Some companies see leadership and managerial training as an investment. Others, however, provide very few resources for the transition from individual contributor to leaders.
For most of the latter companies, managerial training is a one-off event. Take a seminar or two, and off you go. Sometimes you get a company that offers executive coaching or mentorship to their C-suites. But for many first-time (and even some middle) managers, they’re often left to fend for themselves.
This is the problem that leadership coaching startups are trying to solve. The answer, they believe? AI.
While founders of these startups acknowledge the limitations, many are adamant that AI can help break the barriers, democratizing a perk that companies often reserve for the very few at the top.
In this paid Premium story, you’ll:
Learn how AI and human coaching differ in function, and how they can complement each other.
Understand how AI can help solve the gaps that are common in today’s leadership development.
Identify AI’s limitations as a coach and trainer.
Most organizations dont provide managerial training
Ian Gover is a trained industrial psychologist with over 25 years of experience in human resources. Initially, he was resistant to the idea of AI having any part in coaching and mentoring.
That is, until he started to dig deeper into the dataand realized he was part of a group that he calls the fortunate few.
I got amazing training from the companies I worked for, he tells Fast Company, starting from a 30-day, high-immersive sort of leadership programming to having access to coaches and mentors when the company promoted him.
He soon learned, however, that those experiences were rare and far between. He quotes a Gartner study that found 85% of new managers receive no formal training.
Thats when a switch flipped in Govers brain.
He realized that he was asking the wrong question: Its not whether AI can replace humans for this type of learning. Its about how AI can potentially help the majority of managers, who receive very little initial and ongoing support from organizations.
Eventually, that led to Gover cofounding Rypple, a platform that aims to help managers by providing them with an AI-driven leadership team. This includes a range of AI assistants that can help managers with tasks like meeting preparation and follow-ups, and point managers to relevant resources that tackle a topic they might be struggling with. There is also a role-play component, where managers can rehearse difficult conversations with an AI assistant and receive feedback on what went well and what they could have done better. All of these interactions build a context-specific and personalized leadership profile, and can analyze patterns and suggest opportunities for growth.
Viewing human and AI coaching as two different tools
Like Gover, Leon Wever experienced first-hand benefit of one-on-one coaching during his stint as a corporate lawyer. Wever was eager to bring coaching into more working environments, which led him to cofound Coachello. Unlike most AI-coaching startups, Coachello actually provides a hybrid model that incorporates human and AI coaching. Their customers can access coaches that are credentialed through the International Coaching Federation and have access to AI tools. These tools help with role-plays, training sessions, and dashboards that track behavior change progress, competencies, and skill gaps.
Wever believes that human and AI coaching are two distinct tool that provide different benefits.
Technically, AI cannot resonate from experience, and it cannot care for another human being, he says. What AI can do, he explains, is provide an assessment or a reflection tool, and enrich the human coaching experience. For example, AI can live record your human coaching session. The next time you do something to apply your learning from the coaching session, it can record and suggest feedback.
Say youre working on having a difficult conversation with a direct report for the first time. After your human coaching session, you might role-play a potential scenario with an avatar. AI can analyze your performance based on the takeaways and feedback that you receive from your human coach. Your human coach will then have access to that information the next time you meet. In this instance, Wever explains, AI can actually enrich human coaching by making it more accurate.
The opportunity to provide on-demand, 24/7 support
For James Cross, cofounder of Tenor, going into the AI-leadership space was about solving the lack of time and scalability problem that many companies face when it came to leadership development coaching.
When it comes to interpersonal skills that managers need to possess, the former Workday VP explains: We know that humans need to practice and retain those skills . . . Thats what AI is really good at.
However, theres only a limited number of qualified coaches in the world, and many are unable to provide 24/7 support.
Cross believes that COVID expanded the meaning of what it means to be a manager. Theyre being expected to do more with less headcount, he says, and middle managers and frontline managers are bearing the brunt of it. But with AI, he explains, a manager can tap into an on-demand support, almost like a really good HR business partner and executive coach who knows the business, [and] knows you and your team.
He believes this to be especially beneficial for frontline managers in industries like manufacturing and distribution. I think tech company managers are fairly well supported, he observes. In most instances, youre only ever a Slack message away from your HR team. But if youre a manager at a large grocery store chain, youre having to deal with these dynamic situations in the moment. You dont have direct HR support.
Cross says many of these managers are working in a fast-paced environment while dealing with issues like lateness, hygiene, and personal problems. They can turn to AI coaches for suggestions on what they might want to do at that specific moment. For example, say an employee has been late several times in a row, managers can ask AI for suggestions on how they might want to approach this conversation in a sensitive way.
The more they do that, the more AI picks up on patterns and insights that the managers might not be aware of.
Cross finds that once they get over the hurdle of the idea of talking to an AI, managers are often more receptive to AI feedback than they would be to feedback from a human manager. Thats because theres no emotion attached to it, he explains, and they see it as something thats logical and contextual to them.
Acknowledging AI’s limitations
All three cofounders acknowledge that while AI has its strengths, it also has its limitations.
