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Despite years’ of headlines about the importance of workplace well-being and culture, the latest Gallup State of the Global Workplace report paints a stark picture: global employee engagement has declined yet again. But one overlooked yet deeply effective lever for change is also one of the simplest: genuine appreciation. It might be considered “a soft skill,” but when practiced with consistency and care, appreciation can reshape teams, rewire the brain, and reinvigorate entire cultures. Heres how leaders can turn everyday recognition into a powerful force for performanceand why its one of the most untapped tools in the leadership playbook: 1. Understand the neuroscience Appreciation doesnt just feel good, it changes the brain and can be a high-impact leadership tool, according to Amy Brann, applied neuroscience expert, founder of Synaptic Potential, and author of Make Your Brain Work. “Expressing appreciation boosts dopamine and serotonin in both the giver and the receiver, activating brain regions associated with motivation, connection and emotional regulation.” Importantly, appreciation also helps shift people out of a defensive mindset. “It lowers activity in the amygdalathe brains threat detectorhelping people feel safer and more valued,” Brann explains. “When people feel recognized and appreciated, they shift into what I call a High-Performing Neural Environmentone where creativity, focus and collaboration thrive.” To embed gratitude into everyday routines, Brann recommends leaders look for micro-moments of acknowledgement: “Quick, sincere acknowledgements embedded into existing routines. Over time, these create neural associations that reinforce trust and belonging.” 2. Make it safe, human, and consistent When we think of employee appreciation, we often think of grand gestures like bonuses and flamboyant parties. But according to Ella Davidson, founder of book PR agency, The Book Publicist, “Its about the small, consistent actions that show people theyre truly valued.” In her remote agency, daily check-ins are a normnot just for status updates, but to see how people are really feeling. “When someones struggling (personally or professionally), we listen, not just with empathy, but with the intent to support in practical ways,” Davidson says. And appreciation isnt just reserved for technical achievements: “We also make room to say thank you and well done, for results but also for dealing with a tricky situation or being supportive to others in the team,” she adds. Employees should know the buck stops with you. “Creating a culture of appreciation means letting people know you trust them, youve got their back, and that if things go wrong, the responsibility lies with you as the leader. That level of safety takes the pressure off and allows people to show up authentically. Most of all, appreciation means making it okay to be human. No blame, just support. Thats when people feel safe, seen, and truly appreciated and thats when they do their best work.” 3. Hardwire 360° gratitude in daily habits Gratitude cant just happen when theres time, it needs structure. “Appreciation and gratitude should not just flow top downit should be 360 degrees.” says Christina Lovelock, senior leadership coach and author of Careers in Tech, Data and Digital. “To enable this, we need to normalize recognition of good work and create specific opportunities for people to be nudged to think about where their colleagues, leaders, and teams have done something positive or noteworthy.” These nudges might include a regular agenda item in team meetings, a dedicated Teams or Slack channel, or a weekly wrap-up email. “It might be tempting to leave it ad hoc or worry it will seem forced or manufactured,” Lovelock adds, “but actually people usually find a regular cadence around gratitude and appreciation very valuable.” Worried you might struggle to find wins? Christina recommends looking beyond big things: “It can also be the day-to-day demonstrations of support or assistance, a well-handled conversation or really clear presentation slide. If you are specifically looking for good work to highlight, you can generally find it.” 4. Praise thoughtfully, not excessively Leaders are often told to give more praise. But quantity isnt the only factor that matterscontext does, too. “Its well-known both that praise is a good (and cheap) motivator and that most leaders overestimate just how much they give it,” says Nik Kinley, leadership consultant and author of The Power Trap. “But you can overdo it. If you praise too much, you devalue it, and praise actually works best when its unexpected.” Praise is also not one-size-fits-all. “People just beginning projects or who are less experienced typically need more praise,” Kinley notes. “Seasoned vets or those near the end of tasks tend to value praise less.” He also points to the power of public recognition. “Praise usually has more impact when given for simple tasks rather than complex ones. It also always has more value when given publicly, even if the individual being praised feels embarrassed by it.” He suggests thinking of praise as a tool and a tactic and using it as such. 5. Broaden the spotlight Recognition often shines only on the loudest, most powerful voices, silencing the most interesting or challenging ideas. To broaden the spotlight, Charlotte Otter, an executive communications expert and author of We Need New Leaders, recommends fostering smaller, unscripted spaces for conversation: “Organize small meeting rounds, unrecorded, where people feel safe to ask questions and share opinions. Give credit in the meeting for great ideas and afterwards, publicly, if theyre implemented.” Otter also emphasises inclusive meeting practices: “Send agendas in advance, make sure everyone gets a chance to speak, and actively quell the noisy ones. Introverts appreciate the chance to prepare, so let someone know in advance if youd like their opinion to be heard. Its about tuning in better and appreciating differently.” 