The Phoenix Mercury rebranded for the first time in team history, and the new look is part of a wider trend across the WNBA as teams modernize their logos for a growing league.
The new Mercury logo shows an “M” that’s a simplified version of the letter taken from the team’s old script wordmark. The bottom of the “M” is angled up at 19.97 degrees as a nod to the team’s 1997 founding as one of the league’s eight original franchises, and it’s set on a circle with a crescent shadow that represents the planet Mercury. The modernized logo was designed in-house.
The rebrand comes at an inflection point for the team, which lost star player Diana Taurasi to retirement in February, and lost the 2025 WNBA championship to the Las Vegas Aces in October. The Mercury are considered the WNBA’s best-run organization, according to an anonymous survey of WNBA players released by The Athletic in July, in part because of their facilities. Mercury President Vince Kozar tells Fast Company, “Our goal is to make it as easy as possible to be a fan.”
From left: The teams previous logo, and the new one [Image: Phoenix Mercury]
It also comes at an inflection point for the league. Game attendance is at an all-time high, and the WNBA is expanding. The Golden State Valkyries joined last season, with the Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo set to debut next year, and future franchises planned for Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia, which would bring the league to 18 teams by 2030. In a more crowded league, teams are simplifying their branding to stand out.
Before the Mercury, the New York Liberty introduced a simplified version of the teams Statue of Liberty logo in 2020 that’s just Lady Liberty’s hand holding a torch. And in 2021, the Seattle Storm dropped a logo showing a detailed Space Needle illustration in favor of a simpler form of the landmark.
“What we learned looking at the Storm and Liberty examples was you can do a really clean modernizationone that cleans up the 90s busyness of the logo and streamlines your color schemewithout completely rebooting or reimagining your marks,” Kozar says.
[Image: Phoenix Mercury]
The mark is the team’s primary logo, but it has other new marks too, including those that set the team name in a futuristic sans-serif font. There’s a global mark that wraps the Mercury logo in a roundel, a “Merc” logo that writes out the nickname over a map outline of the state of Arizona, and a “PHX” logo that Nike created in 2021.
Kozar says these additional marks, which will appear on uniforms, courts, and merchandise, “just give our brand so much more depth and diversity.
Authenticity is currency.
You can spend it recklessly and go broke, or invest it strategically and build wealth. Most leaders are choosing bankruptcy without even realizing it.
Right now, workplaces are debating authenticity. Some call “bring your whole self to work” a dangerous myth that punishes marginalized employees. Others claim it’s the secret to engagement and retention.
Both are rightand both are missing something.
Unfiltered authenticity without skill can be destructive. And yes, marginalized employees pay a higher price when they try to be authentic in systems that weren’t built for them.
But your team already knows when you’re faking it. That difference between genuine authenticity and performed authenticity determines everythingtrust, safety, retention, innovation.
Think about the best leader you’ve ever had. Now the worst. What separated them?
Kevin Built Wealth. Nancy Went Broke
An employee once described two former managers to melet’s call them Kevin and Nancy.
Kevin had emotional intelligence. When you sent an email that landed wrong, he’d follow up: “Hey, I think you meant this . . .” He remembered small details from weeks ago. You felt seen. He operated from a place of genuine care.
Nancy was polished. She said all the right things about supporting her team. But over time, you realized it was packagingfriendly but transactional. Like a car salesman calling you “buddy” while steering you toward the close. Surface-level all the way down.
The result? People trusted Kevin enough to be vulnerable, to take risks, to bring their full selves. With Nancy, they performed. Stayed professional. Protected themselves.
Kevin built wealth. Nancy went brokelosing her best people in the process.
The Cost of Going Broke
When leaders perform authenticity instead of practicing it, the price is steep.
Trust erodes: Employees start second-guessing everything you say. They stop bringing you problems until they’ve become crises. They smile in meetings but vent about you in private Slack threads.
Performance declines: When people feel unheard, they stop trying. They do the minimum, knowing their ideas will be dismissed or reworked later. Half-hearted efforts, wasted hours, and endless redos are all symptoms of leadership that performs authenticity instead of practicing it.
Psychological safety vanishes: When you fake authenticity, your team learns to fake it right back. No one risks being vulnerable or challenges ideas. Creativity dies quietly in conference rooms where everyone nods along.
Your best people leave: Not always loudly. Not immediately. But they start looking. They stop investing. They give you their labor, not their loyalty.
For marginalized employees, the cost is even higher: Research shows the toll of code-switching and masking isn’t just emotionalit’s biological. Black adults, for example, “weather” years faster under chronic workplace stress, aging 6.1 years beyond their peers. Ninety-one percent of neurodivergent employees mask their traits at work, and most report burnout as a direct result.
That’s what happens when people spend their careers navigating leaders like Nancyconstantly calculating, code-switching, and self-protecting while leadership performs its way through “authenticity.” It doesn’t just drain engagementit literally accelerates aging and drives talent out the door.
What Building Wealth Actually Looks Like
Kevin didn’t just happen to be authentic. He had the emotional intelligence to make authenticity work.
Here’s what that looks like in practicethe four pillars of authentic leadership:
Self-Awareness (Know Yourself): Kevin knew his triggers and blind spots. When he got impatient, he recognized it and communicated expectations clearly instead of lashing out. Nancy probably had no idea how she came acrossor worse, she knew and didn’t care.
Transparency & Honesty (Show Yourself): Kevin admitted mistakes and shared challenges thoughtfully. Nancy talked about transparency but never revealed anything real. Her vulnerability was scripted.
Consistency & Integrity (Be Yourself): Kevin’s actions matched his words whether you were in the room or not. People knew what to expect. Nancy adapted to the audiencewarm in meetings, different behind closed doors.
Respectful Adaptation (Balance Yourself): Kevin was authentic without being unfiltered. He knew how to disagree respectfully, to be real without being reckless. Nancy confused polish with professionalism and never learned the difference.
Without EQ, authenticity is chaosbluntness masquerading as bravery, oversharing disguised as vulnerability.
With EQ, authenticity becomes the foundation for trust, creativity, and growth.
Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: You might be Nancy and not know it.
Cognitive dissonance lets us live with a lie. When we forfeit self-awareness for comfort, we convince ourselves we’re being authentic while we’re actually performing. We package our niceness. We script our vulnerability. We say the right words while our team watches our actionsand knows better.