Tenor, for example, has specific guardrails in lace. The moment a manager starts to ask AI for advice on certain topics, it directs them to speak to an actual human. What AI determines as off-limits will be different for every customerCross believes that managers should discuss termination, health concerns, or specific personal problems with another human in the company.
Dr. Marais Bester, a Netherlands-based occupational psychologist for software firm SHL, said that it would be a risk for a company to rely on AI as a “one-stop-shop for all learning and leadership growth.
After all, human beings are weird, unique, wonderful and unpredictable,” he says. In his opinion, a hybrid model is ideal. This might look like a human coach building a development plan, and using AI to supplement where necessary.
For example, say the human coach doesnt have the time to analyze every single persons psychometric testing results. The person that is being coached might use AI to do that, inputting only the information that theyre comfortable with.
Kseniia Aksenova, a customer service manager at The Pokémon Company International, observed one downsides of using AI coaching. She found that it didnt provide any surprising or unique insights.
It just gave me something that I was thinking of already, she says. It didnt give me much of a new perspective that I was trying to get. At the time Aksenova was using an AI coach, she was going through some personal and professional issues that she wanted to work through. The solutions that she received from the AI coach were ones she already thought of. It was up to her to do a lot of the critical thinking herself. Only then was she able to work with the AI coach and obtain the new insights that she was looking for.
AI as a tool to democratize learning
Gover is hopeful that in the future, AI can be a tool to democratize learning and coaching. For his team at Rypple, the thing that excites us every single morning is really that idea of what happens if we are able to level that field.
Its not about making every manager the worlds best expert in every single leadership topic, he explains. But what if we are able to actually improve the capability and capacity of a material part of that community of managers that are struggling out there right now? What does it mean if we can provide leadership and management opportunities to those who have historically been left out of those discussions and conversations? Gover ponders.
The main message, he insists, shouldnt be about AI replacing human coaches. Its about increasing access to all of these leadership trade secrets that only the few and fortunate have had the privilege to access, he explains.
Nows the time to open it up and make it available.
I spent several years of my career in the uncomfortable role of middle manager. On one side, I had executives asking me why my team couldnt do more, and on the other side, my employees told me they were stretched too thin.
It was an endless tug-of-war. I was both the enforcer of company expectations and the advocate for my teams needs. At times, my role felt at complete odds with itself. Executives push for efficiency and growth, while employees look for empathy and stability.
Middle management, understandably, feels like a pressure cooker.
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The shifting role of middle management
My role as a middle manager was many years ago. Todays middle managers have the added pressure of potentially becoming obsolete. Big companies like Amazon, Google, and Citigroup have opted to make their management teams leaner. Not to mention the looming threat of AI.
With flattening org charts and AI-driven efficiencies, the role of middle management has changed. Theyre no longer the roles that keep things moving. Instead, theyre responsible for people: managing culture and communication across departments and locations.
Yet even though the expectations and job descriptions have changed, many of the underlying limitations of middle management havent. Middle managers often have limited authority to implement changes. Yet, somehow, they have unlimited accountability for outcomes.
Unlimited accountability that often leads to burnout, especially when managing people. I spoke to one former middle manager who said that she felt like she had to compensate for her employers unsustainable growth practices. I had to choose between screwing people over or shielding my team, she said. It was emotionally draining. Eventually, she quit and took a new job as a non-manager.
The reimagined role of middle management
To survive in the new world of middle management, you have to acknowledge that youll mostly be a people-manager rather than a task-manager.
To succeed in this type of role, youll need to do all of the following:
Set the right expectations with upper management, making your teams bandwidth and capabilities clear.
Push back strategically and learn to frame conversations around outcomes (If we do X, here is the impact on Y).
Protect your teams trust by being transparent, admitting the limitations of your authority, and advocating for fair workloads.
Protect your own boundaries by caring for your team without carrying the burden of everyones problems.
For many companies, middle management is the only way to get ahead (and earn more money). Yet its an increasingly risky role for companies that see the job only as task-based, not people-based. Those employers are most likely to lay off managers during rough economic times or when AI can replace tasks.
Take on a middle manager role with your eyes fully open. If the company doesnt value a people-based role, you might want to find a new job elsewhere. Otherwise, youll find yourself underappreciated, constantly pulled in different directions, and at risk for losing your job.
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Below, Jodi-Ann Burey shares five key insights from her new book, Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work.
Jodi-Ann is a writer and critic on race, culture, and health equity. Her essays appear in various arts, business, and literary publications. She created and hosts the prose and poetry salon Lit Lounge: The Peoples Art, as well as the Black Cancer podcast.
Whats the big idea?
Authentic is more than a critique of the empty promise of being authentic at work. It is an invitation to question the structural realities of what it takes to be a person at work. To begin, we must take seriously the health and wellbeing of workers most impacted by harmful policies, performative practices, and opportunistic rhetoric about representation and inclusion.
Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by Jodi-Ann herselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App.
