeeperSignals. He has authored 15 books and over 250 scientific articles on the psychology of talent, leadership, AI, and entrepreneurship. ","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/drtomas.com\/intro\/","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91424798,"imageMobileId":91424800,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
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E-Commerce
Foldable phones have spent years trying to justify themselves. Some were too fragile, others too bulky, and most felt like solutions in search of a problem. The Galaxy Z TriFold is Samsungs clearest attempt yet to answer a more reasonable question: Can one device replace the phone-tablet combo without becoming a chore to carry? Coming to the United States later this month, the TriFold folds twice, opens into a 10-inch screen, and closes back into a pocketable form. Its an assertive design, but not a novelty play. Samsung seems very aware that this kind of device only makes sense for a specific kind of user. [Photo: Emily Price] The double fold is the trick, but the software does the real work The headline feature is the dual hinge. Closed, the TriFold behaves like a premium smartphone. Open it fully, and it becomes a genuinely usable tablet-size workspace. That space matters. You can run three apps side by side, resize them, and keep them anchored even when calls or notifications interrupt. Samsungs task bar lets you jump back into complex layouts without rebuilding them, which is a small thing until youve lost your place mid-task one too many times. We had a chance to try the phone first hand at a Consumer Electronics Show (CES) preview. The first time you open the device, the folding mechanism, in particular, stands out. Fully open, you might not even notice youre holding a phone rather than a tablet. The three separate screens blend together seamlessly. Samsung has also added guardrails. The phone will warn you if youre folding it the wrong way when you go to put it awaywhich feels less like hand-holding and more like protecting an expensive mistake. Editing photos is where the bigger screen actually shows off The TriFolds size gives Samsungs photo tools room to breathe, especially its generative editing features. Blake Gaiser, head of smartphone product management, says the difference is immediately obvious once you start using them. We’re really well known for what we call generative editingbeing able to remove things from a photo, Gaiser told me during a demo this week. He took a photo that included a person, and then was able to select and remove that person from the photo in seconds. It understands everything that I want to pick out here, and I’m able to take all the pixels out of that. He points to something thats easy to miss on smaller screens: cleanup details. Not only did it take the person out, but it took their shadow out as well, he said. So now I can look at both side by side each other, and you can see the shadow that she had there is gone. Being able to zoom in on before-and-after images simultaneously sounds minor. But for people who actually edit photos regularly, its the difference between trusting the result and hoping for the best. [Photo: Emily Price] This is very much not meant for everyone The TriFold is not designed for everyone. Samsung isnt pretending otherwise. Gaiser is blunt about the intended audience. It is for your top productivity people, he says. That philosophy shows up most clearly in DeX (short for desktop experience), Samsungs desktop-style interface. On the TriFold, DeX treats the device like a full monitor. You can resize windows freely, stack them, snap them into place, and even create multiple desktops that remember their layouts. So if I’m consistently looking at news articles and Samsung apps because I’m working on a piece or whatever, I could set those up in their own desktop, Gaiser said. Even when I clear the memory and everything, it remembers that setup. Gaiser has been using the TriFold as part of his own daily setup, and not always as the primary device. The two key things that I’ve done with this personally, in the three months that I’ve had this device: I have just a portable stand that I put it on, wireless keyboard, mouse, use it like a PC, he said. Or in my hotel room, I had my PC and I had this set up as a second monitor. The TriFold supports wired and wireless display output, including 4K when wired, making it less of a stretch to imagine it replacing a second screen for travel or temporary setups. Built sturdier than it looks Triple-folding phones raise obvious durability questions. Gaiser acknowledges the complexity. Because we have two different hinges on here. You have two different pivot points, he said. The phone uses magnets to keep it shut, but also to give the third screen a gentle pop after you open the first, making it easier to lift. Samsung also leaned heavily into materials, using ceramic glass fiber, a titanium lattice, and carbon fiber reinforcements to protect the folding display. Gaiser was candid in comparing it with competitors. [Photo: Emily Price] Power without cutting corners Under the hood, the TriFold runs on a customized Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, includes a 200-megapixel camera, and uses a 5,600 milliamphour battery spread across its three panels. That complexity is invisible to the userwhich is the point. The phone lasts through a full day of heavy use and charges quickly enough not to feel precious. Samsung also worked with Adobe to create a subscription-based Lightroom-specific app that behaves like its desktop counterpart, reinforcing the idea that this device is meant for people who actually produce things on their phones. The phone will come with a free trial. How it stacks up against other foldables Huawei Mate XT Huawei was the first with the Mate XT, proving that trifold hardware was possible. Availability is limited, software support is complicated outside certain markets, and it feels more like a statement piece than an everyday device. Concept triple-folds from other brands Several manufacturers have shown trifold concepts at trade shows. Most trifold devices are still prototypes, and thats fine. Building one is hard. Making one that survives daily life, and the bumps that come with it, is even harder. Samsungs advantage isnt that it folded a phone twice. Its that its spent years figuring out hinges, software behavior, durability testing, and what users actually tolerate. The TriFold feels like the result of that learning curve rather than a shortcut. So who should even consider this? Samsungs own answer is narrow. Gaiser calls the target audience the top 1% heavy users. Productivity tools, multi-window users, your ultra-top users, he said. Its not for everyone. That honesty helps. The Galaxy Z TriFold isnt trying to convince casual users to upgrade. Its aimed squarely at people who already push their devices hard and want fewer things in their bag. Its not flawless, not cheap, and not subtle. But its also the clearest signal yet that foldables are moving out of the experimental phase and into something more practical, even if only for a small slice of users.
Category:
E-Commerce
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