6. Use genuine appreciation to create a ripple effect Thanking your team is one thing, but taking the time to geninely acknowledge their accomplishments from the top creates a ripple effect. “Each time a person encounters you and your kindness, that same person may be inspired to do the same,” says Gaelle Devins is chief customer officer at Breitling and author of Flow Leadership. “Imagine how powerful such a gesture could become in your team.” Devins encourages leaders to pause and reflect on how gratitude feels to themthen replicate it. “We often take things for granted and forget to look at life with childrens eyes or from the perspective of others. By being present, aware, and mindful as a leader, we become more aware of the needs of others.” More than a nicety In a world where employees are increasingly stressed, uncertain, and worried about the future, appreciation is more than a nicety, its a necessity. Leaders who get this right wont just see better performance and stronger retention, theyll build teams where people feel seen, heard, and motivated to do their best work.
Category:
E-Commerce
Entrepreneurs typically contribute less to the overall economy than people who are employed by others. Transitioning from being formally employed to working for yourself or starting a business typically results in working longer hours to earn less and contribute less to the economy and society at large. However, theres no question that entrepreneurs still command high levels of popular approval and appreciation. In particular, we tend to glorify self-made billionaires no matter what they do, how they impact society, and how they behave. To the point that even antisocial acts, contrarian rants, or counterproductive work behaviors can be celebrated if they come from Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, or Peter Thiel. But the truth is, it’s unwise to blindly follow in these folks’ footsteps. Here are four particular habits to avoid. 1. Being a jerk and calling it vision Many successful entrepreneurs are lionized for being difficult. The logic goes like this: if youre abrasive, impatient, or rude, you must be brilliant. After all, ordinary people cant see the world-changing picture youre obsessing over. But in most domains, being disrespectful or treating others poorly is a recipe for failure, not success. Unsurprisingly, these difficult personalities often resort to founding their own business after they are fired or rejected from other peoples businesses, since they are dispositionally unemployable. And if your genius only shines through when you belittle or ignore others, it may not be genius at all. It may just be bad behavior that got rewarded because the outcome was profitable. 2. Obsessive overwork masquerading as passion The hustle culture narrative has convinced many aspiring entrepreneurs that burnout is a badge of honor. But glorifying 100-hour weeks and chronic sleep deprivation doesnt build resilience or productivity. It breeds tunnel vision and poor decision-making. Many of the worlds most iconic founders have spoken openly about their struggles with exhaustion and breakdowns. Yet somehow, the myth persists that if you’re not killing yourself for your company, you’re not serious. In reality, it’s not noble to sacrifice your well-being for work. It’s just avoidable. 3. Disdain for rules and norms Disruption is often code for breaking things without thinking about the consequences. From dodging taxes and ignoring labor laws to trolling regulators and bypassing democratic processes, some celebrated entrepreneurs treat norms as nuisances. But rules exist for a reason. They are not always efficient, but they are meant to protect the many from the power of the few. When tech CEOs behave as if laws dont apply to them, we shouldnt call that boldness. We should call it what it is: entitlement. 4. Being yourself as a leadership strategy Be yourself is the kind of advice that sounds profound on a coffee mug but performs poorly in the real world. The myth of entrepreneurial authenticity suggests that success comes from unleashing your unfiltered self, no matter how impulsive, erratic, or unlikable that self may be. As I argue in my forthcoming book, Dont Be Yourself: Why Authenticity Is Overrated and What to Do Instead, the most effective leaders arent radically transparent; they are strategically self-aware. They know when to adapt, how to filter, and which version of themselves is most useful in a given situation. If being yourself means ignoring feedback, resisting self-regulation, or broadcasting your every mood swing, its not authenticity, its self-indulgence. And when your decisions affect thousands of employees or millions of users, indulging your quirks becomes a liability, not a virtue. In short, there is a fine line between charisma and narcissism, between vision and delusion, and between confidence and arrogance. When we admire entrepreneurs, we should separate their contributions from their character. Otherwise, we risk turning toxic traits into aspirational goals, and forgetting that success is not a moral justification for how you got there. The irony is that we often celebrate these traits not because they are rare but because they are familiar. The workplace is already filled with insecure overachievers, domineering micromanagers, and burned-out strivers. When the most famous founders exhibit these behaviors, it legitimizes them. It tells the rest of us that being insufferable is part of the price of ambition, that success excuses everything, and that empathy or humility are optional luxuries rather than core leadership competencies. But leadership is not just about being right. Its about making others better. And while many entrepreneurs have indeed changed the world, the best ones do so without leaving a trail of broken people behind them. Admiring entrepreneurs should not mean excusing toxic behavior. It should mean holding them to higher standards, especially because of the influence they wield. If were going to celebrate their impact, we should also expect them to be decent humans.
