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Sheena Iyengar studies how we make choices -- and how we feel about the choices we make. At TEDGlobal, she talks about both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, and shares her groundbreaking research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our decisions.

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WSJ: The New Most Dreaded Word at Work: 'Hey'

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WSJ: The New Most Dreaded Word at Work: 'Hey'

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The New Most Dreaded Word at Work: ‘Hey’

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Instant messages with nothing more than a quick greeting—known as “hey hanging”—spark office anxiety. “Am I fired? Am I in trouble?”

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HBR: Good Leadership Is About Asking Good Questions

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HBR: Good Leadership Is About Asking Good Questions

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Leaders today need to revisit an overlooked skill: asking questions. In my 40 years as an executive and advisor in Silicon Valley, I've often seen leaders assume that people look to them for answers - bold assertions that build people's confidence in their competence. But in reality, that kind of approach erodes trust, especially at a time when so much is manifestly uncertain. You think you have the answers to all important questions? That suggests that you are either clueless - you have no idea how rapidly the world is changing - or that you are lying. In either case, you won't find that trust that you've been looking for.

Instead, leaders should ask powerful and inspiring questions, convey that they don't have the answers, and solicit others' help to find them. The leaders I talk to tend to be nervous about this approach: Won't it look like they don't know what they're doing? On the contrary, however, research has shown that expressing vulnerability and asking for help is a strong signal to others that you are trusting, and you're more likely to be trusted in return. In fact, if you can learn to ask questions well, it can help you connect with others. Thinking together can put you on the path to solving intractable problems and sparking innovative thinking.

This article is one in a series related to the 12th Global Peter Drucker Forum, with the theme "Leadership Everywhere." See the program here.

Ask Big Questions

To be clear: I'm not saying you should ask pointed questions that put others on the spot, like "How can you deliver 10% higher productivity?" or "Are you missing anything here?" The kind of questions leaders need to ask are those that invite people to come together to explore major new opportunities that your organization hasn't identified yet. Here are some examples:

What is a game-changing opportunity that could create much more value than we have delivered in the past?

What are emerging unmet needs of our customers that could provide the foundation for an entirely new business?

How could we leverage the resources of third parties to address a broader range of the needs of our customers?

How can we move from standardized, mass-market products and services to personalizing our products and services to the specific needs of each customer?

How can we develop supply networks that would be more flexible in responding to unanticipated disruptions in production or logistics?

How could we harness sensor technology to create more visibility into how our customers are using our products and use this information to deliver more value and deepen trust with our customers?

Focusing your questions on these kinds of new and big opportunities rather than on the existing activities of the organization can also help you to sidestep your fear that questioning will be seen as a sign of weakness, since there's no way you could be expected to know the answers.

These broader questions also communicate that you have a sense of ambition, that you want to take the organization way beyond where it is today. And you can bolster your credibility by providing evidence of those long-term trends that underlie your question - for example, emerging technologies that are likely to offer new opportunities, or demographic shifts that will create some significant unmet needs among your customers.

Involve Others

These questions also invite collaboration. To make the most of them, don't ask them in closed leadership meetings. Instead, broadcast them throughout your organization and even beyond it. It's not just you posing a question to your people, it's your brand reaching out to learn from its consumers. Reaching out beyond the institution to connect with expertise and perspectives from a broader set of more diverse sources will help your company learn faster.

For example, take Domino's Pizza. About 10 years ago, Domino's was hearing from customers that they did not like the company's pizza. Many organizations might have tried to hide this information or work behind the scenes to correct the problem. Domino's Pizza did something different. They made public the feedback they were receiving and asked for suggestions on how they could improve the quality of their pies. This open question generated an avalanche of suggestions that proved very helpful in improving the pizzas.

But beyond an open innovation success, the impact was even more fundamental: by expressing vulnerability, I believe that the company built trust with customers. Here was a company that was willing to acknowledge they had a problem and to ask for help in addressing the problem. If more organizations were willing to ask for help from their customers and other stakeholders when experiencing a problem, they would likely have much greater success in re-building trust.

Change Your Culture

Anxiety can run high in volatile times, and by asking these kinds of questions you can help people overcome some of their fears. It's well established in the psychology field that coming together with others can reduce anxiety - that's the idea behind group therapy. And achieving real impact can also help overcome feelings of being overwhelmed. Thus by helping people to focus on short-term actions they can take together, your questions can provide a focusing and calming effect during a crisis.

