MURIEL WILKINS: I’m Muriel Wilkins, and this is Coaching Real Leaders. Part of the HBR Presents network. I’m a long-time executive coach who works with highly successful leaders who’ve had a bump in the road. My job is to help them get over that bump by clarifying their goals and figuring out a way to reach them so that hopefully they can lead with a little more ease. I typically work with clients over the course of several months, but on this show, we have a one-time coaching meeting focusing on a specific leadership challenge they’re facing.
MURIEL WILKINS: Today’s guest is someone we’ll call, “Naomi,” to protect her confidentiality. She’s a lawyer and has followed a pretty traditional career trajectory from law school to a big firm to an in-house counsel job. But even though she acknowledges she’s done well for herself, she’s feeling unsettled.
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There’s one line from Twitter power user Chrissy Teigen’s latest mea culpa that I haven’t been able to get out of my head. Teigen, who recently returned to the platform less than a month after announcing she was quitting it forever, tweeted an apology to media personality Courtney Stodden, who had accused her of harassing them online when they were just 16 years old.
“I’m mortified and sad at who I used to be,” Teigen wrote to her 13.6 million followers last week. “I was an insecure, attention-seeking troll. I am ashamed and completely embarrassed at my behavior but that is nothing compared to how I made Courtney feel.”
It was the next bit, though, that’s been haunting me: “I have worked so hard to give you guys joy and be beloved and the feeling of letting you down is nearly unbearable.” There’s something deeply telling about Teigen’s admission that she works hard to “be beloved” — which, as writer Bolu Babalola notes, “is not the same as working to be a good person.”
Sophia Cheong’s career started at a Korean barbecue restaurant in California, where she worked as a host while completing her bachelor’s degree in business administration.
After graduating from Fullerton College, she was promoted to assistant general manager and, later, the director of operations. Then a coworker started teaching her how to code.
“I fell in love,” Cheong told Insider. “I know it’s cliche, but I felt like it was my true passion. … I was getting up every morning really excited to learn.”
Like the millions of Americans who quit their jobs during the “Great Resignation,” Cheong had an opportunity during the pandemic to exit the restaurant industry and switch career paths, something she had been wanting to do for some time. With restaurant closures forcing layoffs, she volunteered to be among those let go.
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A woman codes in Python (not Sophia Cheong). 5432action/Getty Images
Nobody knows what two Navy pilots and their weapons officers saw while training the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group in 2004: It was white and shaped roughly like a Tic Tac. It mirrored their movements, and then it disappeared, a feat neither pilot can explain. Maybe the object was advanced technology, ours or someone else’s. Maybe it was a kind of optical illusion. Maybe — and this is least likely — it was something altogether different, an extraterrestrial visit from an unknown species. Implausible though it is, the possibility excites tremendous interest. 60 Minutes, a venerable media institution, recently dedicated an entire segment to the Nimitz sighting and to other unidentified aerial phenomena. The New Yorker published thousands of words on the subject in April. No longer the province of Ancient Aliens or The X-Files, the UFO has gone mainstream.
Not everyone is pleased by this development. There are real problems to worry about, suggested Emerald Robinson, a correspondent for the far-right Newsmax network. “They want you talking about aliens because they don’t want you talking about Maricopa,” she tweeted, referring to a bizarre recount of presidential ballots there. “They want you talking about UFOs because they don’t want you talking about stagflation, the collapse of the dollar, the crisis on the border, and Biden’s mental health.” The Maricopa recount is “a sham,” as acknowledged by the county’s own board of supervisors. The dollar has not collapsed. Biden’s mental health appears fine. Who knows who “they” might be; the Deep State perhaps, or some other cabal, but whoever they are, they’re unnecessary: Our desire for distraction is organic.
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Roswell, New Mexico. Photo: Mark Peterson/Corbis via Getty Images
After months of political wrangling, the House late Friday night passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill to modernize highways, rebuild water lines and provide billions for electric vehicle charging stations, the largest transportation spending package in U.S. history.
