Focus on context cues to boost career development

After a 10-hour flight with the "fasten seatbelt" sign on the whole time, Suzanne Lucas, the founder of Improve Your HR, writes that she learned a leadership lesson in "crying wolf" as passengers ignored the sign and left their seats, even after the pilot reiterated the message. "When you tell your employees there's an emergency, but it's actually not one, it's harder to convince them when you have a real problem," Lucas notes.

Put it into practice: If you have policies and procedures, but there are no consequences for not following them, don't expect your teams to comply, Lucas writes. "When you state one thing, but all the signs point to a different direction, your employees will lose trust in you."

Leaders should learn how to read context cues to steer conversations, writes Julie Winkle Giulioni, especially around the topics of career development and growth. "Reading the room is also when a leader recognizes the nearly limitless context cues in the workplace that offer opportunities for organic career development," Giulioni writes.

Put it into practice: Leaders should ask questions about what contributed to successful projects -- or what gaps in skills led to unsuccessful projects. "Iterative conversations anchored in what's happening around them allow employees to layer awareness, insights and action more naturally," Giulioni writes.

Managers can handle the delicate task of giving employees negative feedback by first asking the team members to rate themselves, write David Rock and Chris Weller from the NeuroLeadership Institute, a technique that creates a sense of autonomy. "Feedback about someone's performance is sensitive, and the person can quickly feel out of control and judged in the conversation," they write.

Put it into practice: Negative feedback can improve performance when the employee doesn't feel threatened. "The feedback can't always be positive, but often the constructive or negative feedback conversations are the ones that lead to the most growth," they write.

New dietary social media trends of "oatzempic" and "ricezempic," which involve drinking a smoothie made with oats or rice, water, a squeeze of lime and a dash of cinnamon or other spice first thing in the morning, promise to have the same effect as taking a GLP-1 agonist like Ozempic. Registered dietitian nutritionist Emma Laing says no evidence supports those claims, adding: "In the long term, any restrictive fad diet likely cannot be sustained and increases the risk for malnutrition, metabolic rate slowing to conserve energy, depression, social isolation, or eating disorder."

Interactions with a dog can result in our brain waves aligning with our canine companion's, a well-known phenomenon between humans known as neural synchrony or interbrain coupling, researchers write in Advanced Science, noting that synchrony is highest when humans pet dogs and gaze into their eyes simultaneously compared with only one of those activities. "The stronger interbrain coupling explains, at least partially, why we humans enjoy the companionship of dogs," says Yong Zhang, one of the study's researchers.

One of the worst bosses I ever had believed in the "sandwich" method of feedback. He'd compliment me on something I did, then heavily criticize me for something else and end with, "Keep up the good work."

The effect of this kind of feedback was that every time he complimented me on something, I braced myself for the criticism I knew was coming. Honestly, most of the time I never heard what he was congratulating me for because I was too busy waiting for the other shoe to drop.

You can avoid this with your team by following the advice from David Rock and Chris Weller from the NeuroLeadership Institute. They recommend letting the employee talk first and give their thoughts about what they did well and what they might improve before you tell them what you think.

As they state, negative feedback is valuable for employees, but they have to be ready to hear it. "They have to be able to compare their undesired current actions with the more desirable future actions. When threat is low, employees are able to engage in this important mental process," they write.

I know my boss had some valuable advice to give me, but his approach always put me on the defensive. Put your team members at ease first, and they're more likely to hear and act on the advice you have for them. And they're more likely to believe that you care about them and want them to succeed.

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