By asking questions as a leader, you also communicate that questioning is important. You'll inspire people to identify new opportunities and to ask for help when they need it. These behaviors lead to a culture of learning, which is critical, since the institutions that will thrive in the future are those that encourage everyone to learn faster and more rapidly expand the value that they deliver to their stakeholders.

This will be especially true if you encourage exploration that can generate new insights into potential answers to your questions, rather than simply expecting complete answers and nothing less. This will encourage people to make small moves initially that can quickly help to increase excitement about the question since participants can quickly begin to see progress. As early answers to your question begin to emerge (as a result of experiments or research, for example), share them, even if they are not groundbreaking. They'll contribute to your culture of learning and show your stakeholders that your questioning is generating new insights, increasing their confidence in your methods.

Leaders who ask powerful questions have the greatest success in both seizing new opportunities and addressing unexpected challenges - and they build cultures that will carry these benefits into the future.

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Good Leadership Is About Asking Good Questions

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Especially when they find themselves in the midst of crisis and uncertainty, leaders should ask powerful and inspiring questions. Asking questions well can put you on the path to solving intractable problems and will also help you connect with others and, counterintuitively, to earn their trust.

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Employee disengagement is rampant in the workplace. We've all experienced it as customers encountering unhelpful retail clerks and as colleagues dealing with apathetic teammates. But what happens when you yourself feel dead at work?

This article describes what you as an individual can do to sustain your motivation or recover it, even in the most stultifying of jobs. After synthesizing research on this challenge and experimenting with various strategies, the authors have developed a process for recharging yourself called DEAR.

The first step is to detach and objectively analyze your situation so that you can make wise choices about it, instead of reacting in a fight-or-flight way. At day's end, review what went well at your job and then mentally disconnect from it to give yourself a break. Meditation and exercise can help you do that and will improve your mood and cognitive function. Next, show empathy. Practice self-care, make friends, recognize the accomplishments of others, seek their views, and help them. Research shows that this combats burnout. Third, take action: achieve small wins, invest in rewarding outside activities, redefine your responsibilities, and turn uninteresting tasks into games. Ask yourself how someone you admire would behave in your situation, and dress in a way that projects confidence. Last, reframe your thinking: Focus on the informal roles you enjoy at work, your job's higher-order purpose, and how others benefit from your work. All these techniques will improve your mental health and increase the energy you bring to your job-even if it is not what you'd like it to be.

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Employee disengagement is rampant in the workplace. We've all experienced it as customers encountering unhelpful retail clerks and as colleagues dealing with apathetic teammates. But what happens when you yourself feel dead at work? This article describes what you as an individual can do to sustain your motivation or recover it, even in the most stultifying of jobs.

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The New Way We Work Podcast: Your Manager is Bad at Their Job

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The New Way We Work Podcast: Your Manager is Bad at Their Job

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Your manager is bad at their job by The New Way We Work

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FastCompany: The Real Reason Why So Many Managers Don't Know How to Manage

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FastCompany: The Real Reason Why So Many Managers Don't Know How to Manage

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One of the most universal problems with work is bad bosses. Part of the reason so many people end up with a terrible manager is that as a society, we associate personality characteristics like charisma to mean someone has strong leadership skills. Instead, it's often a sign of narcissism.

But personality isn't the only reason why so many people dislike their bosses. Often people find themselves in management roles because they were good at their job, but then receive little or no guidance on how to manage others. Their managers also often never received management training and in many cases are making it up as they go.

If you're lucky, you end up with an emotionally intelligent manager who takes it upon themselves to figure out how to work effectively with the people they manage. More often, though, people end up stuck in the middle doing what they think is right with no guidance or becoming frustrated by a boss who doesn't know what they are doing. And, often, they end of quitting. In fact, around 50% of people say they've quit a job because of a bad boss.

But what if we treated management like the important job it is and invested in making sure people have the tools they need to succeed when they get promoted?

On the most recent episode of The New Way We Work, I spoke to Lia Bosch, the founder of the consulting firm Thrive People Strategies, about why so many managers are unable to effectively lead, and the best way to learn to be a better manager.

What's so hard about being a manager?

