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Being a manager is never easy. And if you have never supervised others, the feat can be even more daunting. Managers are often spinning several plates: leading by example, setting and exceeding goals for your team, keeping workflow moving, providing support, and keeping employees motivated, engaged, and productive . . . all while adhering to your companys objectives. If you haven’t done it before, it can be overwhelming. It’s almost like having to activate an entirely new part of your brain. Luckily, experts say creating boss brain is within anyones reach, regardless of leadership experience . . . or lack thereof. Listen and react to the feedback of your team To develop a leadership mentality, it doesn’t necessarily start by trying to muster up more confidence. Rather, it can start by simply listening to your new direct reports. Show them that you care. Ask your team specific questions about their well-being, and identify ways to alleviate some of the challenges they are facing. According to the 2025-2026 Aflac WorkForces Report, fewer than half [48%] of employees believe their employer cares about them, down from 54% in 2024, and nearly 1 in 5 employees [18%] believe their company doesn’t care about their mental health at all, says Matthew Owenby, chief strategy officer and head of human resources at Aflac in Columbus, Georgia. Part of developing boss brain means also developing your empathy muscle. Zero in on direct reports individual strengths Another component of a managers role is to meet goals. But when youre first becoming a boss, it helps to get more granular and specific with your direct reports. Discover ways to best leverage peoples individual strengths. And then, share their accomplishments, pointing out to the rest of the organization how their contributions strengthen the team and the overall organization. Done effectively, this can foster a sense of camaraderie, shared accountability and, ultimately, belongingwhich is vital to a healthy and productive workplace, Owenby adds. The same workplace survey revealed that when employees have a strong sense of purpose, they are more likely to report job satisfaction, be more engaged, have strong relationships with colleagues and superiors, and be less likely to experience workplace stress and burnoutall of which contribute to employee retention, he notes. Recall what it was like not to be a boss As a newly minted boss, you understand the feelings and challenges of being an employee. Managers who were recently individual contributors have a unique perspective because they can empathize with the employees they are responsible for overseeing, Owenby says. To develop the manager mindset, he says its important to zero in on what a managers role is: to ensure the team is engaged and that members have what they need to do their best work. After all, you were in their very position not too long ago. Use that insight to your advantageits one that folks whove been in leadership for years or decades may be less in touch with. A leadership mentality is about showing up with purpose, inspiring others, and staying curious about whats happening outside your bubble, says Katrina Cole, principal program manager and chief of staff in Total Rewards and Technology Human Resources at AT&T. The transition from team member to boss can be tricky. Cole, whos based in Plano, Texas, says staying true to yourself is a step in the right direction. It is definitely a shift, and my advice is to keep the friendships, but be clear about your new role. Set expectations and create boundaries, but continue to lead with empathy. Take it step by step Sometimes the only way to build leadership skills is to just . . . do it. Build confidence with small daily wins that help your team succeed. Dont be afraid to ask questions, notes Owenby, as youre not expected to know everything. Confidence comes from doing. Every time you coach someone, make a tough call, or drive a result, you are reinforcing your ability to lead, Cole adds. She says that leadership is a journey, not a destination. If youre just starting out, remember that your mindset matters more than your résumé. Lead with purpose, act with urgency, and never stop learning. Amy Morin, a psychotherapist in Marathon, Florida, and author of 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do, agrees. Confidence is gained by taking action, she emphasizes. Take small steps toward acting like a confident leader. Every time you do, you begin to shift the way you see yourself. You also shift the way other people see you. Understand the psychological shift Cole says boss brain is a fun phrase, but its more than just flipping a switch. Its about changing how you see your role. Youre not just responsible for your own work anymore. Youre responsible for helping others succeed and understanding the value of their contributions.” From her experience, Cole says leaders who create space for honest conversations and clear expectations tend to outperform those who rely on authority. We teach managers to lead from wherever they are, be transparent, and stay adaptable, especially in our fast-moving, market-based culture.”It’s important to ensure people feel heard and validated, Morin says. Asking questions regularly and checking in invites them to discuss issues.