Category:
E-Commerce
Thinking of leaving the United States for life abroad? Youre not alone. A record-setting 21% of Americans expressed a desire to emigrate in 2024. While politics might play a role in the uptick, an increasing number of creative professionals are also leaving for career reasons. They want to embrace work cultures that foster balance over burnout, escape design echo chambers, and have the ability to afford launching their own studios. In the Bay Area in particular, it just felt like the treadmill was getting faster and faster, says Lisa Baird, president and principal strategist of the creative consultancy Fraīche Design Thinking. Baird moved to Paris with her family in 2022. I knew that quality of life was sort of slowly but surely disintegrating, because people were becoming more and more attached to work, like a religion. We were curious about how creatives like Baird made the move, so we checked in with designers who have decamped for other countries to learn more. In this story you’ll learn: The French program that gets you in the country and doubles as a business plan Why even expats need to maintain a mix of U.S. clients and make occasional return visits How Europe’s social programs foster personal and professional growth The ways in which designers adapt to being hours ahead of the U.S. The great emmigration Baird, who is originally from the Dallas suburbs, has spent time at a kaleidoscopic array of creative shops, including Ideo, Collins, and Frog. Long ago in San Francisco, she noticed one word rising in prominence and impact: hustle. It led her to rethink her life choicesspecifically how she might tip the balance less toward work and more toward life. I just didn’t want to be on my deathbed wishing that I had spent more time with my kids or with family, or pursuing personal interests, or just living life, really, she says. It’s a similar story for Rachel Gogel, a fractional creative director, who is relocating to Paris in January 2026. Gogel was born in Paris to American parents, but she moved to the U.S. to attend the University of Pennsylvania in 2005. From there she worked in publishing in New York City, followed by Facebook in Silicon Valley and other gigs. After a decade in the Bay Area, the dual U.S.-French citizen found herself fatigued by the hustle culture as well, and witnessed the impact of golden handcuffs, where employees trade heaping salaries for overworked misery. But working hard isn’t a golden ticket to the American dream. Meredith Hattam, founder of design studio A Present Force, says she left the U.S. because she grew disillusioned by the design of American systems at large. I don’t want to be ridiculously wealthy. I don’t want to have some crazy life. I want to be able to buy a house one day, Hattam says. I want to be able to raise children and not have debt. I want to be able to run a creative studio or do creative things and not be super stressed about having to take jobs to make ends meet. I don’t want to be worried about healthcare. So she took a job in Berlin in early 2023and now manages her own studio, something she says would have been prohibitively expensive in New York. Moving strategically The first step to moving abroad is obtaining a visa. Given how they vary by territory, it’s too expansive a topic to dig into here, but it’s worth noting how Baird obtained hers: Frances talent passport program. Launched in 2017, it offers a way to relocate ones business to France. It demands a robustly documented plan that involves specifying the number of jobs youll create for French citizens, among other things, but the upside to all that work is that you have a plan in place. By the time I finally got it all approved and landed in France, in a weird way, all I had to do was open up this business plan and look at page one, and be like, Well, what did I say I would do? Baird says. She advises deciding up front if moving abroad is a fun, novel thing you plan to do for a year or soor whether youre looking to full-on emigrate, and let that dictate whether youll work with immigration attorneys, as she did. Gogel has been consulting with one as she looks ahead to her move. Strategically, she has also been taking on more international speaking engagements to carve out a global footprint, adjusting her verbiage to more commonly understood international terms (e.g., focusing more on the term creative consultant in lieu of fractional leader), and rekindling East Coast relationships since maintaining clients there will mean less of a time zone discrepancy with Europe. A new work schedule Baird adjusted the entire cadence of her work life; rather than establish the days marching orders through a client call in the morning, she shifted that call to the end of her workday, and then hits pause until the following morning. Hattam, meanwhile, works a modular schedule based on the meetings or standing calls on her calendar, starting late on days when she has an evening meeting. Thanks to Slack, Loom, and other services, she says she works completely asynchronously, and establishes that up front with clients. At first, she was worried that would be seen as a problem but notes instead, If they want to work with you, they’ll work with you. Most of the people interviewed for this story maintain a mix of U.S.