1. Center the voices of those most impacted.
For years, Ive heard the phrase, bring your full, authentic self to work to support diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. In public, Ive heard workers of marginalized identities talk about their desire to be more authentic and the barriers preventing us from letting our full self flourish.
In private, however, Ive witnessed friends and colleagues scoff at the idea of workplace authenticity, saying something along the lines of, Yeah, right, or They dont want that, or They dont even know what that means. I wrote this book to raise the volume of those conversations.
The reality is that the more of ourselves we give, the more institutions take from our careers, health, and well-being, and therefore the more we risk our livelihoods and lives. The stickiness of the bring your full authentic self to work narrative relies on the erasure and silence of those workers who are most harmed by fair-weathered inclusion policies and practices.
But we cannot understand how work works without talking to Black people and other people of color, people with disabilities, women, queer people, and especially those of us sitting at the intersections of marginalized identities. These are the identities companies cyclically like to say they value, while targeting us with discrimination, bullying, abuse, and inequities in pay and opportunity.
2. Collective access, not reasonable accommodation.
I have a spinal cord injury and must take care of my body in a way that minimizes neuropathic pain flares. Before the global COVID-19 pandemic, my employer made it very difficult for me to meet my access needs. Remote work policies were restricted to two designated days per week. The conference room policy allowed teams to book rooms anywhere on campus, which made my meeting-to-meeting commute chaotic. My co-workers questioned and judged why I took on-campus meetings remotely from my desk or carried a heating pad with me wherever I went, or why I fatigued so quickly walking from building to building.
When a colleague tested positive for COVID-19, just one email shut down our whole campus. Around the country and the world, work, school, and life moved onlinefor years. Remote work and other so-called reasonable accommodations previously denied to disabled workers because it was too expensive, too complicated, and bad for productivity and morale, soon became standard procedure.
How companies pivoted during the COVID-19 pandemic revealed what had always been possible.
Employers restructured jobs, made spatial modifications, and provided personal protective equipment. Relaxed policies allowed workers to reduce their schedules or flex their work hours. This restructuring did not reach everyone. The pandemic affected office workers and frontline service workers unevenly. People who could not work remotely bore the brunt of death and disease because employers and legislators failed to protect them. Still, the COVID-19 pandemic began an experiment of collective access at an unprecedented scale.
The support and structure we need as disabled workers are not accommodations, as weve learned to call them. Our access needs must be met to do our jobs. It is unnecessary (and prone to unchecked, unlawful discrimination) for companies to define and determine what is reasonable. Without a doubt, how companies pivoted during the COVID-19 pandemic revealed what had always been possible to ensure disabled workers can have their access needs met.
Unfortunately, all those learned lessons seem to have already been lost. Just a few years later, many employers have eliminated access practices, forced compliance through threats of termination, and enacted other punitive measures to constrain an empowered workforce. Ableism hurts us all.
3. No sector is immune to inequity.
Its common to make for-profit companies the boogeymen of inequitable, hostile workplaces. Ive spent most of my career working at mission-driven organizations. Early in my career, I worked as a teacher and administrator in charter schools. I spent five years in the global health and development sector. And I worked at a women-focused start-up. Each organization grounded its work in a progressive mission for equity, but that did not exempt these industries from the very same practices of discrimination, bullying, and abuse better known to characterize so-called Corporate America.
Institutions that contradict their own missions can corrupt the part of our authenticity fulfilled by mission-driven work. Instead of nurturing possibility, it breeds cynicismnot just toward one institution, but the entire sector.
Authenticity isnt just who we are, but what we believe in: our mission and purpose in our careers. We must include practices and policies across sectors to better understand workplace inequities and their impacts on all workers.
4. Being more authentic cannot change company culture.
Every workerany personwould want the space and safety to be themselves. We want to express ourselves without contorting who we are. This is especially true for workers subjected to historical and active identity-based discrimination.
Institutions often define authenticity by markers of difference. These accoutrements of identity can include hairstyles, clothing, pronouns, assistive objects, religious paraphernalia, or the words we speak. But inclusion takes more than just wheelchair ramps, pronoun pins, or inclusive dress codes.
We want to express ourselves without contorting who we are.
As workers, we exchange our talent and time for wages. There are much larger institutional levers impacting our professional lives than self-expressionwage theft, pay inequity, workplace fissuring, technological and managerial surveillance, occupationl segregation, racism, sexism, and other forms of structural violence. Redefined as individual acts of self-expression, authenticity narratives abstract unjust and unlawful labor practices that perpetuate workplace discrimination.
5. Community is our greatest resource.
Employee resource groups (ERGs) are employee-led identity-based groups that provide formal channels for connection and collaboration. These groups are sponsored by employers, in that they are acknowledged, supported, and sometimes funded. ERGs are a lifeline for marginalized and underrepresented employees. No matter what our rank, department, office location, state, or region, we turn to ERGs for a place to belong. As corporate DEI programs evolve, more than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies have active ERGs today.