Category:
E-Commerce
Most people still measure performance in hours. They pack their calendars as full as possible, track time down to the minute, and take pride in squeezing more into each day. However, the best performance comes from harnessing rhythmthe alignment of energy, capacity, and focus. Its what turns effort into flow. In the industrial age, managing time made sense: productivity was tethered to factory shifts and desk schedules. But in todays BANIbrittle, anxious, nonlinear, incomprehensibleworld, hours spent no longer translate neatly into value created. The leaders who thrive now are those who sense and harness the rhythms of their team. Energy rises and falls across the day. Caregiving cycles alter capacity. Strategies unfold in waves of preparation, concentration, and delivery. When these rhythms reinforce one another, performance compounds; when they diverge, even the most talented teams struggle. The challenge is that most of these clashes remain invisible. We think theyre the result of individual personality traits or bad luck. The reality is that theyre systemic patterns that quietly drain performance. Here are the three invisible problems affecting your team, along with strategies for addressing them. 1. Biological misalignment Its 8:30 a.m. and the leadership team gathers for its weekly meeting. The Early Birds are full of energy and ready to make decisions. The Night Owls are still warming up and contribute less than they could. By midafternoon, the balance shifts, yet decisions have already been made. Every team includes a range of chronotypes. Some people do their clearest thinking before breakfast; others hit their creative peak late in the day. Standard nine-to-five routines privilege one end of that spectrum and leave the rest operating below their best. Chronobiology research highlights the effect. Social jetlag, the mismatch between biological and social clocks, impairs alertness and cognitive function. Teams experience more rework, slower problem-solving, and thinner creativity when the shared schedule maps poorly to peoples natural peaks. AbbVie Norway, part of the global biopharmaceutical company AbbVie, set out to improve low employee satisfaction with work-life balance and strengthen its ability to attract and retain top talent. Leaders restructured work design so employees could align their hours with their natural rhythms, holding meetings only between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and allowing full flexibility as long as results were delivered. The changes paid offturnover and sick leave dropped sharply, work-life balance satisfaction rose from 58% to 95%, and AbbVie Norway has been named one of Norways Best Workplaces multiple times by Great Place to Work. What to do when biology and schedule pull apart Rotate the clock: alternate early and later starts for recurring meetings. Separate information from decisions: share context asynchronously; save live sessions for debate and commitment. Map energy windows: ask people to mark their sharpest 90120 minute blocks and protect them. Design quiet blocks: build in predictable meeting-free hours each week. Publish your own rhythm: when leaders model their preferred windows, others feel safe to do the same. The payoff comes in the form of increased participation, high-quality ideas, and better decisions. Teams spend more time progressing the work and less time recovering from poorly timed interactions. 2. Life-stage and relationship cycles Its Wednesday afternoon, three weeks before the launch. A product lead is caring for an aging parent. A colleague is coparenting a toddler with alternate-week custody. Both are very committed and highly skilled. Both have a capacity that ebbs and flows in cycles that their work plan doesnt account for. As a result, theres a buildup of unnecessary stress, and cracks start to appear in their relationship. Capacity rarely follows a flat line. Parenting schedules, eldercare demands, study commitments, personal health, and community roles all create repeating patterns. Teams thrive when these patterns are visible and part of planning. Our own work carries this reality. Camilla alternates between weeks of intense caregiving and weeks with greater availability. David structures his day around defined windows of care for his disabled son. These rhythms shape when deep work and collaboration can happen, and they strengthen performance when leaders plan accordingly. In 2011, the Norwegian Association of Lawyers began a cultural transformation to align work hours with employees natural rhythms and personal responsibilities. Led by Secretary General Magne Skram Hegerberg and supported by the Life Navigation framework, the organization symbolically buried its wall-mounted clock-in machine, replacing rigid time-tracking with a focus on outcomes and skills. Employees were encouraged to align their working