Worthwhile Content: April 2025
Some worthwhile reads, watches, and listens from the last month
Talent
Boston – Need a corporate learning professional while you scale? I know a dynamic leader with experience scaling growth initiatives in workforce development, education, community-building, and strategic communication who’s looking to make an impact in corporate learning.
NYC – Looking for a senior talent development leader with 20+ years of progressive experience? Let me know.
World of Work:
This past month, I wrote about whether classic ‘Learning Styles’ are bullshit, had a great conversation with
about the key findings in his book Everyday Leadership (strong recommend), created a one-pager to help Chat-GPT users decipher which of the many models to choose from, and wrote an April Fool’s post proclaiming the brilliance of the MBTI. I probably need to be a bit more obvious with my April Fool’s jokes. Some other worthwhile content includes:Tim Ballard highlights data from Australia which shows that most promotions to management happen within the first 5–10 years, and younger employees tend to rise faster than older ones. Education makes a big difference too, while gender, once you control for other factors, plays a surprisingly small role. The takeaway for companies: invest early in high-potential talent, support further education, and stay vigilant on pay equity.
I like this criticism of meetings from
in his piece for .Law firms that caved to Trump are having trouble recruiting new associates, according to the Wall Street Journal. That said, the article points to just a handful of recruits at a pair of schools (Georgetown and Columbia). I’m not so certain the repercussions from a talent acquisition and retention standpoint are enough to get firms to change course, but stories like this may make managing partners second-guess themselves – especially if they overreact to the headlines without parsing through the data.
Business travel is expected to significantly decline this year. However, the frequency with which I get stuck behind the one person in the security line who has apparently never seen a metal detector before is expected to stay the same.
This Financial Times article emphasizes the critical role managers play in enhancing employee satisfaction and productivity. It highlights findings from Gallup's 2024 report, noting that well-supported and trained managers significantly boost team engagement, underscoring the importance of investing in manager development.
This article introduces the 'Qualume' score, a metric designed to help organizations monitor and improve team dynamics and performance. By providing granular weekly and monthly reports, it enables leaders to identify trends, coach underperformers, and recognize high achievers, fostering a culture of continuous improvement.
I read Storytelling at Work: How Moments of Truth on the Job Reveal the Real Business of Life by Mitch Ditkoff. As expected, the book is full of great storytelling. Though I didn’t find it useful and wouldn’t recommend it.
A DEI benchmarking survey finds 81% of organizations will maintain or increase their DEI budgets this year. I’m not sure what is more interesting – that 81% are maintaining course or that 19% have shifted away?
Here’s a snapshot of managers working through a reflection exercise in one of my favorite workshops: Change Management for Leaders:
By the end of this 3 hour workshop, participants are able to:
Use frameworks like ADKAR and Kotter’s 8 Steps to plan for and execute change
Select *when* to communicate different types of information during a change initiative, in keeping with the “change curve”
Articulate the neuroscientific and social reasons that change is hard, and use this to compassionately provide support
Apply the SCARF framework in addressing individual needs to create buy-in for change
And more!
If you have managers and leaders struggling to help their teams with the constant change we’re all adapting to, check it out — maybe this is for you!
AI Section
This edition is a little AI heavy so this month I’m organizing the AI-related content into its own subsection.
As the world mourns the passing of the Pope, we are reminded of some thoughtful words from the Vatican on AI and the intertwined human future.
Microsoft just dropped a major update to Copilot: a new People Skills platform that automatically identifies and manages employee skills inside MS 365. If your company uses MS 365, you’re about to have a new powerhouse tool for strategic talent development.
As AI recommendations become part of everyday life, one surprising factor shaping acceptance is religion. A new study – Thinking about God increases acceptance of artificial intelligence in decision-making – found that when people are reminded of God, their willingness to trust AI suggestions goes up. h/t to Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic for sharing this neat study.
I like this suggestion from Allison Salisbury: Teach the impressive new reasoning models about your life and work and ask it for suggestions on how to improve your day to day. Her post includes some useful context suggestions, too. This is another example of how AI is already obviating useful, low-level coaching.
I made a quick video explaining the results of a paper that used AI agents to assess leaders using the classic ‘Hidden Profile Task’ assignment. The AI agents strongly correlated with human roleplayers (.81) and are much cheaper to use. I expected “AI assessment centers” to become very prevalent in leadership development and selection.
General Interest
Educational piece from
called “Why philosophers hate that ‘equity’ meme” – the one with people on the boxes trying to watch the baseball game.Sharp explanation from
in “Is Trauma Actually Stored in the Body? (No.)”.
Musings
Would you watch/listen to a discussion show between people where there was an AI Referee?
There's always been complaint on how discussions/debates are full of logical errors and rhetorical maneuvers. After the fact we can say "oh this person was moving the goalposts" or "that was just an argument from authority", but the damage is done. It's nearly impossible to fallacy-check anyone in real time.
But because of how LLMs work, one could be trained to spot and call out these rhetorical tricks without fail. And participants couldn't easily dismiss its observations as ideological or biased.
I could imagine a long-form podcast with an AI that is listening in and interrupts in real-time, doing exactly what we've wished a great discussion host could do.
I’m making my social media sabbatical week a monthly recurrance! Join me starting Thursday, May 1st, and go dark on main social apps (IG/TikTok/X/Facebook/Reddit) for a week. It’s been liberating!
That's it for this edition - please reach out if I can be at all helpful.
Be compassionate and intentional.
Appreciate the shoutout 🧠