I always found the resource part of employee resource groups a bit curious. Who are the resources for? As workers, whatever space weve carved out for ourselves belongs increasingly to the business. Institutions rely on ERGs to support their workforce at large, demonstrate their commitment to diversity, and comply with federal EEO mandates. ERGs help institutions attract and recruit more people of color, women, and other marginalized professionals. Our lived experiences serve critical parts of the business function: sensitivity readers, product innovation, and PR damage control.
Do ERGs have the capacity to agitate for the kind of protections we need, as workers, to be our full, authentic selves? Can ERGs provide safety for workers in the form of labor protections?
ERGs are projects of representation. By design, their power to ensure material labor protections is limited. ERGs appear union-like but cannot act in ways that are dealing with the organization. They cannot negotiate on the terms and conditions of employment. They cannot hold, act on, or represent collective worker grievances. They cannot engage in any collective bargaining with the employer. No organization-sponsored employee group can be structured to truly empower its workforce. To be more authentic, we need community, protection, and a definition of authenticity that goes beyond projects of representation.
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This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
Hyper-independence looks like your best employee. The one who never says no, stays late, and carries the team on their back. Leaders often interpret it as strength, but researchers and workplace experts warn it is often a coping mechanism that masks burnout, erodes collaboration, and stalls leadership growth.
The behavior has gained cultural visibility. On TikTok, the hashtag hyper-independence has racked up millions of views in videos tagged hyper-independence is a trauma response and signs of hyper-independence. For many viewers, the content is striking because they assumed this was simply how success was achieved, not a survival strategy with hidden costs. That viral visibility makes it even more important for workplaces to recognize the pattern and promote healthier interdependence, rather than rewarding the unsustainable behaviors it reinforces.
The academic lens mirrors that. A May 2025 study in the Research Journal of Psychology found a significant link between childhood trauma and hyper-independence among university students, reinforcing that the trait develops as a survival mechanism rather than pure ambition. In workplace contexts, the pattern plays out more quietly: rising stars burn out, teams fragment, and leadership pipelines falter.
What Hyper-Independence Looks Like at Work
On the surface, hyper-independence resembles high performance. Employees take on extra projects, work late, and avoid asking for help, appearing to be model contributors.
Licensed psychotherapist and workplace mental health expert Topsie VandenBosch explains that this pattern is reinforced by decades of being rewarded for self-sufficiency. One of the most common misconceptions hyper-independent performers hold is that their value lies in their ability to carry everything themselves, she said. Their value in the workplace is based on how much they can take on without asking for help.
That misconception is what makes the behavior difficult to detect. Employees continue to take on more than they can sustain, while concealing the strain leaders need to see. What appears to be resilience is often an early stage of burnout.
The Hidden Costs to High Performers, and Their Teams
Modeling Unsustainable Behavior
The individual impact extends outward. When one employee takes on everything alone, colleagues often adjust. Some mimic the behavior, believing this is the path to recognition, while others disengage, sensing theres no space to contribute.
When hyper-independence goes unaddressed, it doesnt just burn people out, it sends a signal to others that this is the behavior that gets rewarded, said Laurie Territo, head of Learning and Development at Altera and a former senior talent leader at Intel. Teams either disengage or self-select out, which erodes culture and drains organizational creativity.
Eroding Engagement
This pattern shows up in engagement numbers. Gallups 2025 State of the Global Workplace report found that manager engagement declined from 30% to 27%, while individual contributor engagement remained flat at 18%. Researchers note that disengaged managers often create disengaged teams, compounding the problem.
When managers hold everything themselves, theyre not only setting themselves up for burnout, theyre disengaging their team, Territo added. People dont stay where theyre underutilized or feel their contributions dont matter.
Stalled Upward Mobility
At the individual level, hyper-independence halts career growth. Leaders who refuse to delegate never develop the trust, collaboration, or coaching skills required for senior roles. DDIs Global Leadership Forecast notes that 81% of new leaders lack delegation proficiency, a gap that experts say fuels burnout and blocks upward mobility.
The ripple effects are organizational. Teams fracture, rising stars plateau, and companies lose both performance and potential.
VandenBosch cautions that what starts as one individuals over-functioning rarely stays contained. Hyper-independence looks like an individual issue until one persons burnout triggers a chain reaction that spreads throughout the entire organization, she said.
The Shift From Survival to Sustainable Leadership
Researchers and leadership experts point to interventions that can reduce the risks of hyper-independence while building healthier performance systems.
Model Vulnerability at the Top
According to Harvard Business Review, when managers admit challenges and ask for support, their teams are more likely to collaborate and less likely to carry burdens alone. The findings highlight the role leaders play in normalizing vulnerability as a strength.
Redefine What Gets Rewarded
Experts also point to performance systems. You extol the virtues of people who are doing that well, by celebrating them. Thats how you consciously create the culture, by spotlighting and rewarding the people who are modeling that healthy interdependence, said Stew Friedman, organizational psychologist at Wharton and founder of the Wharton Leadership Program.
