Common wisdom holds that to enhance well-being and reduce conflict and stress, you’ve got to ease up on work. Conversely, to have a significant impact on the world and be successful by prevailing societal standards, you’ve got to put work above pretty much everything else in your life.

This is zero-sum thinking, and it runs counter to what I have observed in three decades of teaching, practice, and research on the possibilities for achieving success in all areas of life. There are many truly successful people in our midst who have achieved greatness not by forsaking their families, communities, and private selves, but, rather, by embracing these parts of their lives. They have found creative ways to reduce conflict and replace it with a sense of harmony between work and the rest of life. Not only does this reduce stress and its discontents, it is the very source of the strength that enables their admirable accomplishments.

https://hbr.org/2016/10/great-performers-make-their-personal-lives-a-priority

Investments in traditional leadership development are often misguided and a waste of money.

It’s not that development itself isn’t important. In a Deloitte study of 7,000 organizations this year, 89% of executives rated “strengthening the leadership pipeline” an urgent issue. That’s up from 86% last year, and the trend makes sense. Organizations are continuously promoting people into management, and those new leaders struggle with the transition. To help them in their new roles, companies spend almost $14 billion a year on courses, books, videos, coaches, tests, and executive education programs — and such spending rose 10% last year.

But there’s little evidence that much of this works.

Here’s what we learned about companies that have strong leadership pipelines and strong financial performance…

https://hbr.org/2016/10/the-5-elements-of-a-strong-leadership-pipeline

There are many reasons for envy to manifest itself in the daily theatre of the workplace: Competing for scarce resources or limited budgets, and vying for important assignments, are commonplace situations that can trigger predictable envy; Coveting attributes and qualities a colleague has that another might lack is another understandable possibility in the frailty of human nature; Losing a promotion to someone better qualified can also be a trigger for envy. Many of these situations are normal occurrences and cannot be avoided. They are a part of our workplace scenarios and many human resources practitioners have, at one time or other, witnessed a manifestation of these situations.

But there is an overlooked trigger for envy that may very well be an insidious cause of much discontent and disruption in the workplace. It is the leader’s unwitting behavior towards select people in the organization.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_65.htm?utm_source=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=04Oct16#np

Rumours, if you haven’t been a victim of one, you may have participated in one.

The whispers when a colleague is fired. The looks of understanding when two co-workers routinely “stay late to catch up on paperwork” on the same evening. The emails back and forth guessing at which department will suffer the largest budget cuts.

It’s difficult not to become involved in gossip at work. After all, people like gossip and interesting bits of information: you only have to look at the number of celebrity-focused publications to realize that we have a huge appetite for discussing other people’s lives. At work, however, this type of interaction is harmful and costly. It wastes time, damages reputations, promotes divisiveness, creates anxiety, and destroys morale.

So why do people start and spread rumors? Much of it has to do with our need to make sense of what’s happening around us. To understand what’s going on, people talk to one-another. And, together, they fill in the holes in the story with a little bit of fact – and a lot of guesswork. This new story spreads, with bits and pieces added along the way, until you have an out-of-control rumor spreading throughout your company…

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMM_25.htm?utm_source=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=04Oct16#np