If this stirs some discomfort, that’s your cue to practice emotional intelligenceto pause, reflect, and not defend.
Try this on Monday morning:
Practice the pause. When someone challenges you, do you immediately defendor take a beat to ask, “What if they’re right?”
Audit yourself. Do you remember what your people tell you? Do you follow up weeks later? When you admit a mistake, are you learningor just managing your image?
These small acts separate the leaders building wealth from those heading toward bankruptcy.
The Return on Investment
When you invest authenticity wiselywith emotional intelligence as your guidethe returns compound:
Trust multiplies: People stop hedging. They bring their full thinking, their wild ideas, their honest concerns. Problems get solved faster because no one’s wasting energy performing.
Retention stabilizes: Your best people stay not for perks but for purpose. They don’t just work for youthey work with you.
Innovation accelerates: Psychological safety fuels risk-taking. Teams build what mattersnot just what looks good in presentations.
Culture sustains itself: Authentic leaders create authentic teams. It spreads. New hires learn what’s truly valuednot what’s written on the wall, but what’s modeled in the room.
The difference between Kevin and Nancy wasn’t personality or charisma. It was the willingness to do the inner work required to show up authentically and skillfully.
Kevin built wealth because he had the emotional intelligence to make authenticity work. Nancy went broke because she never learned th difference between saying the right words and being real.
The question isn’t which leader you want to be.
The question is: Which leader are your people actually experiencing?
As Sir Isaac Newton discovered, the core scientific law of gravity is that what goes up must come down. The principle applies in many areas, which is why markets are jittery about the near-unchecked, three-year growth of stock prices fueled by the strength of the generative-AI revolution.
The market is on a tear, with a large gap growing even wider between public market valuations and the significantly higher private-market valuations of AI-exposed companies. The top five tech companies in the U.S. are, collectively, valued at more than the combined size of the Euro Stoxx 50, the U.K., India, Japan, and Canadaand account for around 16% of the entire global public equity market, according to Goldman Sachs.
Its not just AI model makers and the firms that provide their infrastructure: Its the associated industries that help serve the AI market. Earlier this year, Harvard economist Jason Furman estimated that U.S. GDP growth in the first half of 2025 was almost entirely due to investment in data centers.
Investors in companies like Nvidia are seeing blockbuster returns, as the firms value has risen more than 1,200% in the past five years, thanks to being one of the few companies able to provide the computer chips required for the AI revolution. Even so, some are worried that Nvidia is providing financing to customers looking to buy its chipsa supposedly circular chain that short sellers have quibbled with. (Nvidia, for its part, has issued responses to market analysts to refute those claims.)
It all adds up to a tetchy time, with nervousness and debate about an AI bubble. Not helping matters are the public comments about the current moment by some of the industrys biggest names.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that were currently in an AI bubble where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI. Microsoft founder Bill Gates has called it a frenzy. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a podcast in September that an AI bubble, and its potential burst, was definitely a possibility. Comparisons have been drawn to the 2000s-era dot-com bubble.
Weathering the storm
So if we are in an AI bubble and it does burst, then wholl be left standing at the end of it?
The idea that entire economies might be hit by the bursting of any bubble is unlikely to happen, reckons Christopher Tucci, professor of digital strategy and innovation at Imperial College Business School in London.
The internet bubble, for example, wiped out many companies and investors, but the technology itself only grew in importance afterwards, he says. Tucci sees AI in a similar way, noting, Even if the investment bubble bursts, the underlying technology will remain critical and will continue to advance.
And while the bubble continues to inflate, Tucci believes thats good news for smaller companies. At the moment, large amounts of money are flowing into AI startups, he says. This lowers startup costs, increases the number of competing companies, and creates vulnerabilities, mainly for investors.
But if and when that bubble bursts, those smaller companies are more likely to be exposed, while larger companies will be insulated from more significant risks.
Survivors will be the ones that own distribution, says Sergey Toporov, partner at early-stage VC firm Leta Capital. Toporov is blunt about the lack of a moat for smaller companies, saying, Nobody cares about your best-in-class AI startup unless people actually know it exists.
In that view, companies like the big four AI firmsGoogle, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Metaare likely to weather any storm, but smaller competitors could struggle. The rest will consolidate or become specialized model shops, Toporov says.
Smaller companies that have what Toporov calls defensible advantages like proprietary data or deep integration into business workflows could withstand an AI-caused market correction. He says the same is true for firms with strong distribution, recurring demand, and a deep technical moat.
Companies that piggyback on existing technology, including AI wrapper services that use their larger competitors AI models in order to provide answers to their customers, sometimes in specific specialties, may face a tough road ahead.
Big unknowns
However, not everyone agrees with that vision of the future. AI apps with high valuations look the riskiest at the moment, says Sampsa Samila, professor of strategic management at IESE Business School. They dont have easy moats against improving foundation models or other apps.
Samila believes even those that operate foundation models, like OpenAI, could be in a difficult position. Foundation labs burning billions are also looking shaky, he says. It’s not at all easy to see how OpenAI will manage, unless it develops winner-take-all superintelligence.
In part, thats down to what Samila sees as circular financing deals, including those supported by Nvidias funding in order to obtain Nvidia chips to power their models.
While OpenAI could struggle because of its cash burn, Samila contends that bigger, more established names in the space are better placed to weather the problems. Google is interesting because they control TPUs [tensor processing units], have proprietary data from Search, YouTube, and Gmail, and are already monetizing AI through Cloud, he explains.
But the big unknown for Google is whether its rollout of AI-native ads can replace its search revenue. Another area of concern for Google, given competition from the likes of Microsoft, is that its tech stack doesnt always integrate well with the existing IT systems being run by organizations.
Amongst the AI apps, deep embedding into customer workflows is going to be key to survival, Samila says. Many companies tend to use Microsofts products rather than Googles in large part because its what theyve always done.
Whatever happens, most people believe there are fundamental differences between a possible imminent burst of the AI bubble and the dot-com stock market crash. The Magnificent Seven tech firms have a 24-month forward price-to-earnings ratio that is 25 times their collective valuationhigh, but half the level it was in the dot-com era. Price-to-earnings growth is also around half the level it was a quarter century ago.