VandenBosch added that one overlooked but powerful lever is to reward leaders not just for their own output, but for how effectively they activate and grow others. Organizations should create reward systems that celebrate leaders for how well they activate, grow, and develop their people, not just for what they personally deliver, she said.
Building Delegation and Trust
Training plays a role as well. Leadership development programs that focus on delegation, collaboration, and feedback can help shift high performers from survival patterns to growth-oriented leadership skills.
What Companies Can Do Next
Experts highlight several steps organizations can take to reduce hyper-independence risks and build healthier performance systems:
Elevate collaboration above heroics. Redesign recognition systems so that collaboration, coaching, and developing others are valued more highly than solo output.
Equip managers to model vulnerability. Provide frameworks and language for leaders to admit challenges and ask for help, signaling that interdependence is strength, not weakness.
Make delegation and talent growth core metrics. Embed trust-building, delegation, and people development as measurable competencies for leadership progression.
Even with its viral rise, hyper-independence still masquerades as high performance. Left unchecked, it burns out top performers and weakens leadership pipelines. Experts say the real measure of strength isnt how much one person carries, but how effectively leaders grow and multiply the performance of others. Companies that reward cllaboration and development over heroics wont just prevent burnout, theyll safeguard their future talent.
Nobody sitting with perfect posture in a room of button-down shirts, looking at a slide that says leverage strategic capabilities, is doing their best work.
Theyre just not.
You know what theyre doing instead? Theyre nodding pleasantly, wondering the last time they went to the bathroom, and trying to figure out when to jump into the conversation with an agreeable, jargon-filled platitude. This is good for no one.
I have been a management consultant for over a decade, serving many Fortune 500 clients, and I have spewed my share of jargon. I understand the instinct. We want to telegraph our competence and we want to fit in, and therefore, we put on business theater.
Unfortunately, when we perform, people can often tell. Take Princeton researcher Daniel M. Oppenheimers landmark study, cleverly titled, Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly. He found a consistent negative relationship between language complexity and judged intelligence. In other words, unnecessary jargon makes us sound dumb.
This kind of performative professionalism is harming how were perceived, but it also harms our ability to truly connect with others. No doubt, connection is critical for business performance. Gallups research shows that employees with a best friend at work are significantly more likely to engage customers and internal partners, get more done in less time, support a safe workplace, innovate and share ideas, and have fun while at work. Its also critical for our own happiness given more than half of Americans are considered lonely.
Whether it be jargon, dress, platitudes, or generally making our work look like how weve always done it, its all a form of muting ourselves; rounding our corners. Sure, we may feel like we fit in if we equate fitting in with blending in, but often thats not truly what were afterwere after connection. And its very hard to connect if you dont first let others see who you are.
For clarity, the problem has never been with professionalism in its truest sensedoing high-quality work, on time, with kindness and decency (which, for the record, has absolutely nothing to do with the fabric of your pants). The problem has always been in the performancethe tamping down of our humanity, creativity, and the confidence to say the company strategy needs an actual point of view, rather than rolling out Our strategy is to exceed our KPIs and outperform for our shareholders.
Ill admit its hard to break free from these norms. I have done an in my head eyeroll many times in jargon-filled meetings (Im like 90% sure they were in my head) and then added more jargon myself. It felt easier to play along. But the more Ive given up the gamethe more Ive simply, kindly, clearly said what was in my head; the more Ive worn T-shirts to work; the more Ive shared openly about my life with colleagues and been genuinely interested in theirsthe happier Ive become. Have some people judged me for it? Thought I was too casual? Maybe. Oh well. I will gladly take their judgment in exchange for my comfort.
If you, too, are feeling the urge to unbutton that top button (or maybe youre reading this in sweatpants and are ready to get others on board), here are five ways to experiment with being less professional at work:
Run the alien test. Like a fish unaware of the water its swimming in, it can sometimes be hard to spot the performative professionalism around us. It can help to ask, If an alien from an advanced civilization were to observe this norm or behavior, would it make sense to them? Or would it seem silly? For example, aliens would see the merit in wearing comfortable clothes to keep us warm at work, but would not see the point in ties. Dangly nooses to appear smart? Very odd. Getting rid of the pomp and circumstance allows us to connect with others under our facades; it tells others that they can also be themselves; and it saves a lot of time, money, and discomfort! Has anyone ever liked paying for dry cleaning?
Talk like a human. Instead of saying leverage say use. Instead of action item say to do. Even employee engagement is little more than human happiness in a suit. For one day, put a note next to your computer that says dejargonify and see if you can go the whole day without using terms that would end up on business jargon bingo such as circle back. And simultaneously, experiment with sharing your perspective with more clarity and confidence (e.g., What I see is . . .) When we stop worrying about sounding smart and impressing each other, we can focus on actually being smarton sharing profound ideas, simply stated, rather than mediocre ideas, elaborately cloaked.
Humanize your space. Whether you work in an office, at home, or in another setting, experiment with changing the visual cues around you to make you feel more yourself. You might have fidget toys, an old-fashioned fountain pen, or maybe a cozy blanket on your chair. Photos and trinkets that remind you that you are more than an employee can help ground you throughout the day. These items will not only make you feel more grounded, but theyre conversation starters for others to get to know you as well.