hours with their chronotypes and caregiving needs, with start times ranging from 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Productivity doubled in some areas, and creativity and problem-solving flourished. To make peak energy hours visible, some employees even used a plush toy frog on their desk to signal do not disturb. What to do when life rhythms shape capacity Sequence the load: assign heavier tasks to higher-capacity weeks. Create coverage by design: pair people or build small pools for critical responsibilities. Signal the cycle: encourage sharing of simple, recurring capacity patterns. Match work mode to the week: plan collaboration-heavy activities for higher-capacity periods. Build recovery in public: name decompression phases so rest appears as part of the plan. The payoff comes in the form of higher loyalty, sustained delivery, and less firefighting. People stay, grow, and contribute at a high level across various life stages, rather than stepping away. 3. Strategic mistiming Its Friday morning at the quarters end. Finance is closing the books, sales is finishing a sprint, and HR is finalizing reviews. Then the C-Suite leadership unveils a flagship initiative and asks for all hands on deck. The purpose of the initiative is strong, but its launch comes at the lowest energy point of the teams cycle. Organizational habits often set the drumbeat: quarter-end pushes, annual summits, weekly status rituals. Strategy, meanwhile, moves in waves that benefit from different kinds of energyexploration and framing, concentrated build, high-tempo collaboration, delivery, and learning. Peak efforts flourish when the strategic wave and human energy crest together.At GuldBoSund, a nursing home and rehabilitation center in Denmark, staff redesigned daily routines around residents preferred rhythms rather than a fixed schedule. One resident enjoys coffee and breakfast at 5:30 a.m., while others sleep until 9:30. Staff also adjusted their own shifts to better match their personal energy cycles, coordinating care so that residents needs were always met. The outcome: residents experienced higher quality of life, and staff took fewer than two sick days a year on averageincluding night-shift workers. The example shows that when human rhythms are respected, well-being and performance strengthen eac other. What to do when timing blunts strategy Plot an energy calendar: map recurring highs and lows and overlay strategy waves. Concentrate the peaks: design a few shared surges instead of scattering intensity. Stage the build: use short rhythm sprints before high-stakes moments, then cooldowns to consolidate learning. Anchor the why for co-location: mark the specific moments when being in-person creates outsized value. Measure cadence as well as milestones: track rhythm health with metrics such as rework, decision latency, and recovery time. The payoff comes in the form of stronger execution at the moments that matter, with a team resilient enough to repeat success across cycles. Make the invisible visible: a mini-playbook Rhythm becomes central to team performance once it becomes visible. Leaders can set the tone with a few simple practices: Rhythm mapping. Run a short survey or whiteboard session that asks three questions: When does focus feel strongest? When does collaboration feel easiest? Where do we lose flow? Turn the answers into a one-page map for the team. Shared cadence charter. Agree the weekly and monthly rhythm: deep-work spans, meeting windows, response expectations, and decision rituals. Keep it light and visible; update as the work evolves. Quarterly rhythm review. Look back on the past cycle: Where did energy surge or dip? What clashed? What flowed? Adjust the next cycle accordingly. Leader rhythm transparency. Publish your own focus windows, collaboration preferences, and recovery practices. Model the behaviour you want the team to adopt. Recovery as a capability. Teach practical reset rituals, such as after-action reviews that end with gratitude, shorter meetings with clear outcomes, brief meeting-free blocks after launches, and flexible Fridays during lower-demand periods. These moves require little budget and deliver immediate benefits: clearer attention, fewer collisions, and more consistent progress. The leadership edge The three invisible problemsbiological misalignment, life-stage and relationship cycles, and strategic mistimingact as a significant drag on the performance of teams. Rhythm-aware leadership treats energy, capacity, and timing as strategic assets. It sets the conditions for wiser decisions, leaps of innovation, and a sustainable pace of working. Organizations that move in rhythm build trust faster, integrate new technology more smoothly, and retain the people they need for the long run. Managing time sharpens efficiency. Leading with rhythm creates a strategic advantage. The best leaders combine both.