And many of the biggest names in the space are well-capitalized tech firms with cash reserves that can pay for any financial hiccups ahead in a way that the dot-com eras biggest names couldnt.
Regardless, those in and around the AI sector need to be aware of whats ahead.When a correction comes, venture capital will dry up potentially for several years, Tucci predicts. In the long run, however, AI as a technology will continue to grow in importance, regardless of short-term investment cycles.
In 1983, Howard Schultz was an employee of Starbucks, a small chain of coffee stores that mainly sold beans (and no drinks), when he was sent to Milan for a trade show. As Schultz observed Italians visiting their local cafés, he loved what he saw, describing it as a sense of community, a real sense of connection between the barista and the customer.
A few years later, after Schultz convinced Starbuckss owners to sell him the company, the new owner attempted to build that same type of connection here in the U.S.
To do so, Schultz knew he had to take care of his people. He called them partners, not employees, a symbol of a more collaborative working relationship. Over the years, Starbucks offered perks that were typically unheard of for part-time workers in food service, benefits like health insurance and contributions to college education.
Nowadays, though, Starbucks seems to have lost the reputation for looking after its people.
No doubt, at least part of the reason for that is Schultz has stepped down as CEO, multiple times, returning as the company struggled under his successors. A few years ago, after taking over on an interim basis, Schultz even went on a listening tour, visiting stores across the country to find out how the company had lost its way.
Starbuckss brass, and even Schultz himself, became hopeful when the company tapped Brian Niccol, former CEO of Chipotle, to take over the helm. In the world of fast food and fast casual dining, Niccol was a superstar. Most recently, he had completed a major turnaround at Chipotle, a company that saw sales double in Niccols first year as CEO, along with a major rise in stock price.
Everyone wondered the same thing: Could Niccol do the same for Starbucks?
In the beginning, I liked what I saw. Niccol vowed to return Starbucks to its roots, with a renewed focus on serving the finest coffee and a plan to update stores to make them more welcoming. Niccol also returned fan favorites, like condiment bars so customers have more control over customization.
But as more details of Niccols turnaround plan surfaced, concern grew. Baristas would be required to adhere to a much stricter dress code. They were given a set of guidelines, even a script, detailing their interactions with customers. Baristas were instructed to write something genuine on each customer cup, with threats of repercussions if they didnt.
This is the fatal flaw in Niccols turnaround plans. The workplace has evolved, and command-and-control management is no longer effective, at least not long term. Thats especially true in the service industry, where trust empowers employees to connect with customers.
Beyond that, Niccols latest policies are antithetical to how Schultz built Starbucks in the first placea company that prided itself on putting its people at the center of everything it did.
In contrast, Niccol and his team would benefit from taking a close look at a recent turnaround story, led by a CEO who, like Niccol, had experience resurrecting a dying brand: James Daunt of Barnes & Noble.
A former investment banker turned bookstore owner, Daunt took over the helm of Americas largest bookstore chain in 2019, which had been in steady decline for years. Since Daunt took over, Barnes & Noble has experienced a resurgence, leading to an expansion of dozens of new stores in 2023.
This wasnt Daunts first successful turnaround. The British businessman did something similar in the U.K., where he revitalized another chain of flailing bookstores, Waterstones.
So, how did Daunt get lightning to strike, twice? His hallmark strategy was simple: Give power to local store managers.
We sort of take three steps forward and then one step back, Daunt once said in an interview with The New York Times. The forward is my constantly encouraging and pushing for the stores themselves to have the complete freedom to do absolutely whatever they wanthow they display their books, price their books, sort their sections, anything. Those freedoms are difficult if you lived in a very straitjacketed world where everything was dictated to you.
In essence, Daunt turned local Barnes & Noble stores, and Waterstones stores before that, into indie bookstores. The strategy worked because of the trust he put in his people, and the power he gave them.
Of course, theres more than one way to turn a company around. Niccol found success at Chipotle. But a focus on efficiency and policies over people is diametrically opposed to Schultzs dream for Starbucks: that Italian-inspired vision of local connection between barista and customer.
I believe Niccols overarching goal to return Starbucks to its roots is a good one. But the companys ability to produce that experience of connection will depend on the people who are serving the drinksand that will require rebuilding a culture where Starbucks employees feel supported and cared for, not threatened.
If Starbucks can get back to taking care of its people, its people will take care of the customers. And the turnaround will take care of itself.
By Justin Bariso
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This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister site, Inc.com.
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When I was cycling across the country on my bike, I spent anywhere from six to nine hours a day in the saddlefor almost three solid months.
It made a lot of people wonder: What did you listen to all day long?
Was it mostly music, or more like audiobooks, podcasts? asked a friend of mine when we went for a drink at a bar after I got back home. What was on your playlist?
“Nothing,” I said.
She frowned slightly, as if shed misheard me. What do you mean, nothing?
“I mean, nothing. I dont listen to anything when I ride,” I replied. “I dont even wear earbuds.”
You could see the wheels of her mind grind to a standstill. What the hell. You . . . you just ride along in . . . in what? In total silence?
“More or less,” I said, laughing.
“Allll dayyy longgg??
“Yeah.”
She was gobsmacked. I would go completely out of my mind.
And my friend wasnt alone in her astonishment. Nearly everyone, upon learning that Id rawdogged a 4,150-mile cross-country cycling trip, looked utterly dumbstruckbereft, almost. I began to realize that while most people think its pretty daunting to cycle the entire U.S.A., they can vaguely imagine what it would be like as a physical challenge: Daunting, sure, but you just put your butt in the saddle and keep going, and youll get there. They dont want to do that epic, exhausting ride, but they can comprehend it.
But the idea of avoiding all media, all day long? They have no mental equipment to imagine that. It completely breaks their model of how the world works.
Except heres the thing: Its kind of awesome.
Silence is golden
Now the thing is, I am not some sort of anti-technology, anti-screens guy. I dont avoid media on principle, like one of our modern wild-eyed destroy-your-phone desert prophets. Quite the opposite. Even when Im on a road cycling trip, I use my phone a tonto navigate, to check the weather (tornado alert apps are particularly useful in Kansas, let me tell you), or just to dork around on social media.
But during the act of cycling itself? Silence, it turns out, is golden.