Dress for joy. For the same reason you wouldnt show up to a wedding in a tracksuit, its smart to be aware of your organizations norms around dress. And yet, it might be worth pushing a boundary or two. Try dressing first for joy, comfort, and function. What colors make you happy? What items make you feel best about your body? What clothes help you do your best work? Even if you work in a hyper-professional environment, you can always experiment with a fun sock. Because feeling good in our clothes takes us a bit closer to feeling good in our skin. And while theres a business case to be madehappy employees are up to 20% more productiveto me, the more compelling case is that when were happy . . . were happy. And thats plenty a goal unto itself.
Model humanity. So often we feel the need to show up professionally because thats what we see others do. If we want to shift the culture, then the best place to start is by shifting what we model for others. If it feels safe, experiment with showing up to a meeting with wet hair. Maybe you exercised, showered, and jumped on the call because you didnt want to sacrifice your health for the sake of professionalism. Or perhaps you eat during a meeting if youre hungry. Share a little about whats happening in your life outside work. In doing so, youll cultivate a workplace where people dont feel the need to hide their humanity, their needs, and alongside those things, the best of themselves.
Show yourself and others that we can be humans at work.
Because we are.
There are many, many maps of New York City. There are the decor maps, sold on Amazon, and the tourist maps, which mostly focus, erroneously, only on Manhattan. Theres the iconic subway map, as well as the MTAs new version. Theres the Eater and Grubhub maps, which tell us where to eat.
And then theres the map that really matters: the official legal map for the city, which quite literally rules the streets of the city, complete with boundaries and widths. Its also the map that doesnt currently exist, at least in one singular and easy-to-use form.
Thats changing, though. On Tuesday night, New Yorkers appeared poised to approve Proposal 5, a measure that will push the city to create a unified official map representing its five boroughs for the first time. The effort should help officials finally catch up with unification efforts, which began more than a century ago in 1898, when areas throughout modern-day Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Manhattan, and the Bronx were combined to form one city government.
While the city has streamlined most operations, New Yorks maps were never synthesized into one document, scattering authority over these official charts across the city and resulting in thousands of paper topographical documents. Today, the diffuse nature of these official maps slows down housing construction, adding another hurdle to solving the citys extreme housing crisis, advocates argue.
The passage of the proposition means that these paper maps will finally be distilled into a single visualization and eventually digitized. The goal is to speed up any city process that typically requires verification with an official city map or updating a city map to mark a change to street geography.The creation of a unified city map should also help officials more accurately represent the citys waterfront, particularly as climate change alters the coastline. Plus, it should help eradicate the problem of paper streets– streets that are still recorded on official paper maps, but no longer exist in real life.
Fast Company chatted with Casey Berkovitz, who is on staff at the Charter Revision Commission, which was charged with considering New Yorks official city charter and putting forth ballot initiatives, including the now-passed map proposal. Earlier this year, the group found that changes to the current map were, in their words, overdue.
This interview was edited for clarity and length.
Rebecca Heilweil: Can you explain what people voted for?
Casey Berkovitz: Today in New York City, we have a very archaic system in which the official city map is spread out across five separate borough offices. On paper we think it’s about 8,000 paper maps across the five boroughs. This is really an artifact of a time before, not just digitization, but also borough consolidation. The five boroughs became one city in 1898, but the borough presidents maintained jurisdiction over things like street maintenance through the middle of the 20th century.
The city just never updated to consolidate its official city map into one unified map. Certainly as digitization and the internet have become more widespread in recent decades, the city never moved to modernize, either. This measure would do both.
Rebecca Heilweil: Growing up here, I was familiar with all sorts of New York City maps. There’s the lot numbers maps, there areConEdison maps, and there’s school zone maps. Will all of those kinds of functions that the city provides, and which are mapped spatially, end up on this map? Will it show everything related to municipal activity?
Casey Berkovitz: When we talk about the official city map, we refer to a pretty specific function, which is the map of things like street borders, street widths, property lines, in some cases, waterfront borders, which hasve to do with construction and infrastructure.
There are other maps like you mentioned. There are school district maps and city council districts and community districts all on down the line that are obviously important and frequently interact with the official city map, but that are their own distinct maps and that wouldn’t be affected by this proposal.
Rebecca Heilweil: Can you talk a little bit about the digital aspect of it? What is that going to look like when people hear digital map? They might think Google Maps.
Casey Berkovitz: We actually already have the vast majority of what a digital city map would look like online, but doesn’t have any binding authority because it is not the official city map laid out in the city charter [Editors note: This unofficial map is available here].
In terms of what it would mean for New Yorkers today, if you want to build housing infrastructure, or any number of things, many of those functions require either confirming on the city map or updating the city map. These are things like property lines or the width of a street or the grade of a street that have impacts on what you can build.
