Beyond Job Descriptions
Studies show that employees who engage in role crafting report higher engagement, stronger performance, and lower burnout (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). It gives people a sense of ownership and helps them connect their work to what they care about. But it also helps teams. When done well, role crafting can surface hidden skills, fill capability gaps, and reduce friction around unclear responsibilities.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
From Policy to Practice: Making Flex Work Actually Work
The practical side of flexible work design, tracking, and communication
Estimated read time: 4 minutes
Flexible work sounds great in theory. But in practice, it often gets lost between a policy PDF and a manager’s interpretation of “do what works for your team.” The result is inconsistency, ambiguity, and sometimes resentment — not because flex work is the problem, but because the structure around it is missing.
Flexibility without clarity leads to confusion. Employees are told they can work from anywhere, but then receive mixed signals about visibility, responsiveness, or in-office preferences. Leaders say they support flexibility, but often default to old habits when measuring performance or assigning opportunity.
Audit Your People Strategy in 5 Questions
In a study of 1,000 companies by Zenger & Folkman (2019), only 27% of leaders were rated as effective coaches. Coaching and decision-making are not soft skills. They are teachable, behavioral capabilities with real outcomes.
The Manager Bottleneck: Fixing Middle Leadership with Science
Here’s how to equip middle managers with decision-making tools, not just soft skills.
The Science of Strong Teams: What Actually Works
When cohesion and psychological safety work together, teams become significantly more capable of navigating uncertainty, integrating diverse perspectives, and executing complex tasks. A 2021 meta-analysis by Frazier et al. found that psychological safety was strongly correlated with performance, especially when teams had a high degree of interdependence and were tasked with problem-solving.
Importantly, cohesion can support the development of psychological safety by fostering trust and mutual understanding. At the same time, psychological safety can accelerate cohesion by encouraging open communication and vulnerability. These two dynamics reinforce each other, creating what researchers call a virtuous cycle of performance (Newman et al., 2017).