The biggest hurdle for new managers is that often they are promoted for the wrong reason. New managers will often be promoted because they've done good work as an individual contributor and there's an open position, or they've been very productive or the company wants to keep them.

But Bosch says, the company often doesn't give the new managers enough preparation for how managing people is different from doing an individual contributor role. "There are expectations that are set for the individual that even the individual is just trying to figure out how it all works," Bosch says.

What makes a good manager

A good manager, Bosch says, spends 75% of their time on the job of managing. That involves building relationships and trust, managing work, overseeing career development, and dealing with problems. Only 25% of their time is spent on the technical part of their job, or whatever tasks they likely spent most of their time on as an individual contributor. Most companies don't give managers the time to do this, and most managers don't approach their jobs this way, which means often managers just aren't very good at their jobs.

One of the biggest mistakes managers make (and the thing employees hate the most) is micromanaging. Bosch says inexperienced managers often resort to micromanaging because they feel like they're losing control of the work and don't trust their employees to do it how they would. But, she says, great managers explain the why and let their employees figure out the how. They communicate expectations clearly and then get out of the way and focus on the outcome, not the process.

How to help managers improve

If the biggest issue for new mangers is that they are thrown into the job with no training, the obvious answer might be a training course. But, as Bosch points out, one-off trainings led by HR are set up to check a box and aren't effective. "The organization needs to make management development and employee development a strategic priority because the future depends on the skills and the knowledge that these individuals need to have," she says. So she advises that companies look at options for longer term management programs and consider mentorships with experienced managers.

For more on how to help managers be more effective-including how AI is changing the job and how employees can most effectively give their managers feedback-listen to the full episode.

Recognize your company's culture of innovation by applying to this year's Best Workplaces for Innovators Awards before the extended deadline, April 12.

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The real reason why so many managers don't know how to manage

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New bosses are often promoted for the wrong reason and are unprepared for the role. On the latest episode of 'The New Way We Work,' we explore what it would look like to treat management like the important job it is.

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WaPo: Gen Z Workers Can Take Criticism. You’re Just Phrasing it Wrong.

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WaPo: Gen Z Workers Can Take Criticism. You’re Just Phrasing it Wrong.

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FastCompany: A Hostage Negotiator Shares Tricks for Dealing With Difficult People

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FastCompany: A Hostage Negotiator Shares Tricks for Dealing With Difficult People

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Inc: Building High-Performing Teams | Managing the 4 Employee Archetypes

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Inc: Building High-Performing Teams | Managing the 4 Employee Archetypes

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Tips for Reading the Room Before a Meeting or Presentation

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HBR: Tips for Reading the Room Before a Meeting or Presentation 

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HBR: Tips for Reading the Room Before a Meeting or Presentation 

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Knowing how to read between the lines and pick up on colleagues' subtle social cues is a critical skill. After all, there's often an explicit conversation happening in a meeting or around the water cooler - and a tacit one. The best way to take the temperature of a room is to pay attention to the people in it. Note who's next to whom, who's relaxed, who's not, who's standing, and who's sitting. Look at their facial expressions, posture, and body language. Then try to make sense of what you've observed. Reflect on possible reasons for your colleagues' emotional states. What's happening in their lives and in their jobs? If the atmosphere feels tense, don't let yourself be hijacked by negativity. Instead, shift the mood using humor or empathy. Keep an eye out for positive signals, too - the executive in the corner who's smiling, for instance - and concentrate on those.

In every conversation at work, there's the explicit discussion happening - the words being spoken out loud - and the tacit one. To be successful in most organizations, it's important to understand the underlying conversations and reactions that people in the room are having. But if you aren't picking up on those subtle cues, how can you learn to do so? What signals should you be looking for? And what can you do to influence the unspoken dynamics?

Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor®. HBR Learning's online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Writing Skills. Earn badges to share on LinkedIn and your resume. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies.

Capture your audience's attention with smarter emails, Slacks, memos, and reports.

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Tips for Reading the Room Before a Meeting or Presentation

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Knowing how to read between the lines and pick up on colleagues' subtle social cues is a critical skill. After all, there's often an explicit conversation happening in a meeting or around the water cooler - and a tacit one. The best way to take the temperature of a room is to pay attention to the people in it.

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The Science of People: Dealing with Difficult People

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The Science of People: Dealing with Difficult People

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Transform the difficult relationships in your life to be more productive.

