How confident humility helps leaders excel Some of the best leaders exhibit a seemingly paradoxical mix of traits that Wharton professor Adam Grant refers to as confident humility. "Confident humility is being secure enough in your expertise and strengths to admit your ignorance and weaknesses," notes Grant, who emphasizes the need to develop a learning culture and be honest about knowledge gaps. Full Story: Knowledge@Wharton (12/6)
The most valuable connections for job seekers Relationships with acquaintances, rather than those with close friends and family, are the most valuable for finding and securing a new job, researchers who conducted a study on the topic say. The study, which consists of an analysis of LinkedIn data, also indicates that weak ties are especially important in industries that are friendly to remote work and that have rapidly-evolving technology, they write. Full Story: Harvard Business Review (tiered subscription model) (12/1)
How to stop overthinking everything Perfectionism can lead to stress and overthinking, which can lead to adverse consequences. Here are seven ways to conquer perfectionism and overthinking, including creating a checklist of tasks and making sure your environment is conducive to productive work. Full Story: InTheBlack (Australia) (12/1)
Hire Smart
4 strategies to build your talent pipeline Find the top talent you need in a tough job market by offering a simple application process, communicating clearly with top candidates and building relationships with them to create a pipeline for future openings, writes Pete Lamson, CEO of Employ. "With a looming recession, fewer workers will leave a job without securing another, creating an even smaller talent pool," Lamson writes. Full Story: SmartBrief/Leadership (12/6)
The Landscape
Surviving a recession hinges on these strategies During times of economic recession, companies that flatten their hierarchies, give more power to decentralized teams and can quickly redistribute their resources, including talent and money, to new opportunities are more likely to thrive, write Donald Sull and Charles Sull, co-founders of CultureX. "Rather than simply slashing costs, the objective should be to balance the short-term imperative to free resources with the opportunity to invest for long-term growth," they write. Full Story: MIT Sloan Management Review (tiered subscription model) (12/6)
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One of the most interesting linguistic mysteries is why curse words sound like curse words. The answer, according to a new study, is there tends to be an absence of something called "approximants," which are defined as "speech sounds ... formed by the passage of air between two articulators (such as the lips or tongue) which are close but not touching and that is usually classified as a consonant." Examples of approximants include the letters L, R and W. Of course, there are some exceptions, but for the most part, the phenomenon holds. Full Story: Inverse (12/6)
SmartBreak: Question of the Day
POLL QUESTION: Who was the last human to stand on the moon 50 years ago today? Check your answer and read about other space records that were achieved in this article.