Part of why I dont wear earbuds while riding is safety. Im often riding along smaller county roads with SUVs and 16-wheelers hooshing past, barely a few feet away. I want to sense when theyre coming up behind me. I want to be able to hear the dopplering thrum of an approaching engine. I once tried some earbuds that let the outside sound bleed through, which kind of worked. Still, I worried I might get too absorbed in the music, and stop being vigilant about the traffic. So I ditched them.
But I found that I didnt miss it. It turns out that, when I turn off media for seven hours on end, my cycling brain goes to some really interesting places.
One of the things about cycling is that your mind is simultaneously busy and free. Cycling requires you to make a lot of constant, tiny decisions: Avoid that pothole, watch out for that pedestrian, swerve around that constellation of broken glass near the curb. You need to be vigilant. The psychologist Nick Moore writes about how navigating traffic on a bike requires a minutely focused state. The world contracts to a space just a few inches wide and a million miles long, outside which nothing exists.
But these decisions arent hard to make, and theyre over quickly, so I dont wind up being mentally exhausted by them.
A feast for the senses
Meanwhile, theres a ton of stimulation. Cycling cross-country is a feast for the senses. While arriving in a city, Id pass by ornate graffiti inside railway underpasses and marvel at the often-corroded architecture on the outskirts of town. Downtown, Id hear thingssnatches of overheard conversation from people I passed by, or bits of Bhangra music blasting from a fast-food joint.
Out in the deep countryside of the Great Plains, Id pass by sprawling crop-watering machinerysplayed across fields like a massive stick insectand watch it come alive in the dawn, puffing clouds of mist over the green wheat and corn. I saw road signs dented with bullet holes, a swollen river that had swallowed an SUV during a storm swell, and a massive longhorn that stared closely at me as I nervously rode past. In the Rocky Mountains, I came across a 16-wheeler hauling a single blade for a wind turbine so massive that it was the length of a city block.
Your senses feel like theyre constantly engaged in a non-stressed fashionlike your body is constantly taking notes on the world around you.
Its a neat interplay of forces: Cycling occupies your forebrain with a welter of tiny decisions, while also feeding your mind with the chill and gorgeous spectacle of the world at large. Together, it seems to loosen up my hindbrainshifting it into a new and meditative gear.
Pondering ideas
Often, Id find myself pondering ideas triggered by the world around me. While cruising through Trenton, New Jersey, I passed a crumbly little strip mall with a tae kwon do joint next to a hot yoga salon, and it started me marveling at how America has phagocytosed so many of the worlds historic physical/mental/spiritual-fitness cultures and absorbed them, Borg-like, into the Puritan quest of bettering our fallen, lazy gnostic selves.
Ill also discover that, almost without noticing it, Im meditating on a bigger life issuesome challenge at work, some memory of my late mother, some friend Ive been meaning to call, a passage in a book Id forgotten but that now intrigues the hell out of me. I often suspect those deep, arc-of-life thoughts rise up precisely because of the curious, tripartite mental state of cycling. The top layer of vigilance keeps me focused, the stimulus of the world inspires ideas, while the deep ocean of my latent mind churns quietlyuntil, suddenly, some aha moment pierces the surface, like a cresting dolphin.
Now, I dont want to oversell the mental state of cycling in silence! This is not about experiencing soul-shattering Eat-Pray-Love breakthroughs out there in the saddle. I havent had any Einstein-level insights. Its more like it creates a useful atmospher in the mind. I come back less jittery, more prepared to handle the everyday thinking of life.
Would listening to music or podcasts or audiobooks break that spell? Would it block that sense of flow? I suspect so. In my daily life, Im not about to stop listening to music or stop scrolling around on my phone. Im a nerd; I love marinating in news and essays about science and technology and culture.
But on the road, I need silence.
Before becoming a coach for neurodiverse individuals with ADHD, Justine Capelle Collis had a successful advertising career. She worked in Australia and the UK, and also across the US and Canadian markets. Her clients have included Fortune 500 companies and government agencies.
And she achieved all this without realizing that she has ADHD.
That realization came when she became a mother. Both of her sons were diagnosed with ADHD, and she started asking questions. “How do I advocate and get the system to bend for them, rather than having them fit into the system and then break? she asked.
She then went on a personal journey to retrain. Collis enrolled in post-graduate study, and went through a specialist coach training in neurodivergent coaching. But along the way, she received her own ADHD diagnosis.
Being a mother of two sons with ADHD required “a different way of parenting,” she says. It also highlighted the feeling that something was off.
“I couldn’t make sense of it,” Collis recalls. “I can have a successful career, I can achieve all of these incredible things. Why am I failing at this thing that I’m biologically wired to do: which is to have kids?” A conversation with a coach friend of hers, who was also practicing to be a neurodiversity coach, revealed some ‘penny-dropping’ moments.
The reason she was able to succeed in her professional career, she explained, was that she had freedom and agency to design her working life in a way that aligned and worked for her. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case with other neurodiverse employees, who are often forced to survive in a world that is not designed or conducive to them doing their best.
But some companies are turning to coaching in an attempt to address this.
The growing awareness of neurodiversity
Like Collis, Dr. George Sachs also built a career while having ADHD. Sachs cofounded an app called Inflow with Levi Epstein and Seb Isaacs after 20 years of working as a clinical psychologist. The app provides support with adults with ADHD through various tools, including coaching. And while their customers are primarily individuals, they do work with organizations and universities that offer Inflow to their employees.
Sachs believes that social media has contributed to the rise of awareness in neurodiversity at work. Companies like EYand Microsoft for example, have a range of policies to support neurodiverse individuals.
They do that through work arrangements, modified workspaces, and educational resources. Thanks to social media, says Sachs, people have become more aware of diagnostic criteria for various neurodiversity conditions.
“At the same time, the concept of disorder is changing,” he says. Rather than seeing their conditions as a disorder, he explains, “you’re seeing this movement towards acceptance of difference.”
The value of neurodiversity-specific coaching
Neurodiversity exists on a spectrum, and even those with similar diagnoses often have unique struggles and challenges. And as a result, companies can’t rely on one-size-fits-all benefits, says Gijo Matthew, Chief Product Officer at Spring Health. The mental health platform launched a neurodiversity hub earlier this year.
“We decided to invest in neurodiversity because traditional mental health benefits often fall short for this community, leaving many employees without the resources they need to be successful, Matthew says. It’s that particular specificity that can make coaching a valuable tool for neurodiverse individuals.