Master your People Skills

Create a Memorable Presence

Communicate with Confidence

Achieve Your Goals

Have a question about the presentation or People School? Email Science of People support.

Next Steps

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Start Learning

You can read a curated selection of our best, most impactful content right now on our blog.

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How to deal with difficult people at work Transform the difficult relationships in your life to be more

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WSJ: What Cary Grant Told Me About Getting Dressed. I’ve Never Forgotten It. (✨)

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WSJ: What Cary Grant Told Me About Getting Dressed. I’ve Never Forgotten It. (✨)

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Listen to this episode from HBR On Leadership on Spotify. What should you do when you become the boss? Many of us are promoted into people manager roles without any preparation for the complexities involved in that work. But Harvard Business School professor Alison Wood Brooks says there are some basics that will help you get started as a first-time boss.

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TED: How to Cultivate the Skill of Happiness

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TED: How to Cultivate the Skill of Happiness

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How to cultivate the skill of happiness (w/ Dan Harris)

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Listen to this episode from How to Be a Better Human on Spotify. If you've ever felt apprehensive about trying something seemingly woo-woo to improve your mental health (like meditation, mindfulness, or simply touching grass) you're not alone.

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Forbes: The Hidden Pitfalls of Servant Leadership

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Forbes: The Hidden Pitfalls of Servant Leadership

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The Hidden Pitfalls Of Servant Leadership

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To build the teams that can solve big, thorny problems, leaders will have to empower their people to learn, grow and innovate.

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How to make generosity contagious (w/ Chris Anderson)

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If you’ve ever opened up social media in the hopes that it would cheer you up only for it to leave you upset, angry, or tired, you are not alone. So what if we could turn that special power the internet has to change our emotions – and use it for good? The head of TED, Chris Anderson, joins Chris Duffy to talk about why he believes in what he calls infectious generosity. Join the two Chrises as they discuss how we can turn outrage back into optimism by tapping into one of the most fundamental human virtues. Chris Anderson’s book, Infectious Generosity, is out now. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts

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Some of my favorite Class Guides from various (& fabulous) MasterClass instructors

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HBR: The Secret to Leading Highly Collaborative Teams

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HBR: The Secret to Leading Highly Collaborative Teams

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The Secret to Leading Highly Collaborative Teams

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Listen to this episode from HBR On Leadership on Spotify. If you're leading a team, you know how hard it is to facilitate collaboration - especially when they don't know each other well or may never meet in person. When people struggle to work together, it can harm productivity, morale, and talent retention.

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You are contagious | Vanessa Van Edwards | TEDxLondon

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NYTime: When You're Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow

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NYTime: When You're Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow

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If You’re Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow (Published 2008)

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Adopting either a fixed or growth attitude toward talent can profoundly affect all aspects of a person’s life, a researcher found.

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HBR: How Gamification Can Boost Employee Engagement

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HBR: How Gamification Can Boost Employee Engagement

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How Gamification Can Boost Employee Engagement

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Employee disengagement is a persistent problem, and attempts to inject excitement often fall flat. However, gamification - using elements of games to motivate - has serious potential when thoughtfully executed. This article explores the psychology behind gamification, successful examples, and how to leverage probabilistic rewards (like lotteries tied to performance) to increase employee motivation.

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Theory X & Y - Understanding People's Motivation

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Theory X & Y - Understanding People's Motivation

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The approach that you take will have a significant impact on your ability to motivate your team members. So, it's important to understand how your perceptions of what motivates them can shape your management style.

We'll now take a more in-depth look at the two different theories, and discover how and when they can be useful in the workplace.

Theory X

Theory X managers tend to take a pessimistic view of their people, and assume that they are naturally unmotivated and dislike work.

Work in organizations that are managed like this can be repetitive, and people are often motivated with a "carrot and stick" approach. Performance appraisals and remuneration are usually based on tangible results, such as sales figures or product output, and are used to control and "keep tabs" on staff.

This style of management assumes that workers:

Dislike their work.

Avoid responsibility and need constant direction.

Have to be controlled, forced and threatened to deliver work.

Need to be supervised at every step.

Have no incentive to work or ambition, and therefore need to be enticed by rewards to achieve goals.

According to McGregor, organizations with a Theory X approach tend to have several tiers of managers and supervisors to oversee and direct workers. Authority is rarely delegated, and control remains firmly centralized.