Those functions can take months or years because they require going to each individual borough map office, finding the right paper map, confirming what it looks like, and changing what it looks like. That’s a long process. There are frequently long queues at those borough offices to do those sorts of things. That adds, again, months or years to the process of building important infrastructure and housing.
Not all of those functions would become instantaneous with the digital map, but they would be significantly faster than the process today of finding the individual paper fragment of a map and updating or confirming the information thats on it.
Rebecca Heilweil: How long is switching to a unified map system going to take?
Casey Berkovitz: Taking that many paper maps […] unifying it, confirming the information, will take time as well from five borough offices to one central office. Granting it the official status as a city map will require essentially a zoning action to grant it that official status. Thats another benchmark in the timeline moving forward over the next couple of years.
Rebecca Heilweil: What are some of the design considerations or, I don’t want to say aesthetics, but things that in terms of what this map should actually look like that you’re thinking about? There are so many different types of maps and so many different ways of representing things.
Casey Berkovitz: The important thing here is that street and property lines are clear, that street widths are clear, and that changes over time are visible. In the preview map today, we have overlays of where there have been changes to the city map over time so that New Yorkers who are interested can see where streets have been remapped or de-mapped over time.
Rebecca Heilweil: Can you talk a little bit about what you anticipate the biggest challenge being, moving forward?
Casey Berkovitz: It is a lot of paper maps to unify and to make sense of. They are amazing historic documents and certainly, well want to take good care of them and preserve them, even if they’re no longer the official binding government document. Balancing care for the physical maps with effciency of unifying them and digitizing them is going to be relatively important. It’s going to take a dedicated effort from city staff.
Rebecca Heilweil: What should I have asked you that I didn’t about New Yorks upcoming digital map?
Casey Berkovitz: This is pretty in the weeds, but it may be interesting to people who are interested in maps is that New York City actually has a number of what are called paper streets that are streets that exist on the city map today, but are not real streets in real life.
A number of the construction or zoning actions that would be sped up by the unified and digitized map related to, if you either want to get rid of a paper street in order to do construction there or if you want to otherwise change the street kid.
The other thing that is maybe a little more broadly applicable is how the map modernization intersects with the climate crisis.
New York City has 520 miles of waterfront, along the bay and then along the rivers. Particularly as the climate has changed, waterfront borders have changed […] This proposal might make a big difference either in development or resiliency efforts, where the paper maps when they were created genuinely do not reflect where the actual waterfront border is today.
Voters are filling in their ballots today to choose who will lead America’s largest city for the next four years.
New York being a center of global finance and business means that its local elections will always attract some degree of attention outside of the five boroughs, but the city’s mayoral race this year has garnered far more national interest than usual.
That’s in large part thanks to Zohran Mamdani, the assemblymember from Queens who was virtually unknown outside of New York before he launched his campaign a year ago.
Mamdani went viral early in the race with entertaining person-on-the-street videos in the wake of Donald Trump’s second presidential election victory. With support from an energized base of younger voters, he rode that wave to a primary election victory against former Governor Andrew Cuomo in June.
Since then, the national headlines about Mamdani and the broader race for mayor haven’t stopped, which is to say that no shortage of eyeballs will be focused on New York’s election results as they begin to pour in on November 4.
Most polls have shown Democrat Mamdani with a comfortable lead over his two main opponents: Cuomo, who is running as an independent, and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, the Republican on the ballot.
If Mamdani coasts to victory as expected, he would be the first Muslim mayor of New York and, at 34, the youngest person to lead the city in more than 100 years.
How can I track the New York City mayoral election results?
News outlets with real-time decision desks offer the fastest way to see how the election is unfolding. We’ve rounded up some resources below:
NPR (via Associated Press)
New York Times
CNN
Decision Desk HQ
Election polls close at 9 p.m. ET.
This story is developing…
Restaurants, food banks, nonprofits, and other organizations have stepped up to offer assistance to the 41 million Americans who have been thrust into limbo this month regarding SNAP benefits that have been halved. But retailers are prohibited from offering discounts on groceries.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has sent notices to retailers alerting them that they cant offer special discounts to customers affected by the lapse in funding. Despite skepticism about the authenticity of these reports, the USDA confirmed the veracity of the notice to Fast Company, though a spokesperson didnt provide any additional comment.
You must offer eligible foods at the same prices and on the same terms and conditions to SNAP-EBT customers as other customers, except that sales tax cannot be charged on SNAP purchases, the notice reads. You cannot treat SNAP-EBT customers differently than any other customers.
The USDA has sent out these notices despite the government shutdown that began last month.
EQUAL TREATMENT RULE
The USDA appears to be invoking the equal treatment rule in an unprecedented way: The rule was intended to ensure that retailers couldnt discriminate against SNAP recipients by charging them more for eligible items. Now, the USDA wants to ensure that grocery stores dont charge these customers less for eligible items.
Whats also unusual is that grocery stores, at their discretion, regularly offer discounts to customers for a variety of reasons including designated discount days for seniors.
