From videos of drunk and disorderly airline passengers to stories of hospital visitors angrily refusing to wear masks, customer-facing work seems to have gotten a lot more difficult – even dangerous -- over the past few years. It's important that organizations understand the experience of frontline workers now, and help to better protect their employees, says Christine Porath, professor of management at Georgetown University. She's studied incivility for 20 years, and has spoken to workers in many industries in the last few years about what it's like working with customers today - with stress, anger, and incivility seemingly on the rise. And she has advice for managers and leaders. Porath is the author of the HBR Big Idea article "Frontline Work When Everyone Is Angry."

Let’s Protect Our Frontline Workers from Rude Customers

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Worker disengagement is on the rise around the world. Even those of us who generally like our jobs sometimes find it hard to muster energy and focus. So what's the key to regaining motivation? Harvard Business School professor Boris Groysberg and research associate Robin Abrahams share a four part process to help you get your groove back: detachment, empathy, action and reframing. They offer simple tips like thinking in the third person, helping others, and gamification to help get back on track. Groysberg and Abrahams are the authors of the HBR article "Advice for the Unmotivated."

Feeling Unmotivated? Here’s How to Get Out of the Rut

Few leaders have been trained to ask great questions. That might explain why they tend to be good at certain kinds of questions, and less effective at other kinds. Unfortunately, that hurts their ability to pursue strategic priorities. Arnaud Chevallier, strategy professor at IMD Business School, explains how leaders can break out of that rut and systematically ask five kinds of questions: investigative, speculative, productive, interpretive, and subjective. He shares real-life examples of how asking the right sort of question at a key time can unlock value and propel your organization. With his IMD colleagues Frédéric Dalsace and Jean-Louis Barsoux, Chevallier wrote the HBR article "The Art of Asking Smarter Questions."

Are You Asking the Right Questions?

Many people aspire to entrepreneurship but we all know it's a high-risk endeavor. Bill Aulet, the Ethernet Inventors Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management, has for decades studied what it takes for start-ups to succeed and advises the next generation of founders on how to do it. He discusses the key trends and changes he's seen over the past few years, and outlines concrete steps anyone can take to get a new venture -- including those within larger organizations -- off the ground. Aulet is the author of the newly updated book Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup.

A Roadmap for Today’s Entrepreneurs

The amount of work we need to get done seems to grow daily. To avoid becoming overwhelmed, we have to become more productive than ever. Laura Mae Martin has advice on what has worked well at one of the biggest organizations in the world. She's the Executive Productivity Advisor at Google and shares the practical ways she helps her colleagues and company executives manage their time, calendars, email inboxes, and more. Martin is the author of the new book Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing.

Treat Email Like Laundry — and Other Tips from Google’s Productivity Expert

It's been nearly two decades since the term "glass cliff" was coined; it refers to the tendency for women to break through the glass ceiling to top management roles only when there is a big crisis to overcome, which makes it more difficult for them to succeed. In short, senior female leaders are often set up to fail — and this continues to happen today, as recent examples from business, politics, and academia show. Sophie Williams, a former C-suite advertising executive and global leader at Netflix, has researched why the glass cliff remains a problem and offers advice for women facing them — as well as lessons for the broader corporate world. She's the author of the book "The Glass Cliff: Why Women in Power Are Undermined - and How to Fight Back."

Let’s Protect Our Frontline Workers from Rude Customers

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