Although Theory X management has largely fallen out of fashion in recent times, big organizations may find that adopting it is unavoidable due to the sheer number of people that they employ and the tight deadlines that they have to meet.

Theory Y

Theory Y managers have an optimistic opinion of their people, and they use a decentralized, participative management style. This encourages a more collaborative, trust-based relationship between managers and their team members.

People have greater responsibility, and managers encourage them to develop their skills and suggest improvements. Appraisals are regular but, unlike in Theory X organizations, they are used to encourage open communication rather than to control staff.

Theory Y organizations also give employees frequent opportunities for promotion.

This style of management assumes that workers are:

Happy to work on their own initiative.

More involved in decision making.

Self-motivated to complete their tasks.

Enjoy taking ownership of their work.

Seek and accept responsibility, and need little direction.

View work as fulfillling and challenging.

Solve problems creatively and imaginatively.

Theory Y has become more popular among organizations. This reflects workers' increasing desire for more meaningful careers that provide them with more than just money.

It's also viewed by McGregor as superior to Theory X, which, he says, reduces workers to "cogs in a machine," and likely demotivates people in the long term.

When to Use Theory X and Theory Y

Most managers will likely use a mixture of Theory X and Theory Y. You may, however, find that you naturally favor one over the other. You might, for instance, have a tendency to micromanage or, conversely, you may prefer to take a more hands-off approach.

Although both styles of management can motivate people, the success of each will largely depend on your team's needs and wants and your organizational objectives.

You may use a Theory X style of management for new starters who will likely need a lot of guidance, or in a situation that requires you to take control such as a crisis.

But you wouldn't use it when managing a team of experts, who are used to working under their own initiative, and need little direction. If you did, it would likely have a demotivating effect and may even damage your relationship.

Circumstance can also affect your management style. Theory X, for instance, is generally more prevalent in larger organizations, or in teams where work can be repetitive and target-driven.

In these cases, people are unlikely to find reward or fulfilllment in their work, so a "carrot and stick" approach will tend to be more successful in motivating them than a Theory Y approach.

In contrast, Theory Y tends to be favored by organizations that have a flatter structure, and where people at the lower levels are involved in decision making and have some responsibility.

The Disadvantages of Theory X and Theory Y

However, both theories have their challenges. The restrictive nature of Theory X, for instance, could cause people to become demotivated and non-cooperative if your approach is too strict. This may lead to high staff turnover and could damage your reputation in the long term.

Conversely, if you adopt a Theory Y approach that gives people too much freedom, it may allow them to stray from their key objectives or lose focus. Less motivated individuals may also take advantage of this more relaxd working environment by shirking their work.

If this happens, you may need to take back some control to ensure that everyone meets their team and organizational goals.

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Theory X and Theory Y - Understanding People's Motivations

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What do you think motivates your team? Money or the challenge? Theory X and Theory Y explains how your perceptions can affect your management style.

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HBR: The Benefits of Laughing in the Office

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HBR: The Benefits of Laughing in the Office

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Don't be afraid to laugh out loud in the office. A series of studies shows the positive impact humor can have in the workplace. For one, it can reduce stress. "When you start to laugh, it doesn't just lighten your load mentally, it actually induces physical changes in your body," the Mayo Clinic explains. It enhances your intake of "oxygen-rich air," increasing your brain's release of endorphins. Laughter has also been shown to boost productivity. A group of researchers found that after watching a comedy clip, employees were 10% more productive than their counterparts. And another group of researchers found that cracking jokes at work can even make people seem more competent. So, within the bounds of decency, laughter on the whole is a good thing, and the benefits far outweigh the risks.

While on an investor tour in Europe, I ended a busy day by joining my boss at a nice restaurant. After he said something funny, I responded in my typical style - throwing back my head and letting out hearty, unabashed laughter. People were taken aback. They turned to stare at me.

Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor®. HBR Learning's online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Stress Management. Earn badges to share on LinkedIn and your resume. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies.

How to build resilience at work.

Learn More & See All Courses

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Don't be afraid to laugh out loud in the office. A series of studies shows the positive impact humor can have in the workplace. For one, it can reduce stress. "When you start to laugh, it doesn't just lighten your load mentally, it actually induces physical changes in your body," the Mayo Clinic explains.