Jill Johnson, a coach who works with executive leaders, women, parents, and individuals with ADHD, describes coaching as a ‘partnership.’ The coach might have a particular expertise, Johnson says, but “it’s also the lived experience of the client, who brings an equally important role to figuring out how to helpand taking ownership of how they can be successful in life, or in the workplace.”
How coaching helps neurodiverse individuals
Roman Peskin, CEO and co-founder of ed-tech startup ELVTR, also didn’t receive a diagnosis until later in his life. He describes trying a series of ‘normal’ jobs in his twenties that he was subsequently fired from, first as a travel agent, then later running a travel website. “Both times I got fired for the same reason,” he says: “not incompetence, but procrastination and inconsistency. Id do great work in bursts, then mentally disappear.”
This is something that Collis is familiar with. “The single biggest thing for brains like ours,” she explains, “is they fire up on interests, not based on external urgency, or what someone else or some external source says it should be. Even though we might know we need to do this thing first, we’re wired that way. So we have to function in a way that harnesses that capability, rather than forcing it into a box.”
For Peskin, that’s the value that coaching can potentially bring, though he stresses that the coach needs to understand what it’s like to have a “high-octane brain.” It won’t work if you have “neurotypical productivity guru pushing a GTD masterclass down your throat,” he says.
“A good coach could start by naming whats going on so you stop thinking ‘Im broken.’ Then help install realistic framework: sprints instead of marathons, accountability, focus blocks, external structure,” Peskin continues.
Because neurodiversity encompasses a wide range of conditions, a level of personalization is also necessary. A 2025 University of Reading study that looked at the inclusivity of a neurodiversity coaching program found that some neurodivergent individuals, for example, do better with text-based or audio-only coaching rather than via video conferences.
Coaches also need to be flexible and responsive in how they communicate. The study cited that some autistic individuals, for example, may face difficulty with open-ended questions. This means that coaches need to be able to adjust their method in a way that works for the employee.
The importance of organizational culture, support, and education
Peskin stresses that companies cannot rely on coaching to be the be-all and end-all. “I think of coaching as software,” he says. ÜMost companies still need to fix the hardware.”
“You can’t coach your way out of a toxic system,” says Collis. “So if the culture in a workplace is fundamentally broken, or not safe from a psychological perspective, then those issues need to be addressed first.”
For neurodiverse individuals, that support starts with education. There are a lot of misconceptions and stereotypes about neurodiverse individuals, says Sachs. For example, like the idea that those with ADHD might struggle to get their work done, or that everyone on the autism spectrum is blunt and introverted. A coach may be able to help a neurodiverse individual with time management or emotional regulation at work. However, the onus is also on the organization to provide a supportive and flexible environment so they can actually do those things.
This starts from the top. As a 2022 study published in AIB Insights concluded, any neurodiverse-inclusive initiative needs to have buy-in from leadership go have any chance of success.
It’s also about ensuring that the neurodiverse employee is employed in a role that actually allows them to use their strengths. “If your job is repetitive admin in an open-plan office with Slack on fire all day, no amount of coaching will turn that into a good fit for an ADHD brain,” says Peskin.
Coaching is also not a substitute for competent management, Peskin says. “If you bolt coaching onto a culture of constant interruption, vague expectations, and busyness show-offs, it just becomes an expensive Band-Aid on a system thats causing the wound.” Many neurodiverse employees also struggle with sensory distractions, as a 2025 Ernst and Young study found. For a workplace to be truly inclusive, it needs to facilitate flexible working arrangements or a physical space where neurodiverse employees can work without interruptions.
Ultimately, Peskin wants to see an attitude shift that sees neurodivergent talent as a strategic asset. As the 2022 study found, when organizations provide neurodiverse individuals the opportunity to play to their strengths, they’re more likely to make meaningful contributions to the company. In the abstract, the authors wrote, “the actions taken to accommodate neurodivergent employees often spill over to the benefit of all employees.”
Peskin says, “Neurodivergent talent is a competitive advantage, not a DEI show off. We dont need fixing. We need the rules of the game adjusted so our strengths actually count.”
For a while now, weve been hearing warnings about AI eliminating jobs. First, it was only at the fringes. But now its starting to bite into roles once thought untouchable. It isnt just administrative work, copywriting, or design anymore; even advisory roles, data analytics, and coding are being reshaped by automation.
But history teaches us that technological disruption doesnt eliminate work, it reshapes it. The industrial revolution, for example, didnt end human contribution, it simply redefined the places where humans bring the most value.
AI is doing the same thing today. While it does, in fact, take (or reduce the need for) some jobs, it can, and will, pave new paths in the form of entrepreneurial opportunities. The rise of no-code tools, automated workflows, and AI-powered tools to support business creation means people can turn ideas into companies faster than ever before. The real challenge now lies in ensuring that the accessibility and utilization of these resources match the level of AI-induced displacement.
While employment rates remain relatively stable, the numbers mask deeper shifts in how work gets done. Automation has been advancing for yearsaccelerated by AIwith many firms quietly cutting labor not through layoffs but by trimming hours, automating tasks, or relying on smaller teams to sustain productivity. This obscured drop in main hours, dubbed shadow layoffs, paints a far more complex picture of employment health than the headlines and numbers suggest.
AI makes independence not just possible, but practical
With roughly 80% of U.S. businesses already operating as nonemployer firms (meaning the owner is the only employee), self-driven enterprises have gained popularity since the 1990s. This massive trend is undervalued, and AIs unique ability to fuel entrepreneurial endeavors will signal a cultural and economic shift toward independence, flexibility, and self-determination. These characteristics are uniquely American, one of the reasons the country has long been the poster child for rags-to-riches capitalism.
AI makes the traditional employment model even less reliable and familiar roles less secure, but the benefits of AI-driven entrepreneurship could reshape the workforce in the near future. For individuals, AI removes many of the barriers that once made the process of building a business challenging. AIs assistance negates, for example, costly and time-consuming marketing campaigns and the difficulties of providing customer support and training materials that drain budgets and slow down the path to business ownership.
Launching a brand, opening an online clothing store, or offering a niche service can now happen in days, not months, with tools that streamline product development, go-to-market, and scaling from day one.