ACTION FOR SNAP VIOLATIONS
Its unclear what penalties, if any, the USDA will impose on retailers who ignore this rule and offer discounts to SNAP beneficiaries. However, a discount apparently is considered a SNAP violation, and the Food and Nutrition Service within the USDA is tasked with monitoring such violations.
FNS takes immediate administrative action to ensure stores that violate SNAP rules no longer participate in the program, reads a March 2025 fraud notification letter sent to retailers and posted on the USDA website. Retailers that commit program violations will face consequences, including losing the ability to accept SNAP benefits. Retailers who commit program violations may also be subject to monetary penalties, fines, and/or criminal prosecution.
RETAILERS THRUST INTO LIMBO
Some locally-owned grocery stores had promised discounts to SNAP recipients, along with DoorDash and Instacart, which deliver groceries for hundreds of grocery store chains.
DoorDash sees no issue in waiving or reducing service and delivery fees for SNAP beneficiaries, as the company announced it would do previously, a company spokesperson told Fast Company. The company is among a group of pilot retailers for online SNAP that received a blanket regulatory waiver issued by FNS that waives the equal treatment requirement, said the spokesperson, who shared a copy of that notice.
Instacart also received a similar waiver from FNS and had offered SNAP customers a 50% off their next grocery order, though a company spokesperson didnt explicitly confirm to Fast Company whether it would continue with this offer.
At least two retailers had offered discounts to struggling customers and retracted them after receiving the notice from the USDA, according to Catherine Rampell, an MSNBC anchor, in a post on the X platform.
Chrysler is recalling more than 320,000 Jeep plug-in hybrid vehicles due to a faulty battery that can fail and lead to a fire, U.S. traffic safety regulators said.
Chrysler, which is owned by Netherlands-based Stellantis, is aware of 19 reports and 1 injury potentially related to the issue.
Owners of the vehicles, which include 228,221 Jeep Wranglers model years 2020-2025 and 91,844 Jeep Grand Cherokees model years 2022-2026, are being advised to park the vehicles outside and away from structures until a remedy for the problem is determined. Vehicle owners are also being told not to charge their vehicles, the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration said.
Interim notification letters are expected to be mailed to vehicle owners by December 2, 2025, with additional letters to be sent once the final remedy is available.
The number for the recall is 68C and owners may contact Chrysler customer service at 800-853-1403. Vehicle Identification Numbers for this recall will be searchable on NHTSA.gov beginning November 6, 2025. Vehicles that were previously recalled for the same issue under previous recalls will need to have the new remedy performed, the NHTSA said.
The batteries were manufactured by Auburn Hills, Michigan-based Samsung SDI America.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy predicted Tuesday that there could be chaos in the skies next week if the government shutdown drags on and air traffic controllers miss a second paycheck.
There have already been numerous delays at airports across the countrysometimes hours longbecause the Federal Aviation Administration slows down or stops traffic temporarily anytime it is short on controllers. Last weekend saw some of the worst staff shortages and on Sunday, flights at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey were delayed for several hours.
Duffy and the head of the air traffic controllers union have both warned that the situation will only get worse the longer the shutdown continues and the financial pressure continues to grow on people who are forced to work without pay. FAA employees already missed one paycheck on Oct. 28. Their next payday is scheduled for next Tuesday.
Many of the controllers said, A lot of us can navigate missing one paycheck. Not everybody, but a lot of us can. None of us can manage missing two paychecks, Duffy said. So if you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos. You will see mass flight delays. Youll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it because we dont have air traffic controllers.
Most of the flight disruptions so far during the shutdown have been isolated and temporary. But if delays become more widespread and start to ripple throughout the system, the pressure will mount on Congress to reach an agreement to end the shutdown.
Major airlines, aviation unions, and the travel industry have been urging Congress to end this shutdown as soon as possible by voting to support the clean funding resolution that Republicans have proposed.
The U.S. Travel Association said in a letter to Congressional leaders this week that the economy has already lost more than $4 billion because of the shutdown, and the industry worries the impact will get significantly worse if the shutdown continues into the holiday travel season.
With Thanksgiving, the busiest travel period of the year, imminently approaching, the consequences of a continued shutdown will be immediate, deeply felt by millions of American travelers, and economically devastating to communities in every state, the U.S. Travel Association said.
Normally, airlines strive to have at least 80% of their flights depart and arrive within 15 minutes of when they are scheduled. Aviation analytics firm Cirium said that since the shutdown began on Oct. 1, the total number of delays overall has not fallen significantly below that goal because most of the disruptions so far have been no worse than what happens when a major thunderstorm moves across an airport.
But on Sunday, only about 56% of Newark’s departures were on time, and the Orlando airport reported that only about 70% of its flights were on time, according to Cirium.
As of midday Tuesday, there have been 1,932 flight delays reported across the United States, according to www.FlightAware.com. That is lower than what is typical although the FAA did say that flights in Phoenix were being delayed Tuesday morning because of staffing shortages. Strong winds are also causing delays at the Newark and LaGuardia airports Tuesday.
Josh Funk, AP transportation writer
