Management gemsFind here some gems from our monitoring of the best publications on leadership and management

At the time of taking on a new position, and especially an executive one, you have probably already been astonished by the assumptions that your interlocutors may have had about you. Sometimes, even the gaze of the people you already know can change in a disconcerting way!

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recounts this phenomenon and the way in which he dealt with it, with accents of sincerity that are rare in politics. His maturity on the subject comes from a very particular childhood, as his father was himself Prime Minister at the time. He thus quickly discovered that a child in his class could tell him from the very first meeting that they did not like him because, in their family, no one voted for Pierre Elliott Trudeau—and that, during his father’s meetings, he was acclaimed by a crowd that knew nothing about him… He thus realized at a precocious age that others would have preconceived ideas about him, no matter what he did—and had to learn to detach himself from this.

Having himself risen to the highest office, he retained this reflex of always questioning the image that others reflected back of him. What elements, well-founded and constructive, should be retained from criticisms? And what should be believed from the praise? A permanent effort to remain clear-headed, which will inspire anyone taking on new responsibilities.

Source : Leadership lessons from the prime minister of Canada, interview of Justin Trudeau by Adam Grant, TED, May 2024.

Employees’ mental health appears to be at an all-time low. In its special report on the subject, France Culture interviewed Thomas Périlleux, a Belgian sociologist and winner of the 2024 Penser le travail prize for his book Le Travail à vif [Work on edge].

One of his observations is particularly interesting: often, he writes, what causes an employee who has been enduring a difficult situation for months to “snap” is a contradictory injunction. The problem is not that there are contradictions within a company; those are inherent to its very operation. The problem is that we are strongly encouraged to keep quiet about them.

Employees are thus asked to “do things faster and better at the same time”, to “get more involved in their work while also showing greater detachment”, etc. One telling example: a technician who was forbidden from mentioning the technical difficulties he might encounter unless he was able to offer a solution. This imposed silence causes psychological suffering, just as when we use indirect wording, or poorly understood terms borrowed from other languages, to soften a harsh reality.

Openly saying things and talking about them: a first step in the fight against such suffering?

Source: Santé mentale : que révèle l’épidémie de burn-out ? [Mental health: what does the burnout epidemic reveal?], interview of Thomas Périlleux by Marguerite Catton, France Culture, La Question du jour, October 10, 2024.

When we talk about stress, we naturally think of sources of concern: changes that destabilize us, conflicts, overloaded agendas, etc.

In an interview, Rob Cross, co-author of The Microstress Effect, alerts us to another, largely underestimated factor of stress. Every interaction with people whom we appreciate, and with whom we wish to establish or maintain a relationship, also generates its own share of stress. We are careful about what we say, we are eager for the other person to interpret our messages correctly, we ask ourselves how we should interpret their words. Admittedly, this stress is a low-intensity one, and one that we do not generally identify as such. But it is repeated dozens of times a day and can accumulate to the point of bringing us closer to the risk of burn-out.

How can we minimize this risk? The author emphasizes the need to limit “collaborative overload”. To promote good mental health, we need to choose, deliberately, with whom we interact regularly and with which groups we can maintain more distance. For establishing relationships with people we trust is essential to curbing our stress, but only up to a certain volume of interactions.

Source: Author Talks: How minor stresses add up to epic fails, interview of Rob Cross by Lucia Rahilly, McKinsey Insights, July 2023.

“Clean up your desk so you can work better”, your parents perhaps told you when you were younger… A piece of common-sense advice that has now been validated by neuroscience.

Researchers at Yale University recently showed that visual clutter has little effect on our ability to perceive information, but a far greater one on our ability to process it efficiently. In macaque monkeys, whose visual capacities are close to those of humans, under such conditions, information is transmitted almost normally to the primary visual cortex, but the way in which it is relayed to the secondary visual cortex is affected.

Can we compensate for this negative impact through the strength of our attention? In part, yes, indicate the researchers. This is the example of a driver watching out for a car that might overtake them, while centering their vision on the road in front of them. But the energy expenditure is high.

This research will certainly have applications in ergonomics. In the short term, it also opens up avenues for improving one’s concentration.

Source: ‘Visual clutter’ alters information flow in the brain, Mallory Locklear, Yale News, October 2024.

We often hear this nostalgic chorus: “We can’t trust one another like we used to; people are more and more individualistic; incivility and violence are on the rise…” According to this ditty, our society is facing a form of moral decline.

Psychologists Adam Mastroianni and Daniel Gilbert reviewed hundreds of studies to analyze this worrying phenomenon. They discovered that the myth of “moral decline” has in fact been around since antiquity. In parallel, the study of actual behaviors shows, at worst, stability, and most often a progression of positive behaviors. We are less frequently at war, rules and laws provide a better framework for relationships and reinforce trust, we continue to help one another…

Why do our perceptions differ so significantly from reality? Two cognitive biases are involved: the negativity bias and the memory bias. Our brains give greater importance to negative information, which originally constituted a protective reflex. On the other hand, our negative memories fade more quickly than our positive ones, which allows us to distance ourselves from negative experiences, but can also lead to our idealizing the past.

As a result, we cannot help thinking, often erroneously, that things were better before. But knowing why we have this biased perception can help us put it into perspective.

Source: Déclin moral : pourquoi pense-t-on toujours que « c’était mieux avant » ? [Moral decline: why do we always think “things were better before”?], Adam Mastroianni, Polytechnique Insights, November 2023.