For example, a laid-off marketing manager can launch a single-person consultancy powered by AI tools and handle everything from accounting and content creation to client management as a one-person show. This is something that in the past would have demanded at least three additional employees.
While the technology is proven, individual grit alone isnt enough. Without proper support systems to close the gap between displaced workers and AI-enabled bootstrapping, an accessible path to entrepreneurship will remain out of reach for most. For future classes of AI entrepreneurs to thrive, theyll need an ecosystem designed to absorb and launch them forward.
Turning disruption into design: Why public-private collaboration matters
The ultimate goal for turning AI displacement into entrepreneurial opportunities should be a healthy society and a resilient economy. The key to maximizing these circumstances lies in empowering those who combine a unique vision with AI fluency. Investing in regional AI boot camps, small-business accelerators, or micro-grant programs for displaced workers will provide resources to help them reinvent themselves.
Timely support is key: Upskilling workshops, business literacy, and AI fluency need to be accessible before layoffs happen, not after. If laid-off workers can pivot faster, the economic and social repercussions will be minimal.
The most effective recipe for success in this regard is when the private and public sectors work in a complementary manner. Public-private entrepreneurial hubs could close this gap. Governments can ensure equitable access, while private companies focus on relevance and innovation. Through upskilling and educational initiatives and incentivized collaborations, the two can turn layoffs into small-business launchpads.
In New York, the Department of Labor enacted an initiative to provide free access to Coursera and professional certifications from leading tech companies, including Google. While primarily for reskilling, these certifications and courses specifically support self-employment in the digital economy. If replicated nationwide, this could actually start moving the needle on digital self-employment.
The key to kick-starting like-minded programs is through building awareness. They should focus on steering economic and social stability by providing laid-off workers with the necessary tools. If key private-sector leaders and government officials can align around shared goals, AI could redefine the American dream instead of disrupting it.
While AI destabilized the traditional employer-employee model, it also opened new doors for the next wave of entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs wont necessarily have an Ivy League degree or access to VCs, but they will be those who embrace AIs powerful capabilities and monetize those skills in original ways.
AI will continue to change the paradigm on how and where people earn a living, but the outcome depends on how society responds. With the right infrastructure in place, this wave of automation could become one of the largest drivers of entrepreneurship since the internets onset. Without it, expect to see deeper inequality and economic stagnation.
Disruption is unavoidable, but reinvention is a workers choice. Those who pair their expertise with AIs capabilities wont just survive this transition; theyll be the ones who embrace entrepreneurship, turning passion projects into real businesses faster than ever. The barrier to entry is no longer a team or a budget. Its a mindset and a small monthly subscription. In this shift, the winners wont be the ones who fear AI; theyll be the ones who take one good idea and build.
Its the end of the year and the pressure is on, demands are high, and youre probably close to the end of your rope as you try to wrap up your remaining projects before the holidays start. If thats you, youre not alone. Holiday stress is very common: In a survey by LifeStance Health, 57% of respondents said they experience stress over the season.
But its possible to maintain your energy and momentum and not only get things done but stay engaged and finish strong. Fortunately, there are a few pragmatic strategies to maintain your energy and momentum through the end of the year.
1. Maintain control
Youre likely to start feeling out of control. This is because of all the work you must accomplish before the end of the year, all the events you must attend, and all the responsibilities to families and friends for the holidays.
Feeling like your work-life balance is out of control can sap your energy and create a barrier to getting things done. This can turn into a vicious circle. Youre out of control, cant get things done, and then feel even more out of control, and the cycle continues. On the other hand, when you feel greater levels of choice and control, youre better able to stay clearheaded, get more accomplished, and feel more satisfied as a result.
So how can you feel more in control? First, decide what you must do this year and put off the things that dont need your attention until after the holidays. Be intentional to get things done that will relieve your mind and keep responsibilities from hanging over your head. At the same time, plan for what can be done later on.
Additional tactics to take control are deceptively simple. Make lists of what you need to accomplish. Keep a calendar handy so you know whats coming up. When you accomplish things, check them off your list so you feel a sense of completion and progress, or mark the calendar counting the days youve tackled.
With all of these, take the approach that works best for you. For some people, its an analog and always-visible to-do list. For others its an app or the use of your systems calendar or planning software. Dont spend a lot of time deciding which to use, just leverage what youre accustomed to and dig in to take control and maintain your momentum for the year.
2. Prioritize
With so much coming at you, it can be tough to find the time and energy for everything. The project is due at work, you have to buy a secret Santa gift, and you must figure out what to give your childs teacher for the holidays.
Surprisingly, when you remind yourself that you cant do it all, youll actually enhance your well-being. Its a mindset that we can do it all that often leads to burnout and emotional upheaval. By giving yourself permission to choose, rather than having to do everything, you liberate yourself to focus on whats most important.
In order to choose well, clarify your values and focus on whats most important to you. For example, completing the project at work is aligned with your value of excellence or standout performance. Contributing to your childs party at school is important to your role as an involved and committed parent.
But you might choose to forgo the committee meeting this month or miss the neighborhood cookie exchange because these arent as important to your identity or your priorities. In fact, the LifeStance Health data found that 64% of people would like to skip at least a few of their holiday gatherings. So while many of the meetings or events still matter, some may not rank as highly when you consider that you cant do it all.
Do what you can and preserve your energy for the activities that are most important to you.
3. Spend meaningful time with others
When things get busy, you may feel like everyone is pulling you in different directions, but our community and relationships are among the most important drivers of well-being.
Youll want to maintain connections to maintain your energy. Research shows that strong community and relationships have significant impact on mental, physical, and cognitive well-being. And yet the holidays can be a lonely time. According to LifeStance Health, 51% of people surveyed said they experience loneliness during the holiday season.
Reframe the demands you face as opportunities to share meaningful time with others. If youre under pressure to finish the project before the holiday break, appreciate the bonding opportunity with colleagues as you push forward together. If youre holiday shopping with your sister-in-law, appreciate the moments to deepen your relationship. Strive to be fully present with others, no matter what youre doing together.
You can also reduce the responsibilities that come with getting together with others. Instead of reading your usual book with your book group this month, get together for conversation without actually reading a book. Or if your singles group normally meets at someones house, get together at a restaurant this month so no one has to host. The bottom line: Adjust your patterns during this time so its less about the demands and more about the connections.