-based clients and some local work. What they all note: U.S. clients pay better. Cari Sekendur, founder of Butter Studio in Berlin, says European budgets are a lot lower in general. In her experience, clients in Europe invest less in marketing across the board. Her advice is to have a solid client network before leaving the U.S. I think it would have been really hard for me if I had just moved here straight after leaving my last full-time job, she says. The perks of life abroad If you’re working anyway, what makes life in Europe any different? Sekendur and Gogel both note that theres a prevailing cultural ethos of working to live, rather than living to work. Hattam says that in Berlin, the shift is palpable: All the noise around the next achievement you should be seeking and how youre doing compared to your peers is quieter. She says she had to adjust to a culture where What do you do? is not the first thing asked in the course of conversation. It’s actually been really healthy to decouple my professional status from my life, she says. I have actually had to undo a lot of toxic patterns in thinking about careerism, finances, all of these things. It’s not that you can’t think about these things at all, but it’s just that they’re not front and center in the same way. For Sekendur, the international life finds its way back into her work. Belin has long been a hub for art and music, and the city has always had a strong DIY culture as well. Being around a lot of creativity and people creating things from scratch gives me inspiration, whether it’s a direct connection or not, she says. But it comes with a practical boon, too. In Sekendurs case, Berlin is a very international city, and thats reflected in the people on her team; while New York is, too, she says the Brooklyn studio where she worked was comprised of people from the same cultural backgrounds. Being able to bring different experiences and backgrounds to the work just makes it better, in the same way that any kind of diversity makes work better, because you’re having more perspectives coming to it, she says. What that looks like practically: In her current studio, for example, Sekendur worked with a copywriter from Syria on a menstruation activewear line for Puma. That colleague was able to offer critical perspective on how to talk about the subject with a Middle Eastern audience. Ultimately, as Baird adds, Not everybody’s just on some tech treadmill, trying to help the next rich guy get richer, which, you know, God bless you, everybody’s got to have a way to put bread on the table. But you just meet a broader mix of people here, because the way society is structured enables more types of careers to exist in a shared community. It’s not a panacea One thing in particular that Sekendur misses about the States is networking. So she dedicates a couple of annual visits to New York City, where she crams in as many meetings as possible. She says shes also been beefing up her LinkedIn presence. The creatives we spoke to don’t play up the fact that theyre not based in the States. Sekendur says she doesnt tout it, but she also doesnt hide it (Berlin is indeed on her LinkedIn profile). It’s so interesting to me because [being based out of the U.S.] felt like the most important thing for so long, until the pandemic, and now nobody even asks, she says. Baird says her best advice is to not bring it up constantly. There’s no need to just be like, Hey, its Lisa dialing in from Paris at the start of every Zoom call, she says. It’s not relevant. It doesn’t need to be the focus or the focal point of any and all conversations. After all, as it happens, location isnt everything, and Hattam cautions against romanticizing a move abroad at large. It’s still really hard in different ways. Living in Europe isnt going to fix all of your problems, she says, though shes grateful for some of the structural differences that she wishes America could fix, like healthcare, education, gun violence . . . She adds: It’s more about wanting to find more of your own voice and challenging yourself. I never thought I was capable of moving abroad, period. But once you do something like that, you’re like, Oh, I can do all these other things that I was scared oflike starting my own design studio, or going freelance, or pitching clients that I never thought I could pitch. Whatever it is, you’re going to feel more and more empowered. I think that’s just a really beautiful thing. Do these designers have any plans to move back to the U.S.? No, Hattam says. No, Sekendur says. No plans, Baird says. And in all likelihood, Gogel is hoping to soon be able to say the same.
Category:
E-Commerce
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