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Some people are simply better at transforming casual human connections into social capital. Their network is their influence. My first career break was a simple introduction to a social entrepreneur. It led to who I am today. Networking isnt just social leverage. Its the art of making people remember you when they shouldnt have to. Its creating pull so strong, opportunities orbit you, not the other way around. You make yourself impossible to ignore. Turning networking into career gold is about playing the long game: human connection, done with intent. Start with a constellation Think of every person you meet not as a contact, but as a star. A single star is just a point of light. But connect a few and have a constellation. Connect enough, and you have a galaxy that can change your life. Your career is not a ladder; its a night sky. Your job is to populate it with bright, interesting stars. That means talk to everyone. The person next to you on the plane. You might as well make the most of it if you are going to spend hours with them. Introduce yourself to the quiet ones in the corner. Youre not pitching. Youre connecting. Youre finding out what makes them light up. Thats how you connect the dots. You never know who will say, Hey, I know a guy . . . Thats the constellation at work. Serendipity is just what happens when your network is wide enough for luck to find you. Give. Then give again. Expect nothing The fastest way to kill the magic is to keep score. How can I help you? is my mantra. If you find a book that reminds you of someone who might find it useful? Send it to them. Hear about a project that aligns with a contacts skills? Connect them. Your value isnt what you can get; its what you can give. It builds a currency of trust. People remember generosity. They are hardwired to reciprocate. But you cant do it by waiting for the return favor. You have to give like its your job. But dont expect them to return the favor. The ROI is trust. And trust is the only currency that never inflates. Be a person, not a profile Nobody connects with a LinkedIn headline. They connect with a human. Talk about your failed startup. Your weird hobby. The time you made a mistake. And of course, how you bounced back. Vulnerability is a superpower. Its the secret that bypasses the professional face and goes straight to the person on the inside. Your specific, unapologetic self is your greatest asset. Authenticity is magnetic. It draws the right people and repels the wrong ones. Its a filter. Use it. Get the follow-up right You met someone great. What now? If you send a generic LinkedIn request, youve already lost. The gold is in the specificity. Your follow-up should reference something unique to the conversation. Great talking about the future of work yesterday. Heres that book or post I mentioned. No need to reply. Just thought youd enjoy it. That simple follow-up makes you a person. A thoughtful one. Not just a networker. Youve added value immediately with zero ask. Youve deposited into the trust bank. Now youre not a forgettable face. The goal is to be a connector You gain more social capital by connecting other people than by connecting people to yourself. If you see a developer who needs a designer. Connect them. You hear a problem and know the right person who can solve it. You make the intro. You become a value creator. Youre the person everyone wants to know because knowing you means access to a whole world of other interesting, capable people. Thats when youve truly made it. Dont just be interesting, be interested. Be a giver, not a taker. Be a person, not a profile. Build your circle of influence, one genuine connection at a time. The gold was never the asset you acquire or invest in. It was in the people you meet along the way.
Category:
E-Commerce
Most of us will work for a really bad boss at some point in our lives, perhaps more than one. Research by the Harris Poll bears this out, showing that more than 70 percent of workers have had at least one such noxious manager in their career. These difficult managers can range from inexperienced and incompetent bosses to truly mean-spirited individuals who have little regard for human suffering. Researchers have found that when we experience incivility in the workplace, about half of people intentionally decreased their work effort, more than three-quarters said it decreased their commitment to the organization involved, and more than one in ten said they had left a job because of poor treatment/behavior. Whats interesting is that many people think Its all their [the bosses] fault when, in fact, we often play a role in the difficult relationship. When we have a less-than-ideal boss, its also helpful to look in the mirror, for there may be some things we are doing that contribute to the situation. In addition, its easy to mistake incompetence for ill intent toward us. Keeping this in mind may give us a bit more empathy for a previous bad boss because we learn our own leadership skills by leading others, just as that previous bad boss had to learn to lead by leading us. Really bad bosses can be soul-crushing and draining to work with. It helps us realize that when a boss, or any other person, treats us badly, their behavior may have very little to do with us and more to do with what is going on in their own world. But although we cannot control how others think or behave, we do have control over ourselves and our behavior. When you have an insecure boss, there are some things you can do to make the situation more palatable. First, let them know, and feel, that they are in charge. Dont challenge them, particularly in front of others. Keep track of your own contributions and successes so they will be top of mind when they tell you that you have not made any contributions. And learn as much as you can from them while youre there and network widely to expand your learning, contacts, and opportunities. Sometimes the biggest learning from these situations is that you never want to make anyone feel the way this boss makes you feel. Thats still a valuable lesson. If you work with a difficult person, keep in mind that you cannot change them and their behaviors. Only they can make these changes. Their own self-understanding and ability to self-manage is not up to you or even about you, but it can have a strong impact on you. When you have a really horrible, no-good boss, one that is demeaning or abusive, it may be helpful to remember that their behavior says more about them than it does about you. Although its never pleasant to have an abusive manager, remembering this may help you to not take their behavior personally. It doesnt excuse their behavior, but it may help you put it in perspective. You own your behavior; they own theirs. This advice may be helpful in not exacerbating an already difficult problem or avoiding having your behavior become what gets singled out for punishment. But if you continue to work with an abusive manager who diminishes you, it can negatively affect your motivation, confidence, mental health, and career. In these situations, you may want to take the learning and move on. Should I Stay or Should I Go? The answer to this question is, like so many others, It depends. It depends on what your goals are for your career, for learning, for experience; your appetite for comfort versus adventure; how you think about remuneration and learning; and how uncomfortable your current situation is. There is no promise that the situation you are in will get better, and theres no guarantee that