4. Manage your habits
Another way to maintain your energy is to manage the small habits that make a big difference in your physical and emotional energy. Get enough sleep. Stay hydrated. Eat healthfully. Move as much as you can. All of these are proven ways to ensure youll be at your best.
Also spend as much time as possible in nature, even if the weather is colder. Significant research demonstrates that by spending more time outside, youre able to maintain perspective and rejuvenate for all the responsibilities you face. In fact, nature is a source of micro joy.
Part of the reason that nature is so powerfully positive is that it engages your diffuse attention. Youre generally aware of the light, the breeze, or the brisk air. This is in contrast to the focused attention that work or personal commitments require. Research published in Environment and Behavior found that a shift to a more diffuse focus contributes to well-being and renews you for tasks that require more concentration or intensity.
At the same time, avoid habits that detract from your well-being. For example, steer clear of doomscrolling or spending too much time online. These activities can have an especially negative impact because of the overwhelm caused from too much bad news; the urgency of most news sources, which creates a sense of worry; and the comparisons we naturally make to others. Instead, put your device aside or set a timer on your system to limit your time on social media platforms or news outlets. This will free you to spend more time with people or in nature.
5. Focus on gratitude
Finally, focus on gatitude. When youre consciously grateful, you contribute to your well-being and ensure you can keep going through it all. You have a lot of responsibilities at work, which is a signal that others value your contributions and rely on you. You have gifts to wrap, which is a reflection of all the loved ones youre able to provide for. You have gatherings to attend, which is an indication of how youre connected to your community.
Its also powerful to remind yourself that youre not alone. When youre under a lot of pressure, it can be natural to lose a broader perspective or feel like a victim of too much, too fast, all-at-once circumstances. But research experiments have shown that when people remind themselves that others are also going through hard times or similar challenges, they feel greater levels of happiness and well-being and less isolation, according to a study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies.
To embrace gratitude, think of two experiences youre grateful for before you go to bed or consider one relationship youre thankful for as you approach each new day. Also remind yourself that youre not alone, and that while you face a ton of demands, others have similar experiences. Focusing here will help you maintain your energy.
You can do it
Remember: Just do what you can. You dont have to be perfect, and youll certainly miss things or drop the ball sometimes. Be flexible and optimistic with yourself and others, leaving room for things to go well enough, even if they dont meet your ideal.
Reduce the pressure on yourself and youll not only get through such a busy time with your energy stores intact, youll also maintain greater joy in the process.
When Jon LaMantia, a Long Island-based business reporter, was in journalism school, his professor drilled one rule into his students: you get two exclamation points a year and no more.
So if you use them in January, LaMantia recalls being told, you better hope theres nothing to exclaim for the rest of the year.
The rule stuck. LaMantia still thinks about that rigid quota today. I use exclamation points all the time in texts and emails. If you dont, the message sounds more stern, he says. But I cant remember the last time I used one in a business article.
Strong feelings about the exclamation point arent uncommon. People tend to either love it or loathe it; lean on it constantly, or avoid it religiously.
Personally, I use multiple, but at work Ill only use one, says a woman who works in HR at an investment bank in New York City, who wasnt cleared to speak publicly but said she couldnt resist chiming in on this topic. People say Im bubbly and high-energy, so I use them to let my style come through in emailwhen appropriate.
A consultant in Ohio, who also asked not to be named, tells me he uses them to lighten the tone of written communication or reduce formality. Others tread more cautiously. I use way too many and then feel embarrassed later on, admits an artist from Brooklyn. A Boston-based consultant says hes begun actively metering his usage to set the right tone.
In short, exclamation points matter. They spark surprisingly strong feelings about tone, intention, and even etiquette. But according to new research, they also shape much more than just mood.
Warmer, But Less Analytical
A recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, titled Nice to meet you. (!) Gendered norms in punctuation usage, found that women not only use exclamation points more frequently than men, but that this difference carries real consequencesboth for those writing and for those reading.
Across several experiments, participants judged writers who used exclamation points differently across measures that included perceived warmth, power, analytical ability, and competence. Heavy usersa group that overwhelmingly skews femalewere seen as warmer and more enthusiastic, but also as less analytical.
The study also showed that women were more likely to think about their punctuation choices, whether to end a sentence with a period or an exclamation point, for example, underscoring the invisible cognitive labor that often shapes womens communication.
All of it illustrates how something as small as punctuation can reinforce the subtle forces still underpinning stubborn gender norms and divides both at work, and beyond.
Unequal Cognitive Load
Cheryl Wakslak, associate professor of Management and Organization at Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California and one of the authors of the study, says she was particularly struck by how much mental energy women devote to these decisions.
Women are putting a lot of thought into this, she says. On one hand, intentional communication is valuable, she adds, but its also a lot of cognitive energy that men are simply not spending.”
Women, she explains, are constantly navigating what she describes as a warmthcompetence tightrope.
Theyre worried about not seeming warm, so they use exclamation points to appear warmer. But theyre also worried about not being seen as competent or powerful, and they may worry that exclamation marks undermine that. Men, the research shows, largely dont think about any of that.
Another finding that surprised her: the trade-offs of using exclamation points. Heavy users were perceived as more appealing collaborators and more enthusiastic, but also less powerful and less analytical.
For me, the most interesting finding, though, was about competence, says Wakslak. We didnt see a clear effect in either direction. That matters to me because, when Im walking that tightrope, Im mostly worried about the competence trade-off, she adds. I dont need to seem powerful in every context, but I do want to seem competent.
Still, she acknowledges that in some work environments, being perceived as analytical is crucial. In those situations, based on these findings, a woman might want to avoid using exclamation marks.
Perpetuating Stereotypes
Asked about the exclamation point research, Elaine Lin Hering, author of Unlearning Silence, a book about verbal and nonverbal communication, says shes not surprised.
[The findings] illustrate the downside of the conditioning women have long received and the contorting women do to try to meet expectations. It is simply one of many examples of the double standards women are held to and the tension that women navigate every day, she adds.
It’s akin, Hering says, to women being told to smile more in order to appear warmer and more approachableand then finding themselves being taken less seriously because they smile too much.
And the issue extends beyond punctuation. Workplace communication norms are typically defined by the groups with the dominant identity. Not just that everyone should talk like a man, but that how people communicate should fit into the stereotypes that the dominant groups have of that other identity, she says.
