Zoe Williams The Traitors has shown just how adept some people are at lying. Here, an ex-FBI agent, a psychologist and a fraud investigator share their best tips for detecting dishonesty Twenty-two people in a castle, Claudia Winkleman hamming it up like crazy, a number of silly challenges, a chunk of money sitting at the centre, almost glowing, and human nature laid bare. To try to pick apart exactly what makes The Traitors so compelling would be to miss the point, like trying to analyse the ingredients in a Krispy Kreme doughnut. As enjoyable as it is, though, the show…

Megan Sauer The next time you catch yourself nodding along to something you disagree with, stop and calmly enter the argument instead. That’s advice from Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Learning how to effectively disagree — without simply saying “no” — can strengthen your relationships and make you more persuasive, Grant recently told the “What Now? with Trevor Noah” podcast. “So often, people are told, ‘Just compromise. Pick your battles in relationships,’ that they end up treating them as fragile,” said Grant, in an episode that published on August 15. Then,…

Matthew Smith While the business press tends to focus attention on macro strategic forces such as AI, geopolitics, and climate change, one of the biggest trends among experts in leadership development today is perhaps surprisingly a focus on building deeper, more “human” capacities. The call for leaders to embrace their humanity is not new. Next year will mark the thirtieth anniversary of Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence, which popularized competencies such as self-regulation, empathy, and social skills as critical to leadership success. More recently, however, many leading thinkers on leadership development have suggested the need for leaders to undertake even…

Chris Westfall Passive-aggressive leaders specialize in hiding their true feelings, and making you question your own. Instead of taking a direct approach, and fostering clarity, passive aggressive leaders lack the courage (or the interpersonal skills) to confront workplace challenges. In a report from the Harvard Business Review, researchers identified passive-aggressive leadership as a key factor in low employee engagement and reduced organizational performance. PwC says that a passive-aggressive organizations will suffer from an inability to execute, experiencing ineffective decision making and an “information disconnect” - something that no one can afford in the age of AI. Rather than addressing issues…