a new job will have a better manager. Many of us have stayed with bad or even very bad bosses longer than we should have, and we have left other difficult managers whom we might have stayed with longer and learned from. Just as our boss can fire us, we can fire our boss by leaving them or the organization. Some helpful should I stay or should I go questions to help you assess whether its time to begin looking for another position and manager include these: What have I learned from this person, and in this position, so far? Is there still an opportunity for me to continue to learn and grow in this position, working for this manager? If so, what is it that I want to learn, and how might I go about obtaining this knowledge and growth? To what extent are the skills Ill continue to learn be transferrable to other jobs or careers I may want in the future? Do my reasons for considering leaving this man- ager have to do with ethical lapses in the manager or organization? Is working for this person negatively affecting my mental health? Are there people higher up in the organization whom I admire or aspire to be like? Even when your answers to the above questions point to I should go, there may be times when leaving a bad boss may not be a viable short-term solution. In these situations, it can be helpful to focus on what you can learn while you remain there, which may include taking on new projects or challenges, networking widely within the company, or practicing dealing with a difficult, demanding person. However, working with a bad boss comes with an emotional and sometimes physical toll, and the longer you continue to work with them, the larger the overall toll it will take. When leaving a bad boss or situation, as hard as it may be, plan to make a graceful exit. Rage quitting, including creating an ugly scene on your way out or leaving a mess for your manager, others on the team, and the person who comes in behind you, may feel satisfying in the moment or even justified based on the way youve been treated, but its rarely a good option for your long-term reputation. Making a graceful exit means making a transition plan to help the person who comes in behind you understand the relevant processes and know where to find key information, thanking your manager for what youve learned from them, tying up as many loose ends as possible, being constructive in explaining why youre leaving, and offering to answer some questions in the weeks following your departure. Excerpted from Manage Yourself to Lead Others: Why Great Leadership Begins with Self-Understanding. Copyright 2025 by Margaret C. Andrews. Available from Basic Venture, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Category:
E-Commerce
Technologies from AI to advanced robotics have been celebrated for their ability to lighten peoples workload. But despite their promises, these technologies arent being used to improve workers lives or keep them safe. In 2023, 385 workers died every day due to hazardous working conditions, with over 3 million more work-related injuries and illnesses reported that year in the United States. Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet spent a collective $155 billion on AI development in the first six months of 2025close to what the entire U.S. government has spent on education, training, employment, and social services since the start of its fiscal year nine months ago. Yet, very little of this investment has gone to make workers lives safer. What does this say about us as a society? In health care, a common cause of workplace injury is strain from lifting and physically assisting patients. Assistive technology could go a long way to preventing these common injuriestechnologies like robotic exoskeletons, which can be applied in healthcare settings for this purpose, already exist. But we do not see companies racing to build the best robotic assists for care workers. Instead, thousands of companies are creating chatbots that replace their customer support staff or automate away entry-level roles. In fact, robots actually seem to be making warehouse workers jobs worse. Speeding up processes with robotics requires workers to speed up as wellleading to increased injuries. Several investigations have found increased rates of injury in warehouses that use robotics; between 2016 and 2019, Amazon warehouses with robots had a 50% higher injury rate than those without. And even in 2020, when Amazon temporarily relaxed many of its requirements to work at a certain pace, warehouses with robotics had a 14% higher injury rate than those without. While warehouse robots now come with more safety protections, updating older equipment with new safety features does not seem to be a priority. In fact, safety doesn’t seem to be a priority. During a visit to a large warehouse facility a few years ago, I watched workers packing boxes at lightning speed, surrounded by screens and robots. I also saw aggressive signage throughout the facility, warning workers that heavy machines could begin moving at any moment. The message was clear: If you were injured it was your fault for not being careful enough. Neglect of worker safety is not newthroughout U.S. history, production speed and profits have outweighed the value of human lives. While the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows a pretty consistent year-over-year drop in overall workplace injuries and fatalities, the change is minuscule: Injuries have dropped from 2.8 per 100 workers in 2019, to 2.4 in 2023. Meanwhile, death rates are increasing for workers of color: In 2023 Black workers faced their highest fatality rates in 20 years, and Latino worker deaths have risen steadily since 2020. Powerful health and safety technologies exist but are vastly underutilized. A new sensor could help farm workers, one of our most poorly paid but important workforces, prevent dangerous heat-related illness. Wearable smart devices can monitor air pollution and alert workersfrom miners to cleanersof dangerous air quality. Other smart tech can help correct bad posture that could lead to injury or ensure machinery shuts down automatically if a worker gets too close. These technologies could prevent harm for many workers but we need to invest in them andcruciallygive workers input and decision-making power to ensure the technologies we invest in will effectively address their needs. There are companies leading the way on consulting workers when implementing new technologies, like Microsoft, which is working in partnership with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) to get worker input on AI development. However, many lower-wage professions are unlikely to get the investment needed to implement advanced worker safety tech. Updated workplace safety regulations, which account for the possibilities unlocked by new technologies, are needed to ensure workers are getting access to lifesaving equipment. When I envision an economy employing advanced technologies, I do not think of one where workers get their limbs amputated in factories, suffer lung damage from cleaning chemicals, or get stress injuries from being asked to work faster and faster for meager pay. We need bold actionregulations that require the use of safety tech, incentives for companies that invest in it, and worker voices at the table. Policy makers and business leaders can help us course correct; we need worker protections for a new age of technology and investment in tech that centers the needsand safetyof workers.
Category:
E-Commerce
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