There’s a lot going on behind the scenes and I wanted to share that we’ve been revamping the Owlthena Executive Listening Service as a value-added service for the clients of Owlthena’s parent company, Digital Brand Expressions. We’ll continue to offer these one-off, business sounding board sessions for other business leaders as well, but soon everything will be found on the Digital Brand Expressions website and we’ll be sunsetting the Owlthena site.

Helping leaders get to quick clarity with personalized listening sessions designed to help them hear themselves, see their challenges and opportunities from new angles, and move forward with confidence is a pleasure and being able to continue to provide this much-needed support in new ways is very exciting.

We’ll continue to publish this free e-briefing for business leaders and the content will live in a special section of the DBE website. Stay tuned as the transition continues, and with that as the backdrop, here’s this week’s What’s Hot Wednesday to nurture and spark your business leader self:

• Take a pause before using QR codes personally or for your business. This story from Inc. points to the pros and the dangers, including warnings from the FBI about bad actors.
• If you don’t have a subscription to the NY Times, you may be able to see this amazing trend tying article by Noreen Malone by Googling the title and trying to see it for free. The article is called “The Age of Anti-Ambition” and it does an excellent job of wrapping up a number of key points and trends to help explain some of what is going on in the labor market, and society, today. One of the best pieces I’ve read all year.
• I know no one reading this would be considered an arrogant boss, but do you possibly have these toxic people working for you? This Fast Company article talks about the characteristics of arrogant bosses and why confidence is often taken as a sign of competence.

Do Good Spotlight: Charity Navigator’s Homelessness Fund

If you’re a regular reader, you probably know that we value Charity Navigator (and have featured them here too in our not-for-profit spotlight) as a resource for finding highly vetted organizations to feature and donate to as part of our What’s Hot Wednesday initiatives. But did you know that Charity Navigator has funds that make donating to your favorite causes easier? This week, we donated to combat homelessness by donating via Charity Navigator’s fund to not one, but to 10 charities supporting the homeless with one donation. What a wonderful mechanism for doing good! Charity Navigator, we salute you! (And we couldn’t help but make a donation to Charity Navigator this week too to help them help so many!) To find funds, go to “Top 10 Lists” in the top nave and choose the first option, “Funds Dedicated to Causes You Care About.”  It all starts here.

• From CNN Health: did you know kindness is healthy? Here’s why. How can you encourage this healthy behavior where you lead?
• Have you been staying abreast of new laws requiring salaries to be posted in job ads? New York City’s law goes into effect in May of this year. This article from CNN Business talks about what happens when salaries get posted.
• We’ve been hearing more and more about compassionate leadership as differentiated from empathetic leadership. I love this quote by Rasmus Hougaard “…Right, so compassion is the intent to be of benefits to the people that we are with and it is very different from words like sympathy, empathy – in that sympathy is when we are just seeing someone that suffers and yeah, we feel for them. Empathy is when we see someone who suffers, and we take on their suffering. Compassion is when we take that a step further and we say to ourselves, how can I help this person? So, compassion is in short empathy plus action.” Here’s a link to where I found this quote and more information around it in the transcription tab.

Okay, that’s it for this time. I hope these shares are helpful to you as you lead your teams to victory. Have a great rest of the week and please reach out if you’d like to chat, you know I love to hear from you!