The passage is a victory for Democrats and President Joe Biden, who had suffered a stinging defeat in Tuesday’s elections.
The bill, passed by the Senate in August, will now be sent to Biden who is expected to sign it into law.
The 228-206 vote followed bitter differences between Democratic progressives and moderates who clashed over the size and scope of Biden’s $1.85 trillion Build Back Better budget bill that would expand social safety net programs and enact sweeping climate programs. The deal Democrats struck allowed passage of the infrastructure bill Friday and a promise that the larger bill would get a vote later this month.
The funeral for Colin L. Powell, former secretary of state, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and national security adviser, brought out a Washington that barely exists anymore: Republicans and Democrats, including President Biden and two of his predecessors, uniformed military and diplomats, and people on all sides of the Iraq war.
No one would have been more amused by the assemblage than Mr. Powell himself, who often ran a smiling, half-whispered commentary on the city’s temporary loyalties and back-room machinations. Yet on Friday, the Washington National Cathedral was filled with them all — former officials who were at Mr. Powell’s side in the Persian Gulf War and on the seventh floor of the State Department, where he often waged a behind-the-scenes battle for influence in the George W. Bush White House.
Mr. Biden did not speak, nor did the two former presidents who attended, Barack Obama and Mr. Bush, who made Mr. Powell his first secretary of state. Instead, among the eulogists was a Democrat who had often clashed with Mr. Powell over the general’s reluctance to commit American forces to battles when the general, seared by the experience of his service in Vietnam, did not see a clear, successful outcome.
“He said I almost gave him an aneurysm,” the Democrat, Madeleine K. Albright, who served as secretary of state in the Clinton administration, told the mourners, recalling Mr. Powell’s reaction after she famously asked him, “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”
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At Washington National Cathedral on Friday, Colin L. Powell was remembered as a “warrior-statesman” whose leadership was valued by officials from both parties. Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York Times
Most folks love learning, regardless of whether or not school is “their thing.” Sometimes it’s just a matter of finding the right teacher for your learning style—or maybe even the right medium.
For auditory learners, podcasts can be excellent vehicles for processing knowledge that’d be less digestible in more visual mediums like video or even the written word. The American education systems tends to fail students in myriad ways, requiring continual education after the fact to learn the truth behind what we were taught in history, art, science, language, literature, and math. Privileged gatekeepers deciding who and what gets taught can result in the denial of diverse voices and perspectives.
Podcasts radically shift the dynamics around who gets to teach, and who gets to learn. A lot of the most beloved and popular shows, like Radiolab and Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, basically boil down to what you wish your science or history class had been like in the first place. Many others, like 1619 and You’re Wrong About, aim to correct the misinformation in many accepted cultural narratives from both our near and distant pasts.
Now, obviously, podcasts can’t replace a world-class, bonafide, IRL, teacher-to-student relationship. But they can teach us more than a few vital lessons.
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Listen, and you might learn a things or two.Credit: bob al-greene / mashable
A year ago, as the pandemic ravaged country after country and economies shuddered, consumers were the ones panic-buying. Today, on the rebound, it’s companies furiously trying to stock up.
Mattress producers to car manufacturers to aluminum foil makers are buying more material than they need to survive the breakneck speed at which demand for goods is recovering and assuage that primal fear of running out. The frenzy is pushing supply chains to the brink of seizing up. Shortages, transportation bottlenecks, and price spikes are nearing the highest levels in recent memory, raising concern that a supercharged global economy will stoke inflation.
Copper, iron ore and steel. Corn, coffee, wheat, and soybeans. Lumber, semiconductors, plastic, and cardboard for packaging. The world is seemingly low on all of it. “You name it, and we have a shortage on it,” Tom Linebarger, chairman, and chief executive of engine and generator manufacturer Cummins Inc., said on a call this month. Clients are “trying to get everything they can because they see high demand,” Jennifer Rumsey, the Columbus, Indiana-based company’s president, said. “They think it’s going to extend into next year.”
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Irrigation lines are set up to water almond tree rootstocks in Tulare, California, on April 21. Photographer: Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