Category:
E-Commerce
Most immersive experiences today may feel stale in retrospect. Brands have invested heavily in creating spaces meant to captivate, yet these experiences all replicate the same visual and audio cues, making it increasingly difficult for brands to differentiate. The underlying issue is a technological design constraint: You can either create something highly personalized or something that scales to hundreds of people simultaneously, but rarely both. A seismic change is afoot that will dwarf the previous chasm, like the shift from black and white film to color cinema. Multimodal AI is poised to eliminate the joint scaling and personalization limitation, enabling truly multidimensional, adaptive experiences where each person experiences something completely unique, all generated in real time. Multimodal AImachine learning models that can process and integrate information from multiple modalities, like text, images, audio, and videowill fundamentally reshape not just the types of experiences designers create, but how they work. Designers who can orchestrate these AI systems will create the future of multidimensional experiences, realizing true personalization at scale. HOW MULTIMODAL AI WILL REVOLUTIONIZE DESIGN Close your eyes and imagine two people walking through the same physical spacean immersive entertainment activationand they are each having a unique, hyper-personalized visit across every dimension. Through interfaces like smartphones, wearable devices, and embedded sensors throughout the space, the environment adapts in real time to each individual. That includes the visuals, sounds, narrative, and digital interactions. Multimodal AI can simultaneously “see” your facial expressions, “hear” your voice tone, “read” your text inputs, and “observe” your movement patterns. It weaves all this information together to make intelligent decisions about how to personalize your experience in real time. Las Vegas Sphere demonstrates early-stage capabilities with its 170,000-speaker Holoplot audio system that creates distinct sonic zones with surgical precision. Visitors standing just feet apart can experience completely different sounds, tones, intensities, or narrative perspectives of the same content. Multimodal AI will take this capability a step further by enabling even more distinct, individualized sonic experiences based on person, as opposed to a zone. The level of personalization sophistication will ultimately depend on the available interface capabilities. Achieve basic personalization through smartphone apps and existing displays, much like current museum audio guides that offer different language options. More immersive personalization may require wearable tech like alternative reality glasses or advanced earbuds that can overlay completely different visual and audio experiences for each user. The future promises even more seamless interfaces, with the rumored Jony Ive-Sam Altman device potentially enabling contextually aware, screenless interactions that respond to gesture, voice, and environmental cues with minimal technology barriers. THE RISE OF THE “UBER DESIGNER” Creating these AI-powered ultra-personalized immersive experiences requires designers to fundamentally change how they work. This evolution creates what I call the “uber designer, creative professionals who direct AI systems across multiple modalities to craft unified, adaptive experiences. The uber designer becomes the conductor enabling experiences that account for every element while AI, alongside specialized design teams, handles the execution of countless personalized versions. This technological shift will represent an elevation into higher-order creative leadership. AI manages routine execution and personalization at scale, while humans focus on strategic vision, storytelling, creative judgment, and orchestrating the overall experience architecture. STAYING AHEAD: A DESIGNER’S SURVIVAL GUIDE This isn’t some distant future. Designers need to adapt now. The designers who position themselves now as AI orchestrators for immersive experiences will define the next generation of physical spaces, from retail environments that adapt to each shopper to museums where exhibits personalize to visitor interests. Some industry leaders have begun integrating AI within elements of their brand concepts. Beauty brands like LOreal and Sephora have released versions of an AI assistant allowing customers to try on beauty products before they make a final purchase or to analyze their skin. Bloomberg Connects has leveraged AI to enhance museum accessibility for visually impaired visitors within an immersive audio guide accessible through a digital app. The Sphere Experience enables guests to converse at length with an AI humanoid robot. Leveraging multimodal AI, designers will be able to expand these experiences even further into multiple dimensions, impacting sound, sight, touch, and smell all at once. So how do you become an uber designer? Designers can strengthen their toolkit in various ways, but heres my advice: Start integrating AI into workflows now. Begin incorporating AI tools into daily practice. There are various administrative tasks that AI can handle with minimal oversight. Learn how to effectively prompt, direct, and refine AI-generated content. Develop fluency in multiple AI platforms to understand their strengths and limitations. Develop cross-disciplinary thinking. The most valuable designers will orchestrate experiences across every single dimension and not just specialize in one. Move from a “maker” mindset to that of an “experience conductor.” Emphasize the modernization of existing spaces. The biggest opportunities lie in reimagining stagnant industries like retail stores, museums, and entertainment venues, with AI-powered personalization that creates the ultimate multidimensional experiences. Multimodal AI will enable designers to envision even more impactful spaces and experiences that move, inspire, and connect with people. Those who start experimenting now and make an emphasis to revitalize stagnant industries will find themselves at the forefront of a creative renaissance. Humans will be directing machines to create immersive experiences we never thought possible. Andrew Zimmerman is CEO and cofounder of Journey.
Category:
E-Commerce
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