Social norms exacerbate inequality by perpetuating existing stereotypes that the dominant group holds, she explains, like that women are too emotional or Asians are good workers but not leaders or that Gen Z is lazy.
So what can be done? As ever, when the problem is rooted in social conditioning, theres no easy fix. But Hering says that, especially in workplace settings, systems can be put in place to help control for biases like the ones that creep in when we read something someones written.
We can challenge the social norms and exacerbated inequalities by having clear and consistent criteria for evaluating performance, she says.
Research published in 2022, shows that womenbecause of systemic biasare often assessed in workplaces based on their actual performance, while men are assessed based on their future potential creating what the academics dub a gender promotion gap. Having more rigid criteria for assessment can offset that divergence.
A wide awareness of the existence of these biases and this conditioning is alsoof coursecritical to making workplaces fairer. And Cheryl Wakslaks coauthor Gil Appel is the first to admit that. Appel, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the GW School of Business at George Washington University, says that spending time researching gender and communication has made himmuch more of a feminist.
There are some things that men just dont have to think about at all, and women have to think about all the time, he says. Whether thats to ensure their safety, or whether its to make sure theyre coming across as competent, he adds. They just always have to be thinking.
And beyond becoming more feminist, theres one other thing thats changed for Appel since working on the research: I have to admit, he says, I definitely use more exclamation marks now.
Its been a tumultuous year for the legacy retailer, shaped by new tariffs, shifting consumer habits, and the constant flip between wartime and peacetime leadership. Macys Inc. Chairman and CEO Tony Spring shares why his team is now on version twenty-seven of the plan, and what it really means to court the next generation of shoppers.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Responsefeatures candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
The Thanksgiving Day Parade, the sprint to Christmas, it’s like your Super Bowl. What’s waw distinctive about 2025? I mean, the economic and shopping environment has been pretty chaotic.
I think the news certainly makes things more complicated. I think people are confused. We had a terrific second quarter. We talked about the back-to-school business being pretty healthy, and yet we all see potential storm clouds on the horizon. So we’re trying to be cautiously optimistic You could stay up all night worrying But in reality, our job is to make sure we create a better shopping experience for the customer. There’s plenty of things that are out of our control that we could obsess about, but it really doesn’t satisfy anything or make you feel any better.
And for the parade, how do you keep it fresh?
Making sure every year the parade has, again, newness: We have partnerships with Disney, Pokemon, Pop Mart, Labubus We want to make sure that whatever is popular and whatever’s interesting weaves its way, not only into our merchandise strategy, but also into an iconic event like the Thanksgiving Day Parade. 32 million people approximately are going to watch it on TV, and we have several million more that come live in person in New York City on that day.
Macy’s has an iconic place in American culture, although obviously it hasn’t been immune to the challenges in retail. You launched what you call a bold new chapter after becoming CEO in 2024. It’s showing traction in your financial results, but you’re still sort of in the midst of it. What’s working, what’s not?
Well, let me break it into the three parts: The first was strengthening and reimagining Macy’s, and that included closing underproductive stores and betting on our future state stores, so putting more colleagues into the stores, putting new merchandise into the stores.
We also improved our digital platform and doubled down on our luxury businesses, which include Bloomingdale’s and Blue Mercury.
And then the final part of the strategy is end-to-end operations, and that’s making sure we’re utilizing automation and robotics and AI, and making sure the complexity that might exist in our business doesn’t affect the consumer.
Your stores face pressure from everywhere, fast fashion and e-commerce and social shopping and live shopping. How do you think about in-person, human interaction, versus digital commerce?
I talk to our team all the time about the word balance, and I don’t think the word gets enough volume or credit There’s some reports out now that the next generation is longing for socialization, and in-person shopping is a big part of what they’re doing together. There is a place, I think, for all these types of businesses, as long as we pay attention to what the consumer wants. Almost 70% of our business still remains in physical retail, which is very consistent with the industry averages. That doesn’t mean we don’t love our digital business. If we were selling paper towels, who wants to go shopping for paper towels? I’d like to have those delivered to my house right before I run out of them. But I think there are other things that are fun to do in person.
And by the way, when we have a DJ on a Saturday, when we do bottle engraving, when we, people show how to do flower arranging, you can get people to turn out to the stores because it becomes an extension of what they want to do for the weekend. I think a big part of our bold new chapter is stepping up to the fact that a good retail experience, people are looking for. A bad or mediocre retail experience. People, people can do digital. They don’t need to exhaust themselves with that experience.
I want to ask you about planning and decision-making in 2025. One CEO I talked to recently told me that things change so fast that he’s been forced to update his plans as often as weekly. You get new data constantly. I’m curious what you look at and how fluid you have to be with your plans?
You have to be very fluid. I mean, to be candid, in the age of tariffs and in the uncertainty of supply chains, plans are the guardrails, and the longer the plan, the less accurate it is. So you do deal with a rolling operating forecast, which is something that we update on a weekly and monthly basis, and that kind of gives us a greater visibility into how to allocate inventory, how to plan our staffing, how to change our marketing, so that we’re doing it in real time, not based on some plan that we developed three or six months ago, which may at this point be somewhat outdated. I think we’re on version number 27 of our forecast and plan, because of the interesting environment that we’re operating in 2025.
There’s an analogy that people sometimes use, that sometimes you need a wartime leader and sometimes you need a peacetime leader, and there’s a different strategy for each one of them. And I’m curious whether you feel like for Macy’s, is today wartime or peacetime? And how would you cast yourself in that?
I’d like to say it depends on the day of the week you ask me, and I think the challenge for our business is, on Tuesdays, I might have to be a peacetime leader, and on the first day of November, you may need to be a wartime leader. And in the environment we’re operating with, with unexpected tariffs by the middle of the year that didn’t exist at the beginning of the year, there is a lot of wartime philosophy. The same time, we are in a business for the long term. We are not trying to just have a great third quarter. We’re trying to have a great business that lasts decades, if not more. What matters tomorrow is going to be different than what mattered yesterday. I use a phrase, graciousness and kindness don’t cost money. So, how do we make sure that we imbue and express those things on a regular basis?
What’s your role when it comes to the Thanksgiving Day Parade itself?
Stay out of the way.
