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Cornell Keynotes podcast: How to transition to management

Smiling businesswoman in office

For many employees, the promotion from individual contributor to their first managerial role is the most important promotion of their lives.

In the latest episode of Cornell Keynotes podcast, Cornell lecturer and technical entrepreneur Dirk Swart shares how employees can elevate their managerial and business acumen to transition into management.

The episode covers the “rules of the game” to successfully make the transition to management, how to position oneself to increase the chances of promotion and tips for success as a junior manager.

Read more on the Chronicle.

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Cornell Keynotes podcast: AI today – laws, ethics and protecting your work

Abstract multi-colored objects on blue background

Understanding the ethical and legal use of AI is important for any business. In a new episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast from eCornell and the fourth installment of the “Generative AI” series, Cornell Tech professor Karan Girotra pairs up with professor Frank Pasquale from Cornell Law School to discuss the laws and ethics of generative AI while looking at performance guarantees as well as unintended consequences and outcomes.

The conversation highlights how organizations in finance, health, education, media and manufacturing are using these technologies in clever ways and charts a path for the next generation of use cases — ones that go beyond using assistants to enhance individual productivity.

Read more on the Chronicle.

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More than recovery: Examining life after depression

Host Chris Wofford (L) and Jonathan Rottenberg, professor of psychology, in the Cornell Keynotes studio.

Experiences with depression have hit record highs, with nearly 30% of U.S. adults reporting diagnoses. In the workplace, the figures present greater cause for alarm — around three in four employees have grappled with matters that impact their mental health and stigma that inhibits their access to care. The costs of this double-edged challenge are significant for workers and organizations; the latter lose billions of dollars related to mental health issues annually.

Jonathan Rottenberg believes there is a rarely discussed and remarkable silver living: A meaningful number of individuals who have experienced depression not only go on to experience well-being but flourish in their lives. Rottenberg, a professor of psychology and director of the Better Outcomes Laboratory at Cornell, shared his research and reasons for optimism in a recent Cornell Keynote.

What is depression — how do experts define it?

“Depression is a mood disorder, and it’s a profound state involving symptoms like feeling sad, losing interest or pleasure in things, and then a number of other associated symptoms. These symptoms come together, and unfortunately, depression tends to be disabling and also is accompanied by a lot of distress of people who feel quite bad, and in severe cases, people might actually become suicidal.”

What is the typical prognosis for depression? Do most people experience recovery or recurrence?

“Typically, depression is recurrent, meaning if you had one episode, you’re likely to have another. In addition to that, it’s likely that you’ll have some degree of continuing symptoms, so even during better periods, there’s still some burden of depression with you.

“For about half of people who have depression, it is recurrent, but for the other half it is not. People who have only one single lifetime episode of depression — that’s very common, and we don’t actually know so much about that very large group of people.”

Why is symptom reduction the focus of most depression research?

“The field of clinical research and treatment research is 100% geared toward symptom reduction as the main outcome, but our research suggests that depressed people have a wide variety of aspirations for their life, and reduction in symptoms is just one piece.”

How are broader recovery goals addressed in mental health treatment?

“Practitioners will have discussed with their clients these other themes because, in part, these are things that the clients will themselves bring up. As part of the nature of depression, people feel desperately cut off from their past. They have trouble even imagining times when [they weren’t] depressed, and so they desperately want this reconnection with [their former selves]. That said, researchers really haven’t studied this nearly as much in clinical practice and in real people. This is very important, but our researchers have not caught up to the reality of what the people on the ground really care about.”

What do we know about good outcomes, both historically and in present-day state-of-the-art research?

“I think it scared a lot of people off in the sense that we had all this research that suggested rather strongly that ‘not so good’ outcomes were the norm. Typically, if one had an episode of depression, one could expect to experience a recurrence and continuing symptoms, even during better times. There would often be some ongoing burden of symptoms. I think that’s partly why people maybe didn’t have the imagination to wonder whether, in addition to these not-so-good outcomes, there might also be people who not only recovered but actually flourished.

“We’ve always known that some people recover in the sense that they no longer have symptoms, which is great, but we didn’t imagine that people might be flourishing — doing really well in relationships, jobs, spiritually or emotionally. And if you don’t imagine that something is very likely, you might not research it, and that’s how it was until about a decade ago. There was virtually no research on good outcomes other than recovery, which is, of course, important. Recovery — meaning the symptoms are gone — is one kind of good outcome, and we know that many people fully recover from depression.”

What are the challenges individuals face when considering disclosing a mental health condition?

“There are some forums, in particular, where disclosure is extremely difficult. One would be in workplace settings. Many people have all kinds of negative associations and fear about mental health problems and . . . really fully empathizing with what this person is going through because that is part of the reality and we cannot ‘happy talk’ our way out of that. We still live in a society where there’s a lot of judgment. The younger generation is making progress, but there are still these domains where we haven’t made as much progress as you would think, and employment is a big one.”

Has the research at Cornell’s Better Outcomes Laboratory disrupt historical assumptions about depression recovery?

“Our research aims to challenge the bleak outlook that’s often associated with depression. We look at whether people can not only recover in the sense of losing symptoms but also go on to thrive emotionally, socially and professionally.

“So many of these outcomes you could say would be tricky to measure . . . we might have different ideas about who’s doing well. I wanted to start with a good outcome that most people think is important: happiness. We started with psychological well-being, and that had the dual good quality of a) being important to a lot of people who experience mental health problems, and b) being readily measurable.”

What did your research reveal about the likelihood of achieving high levels of well-being after a diagnosis of depression?

“The conventional wisdom would say that this is going to be pretty rare, right? These people had serious diagnosed depression . . . [we expected] 1% who are really flourishing and reporting these very high levels of well-being. What we found was that depression cut the chances of reporting high levels of well-being about in half, and about 10% of depressed people went on to report these very high levels of well-being. This really challenges the conventional wisdom that this kind of good outcome is rare. These good outcomes are real, and this is not an insignificant group of people.”

What are the next steps for your research, and what direction do you see yourself going?

“The next step is to understand what explains these good outcomes and how people transition from depression to states of well-being. My strong hypothesis is that there won’t be one single road to well-being; rather, there might be various paths involving cognitive, behavioral, biological and social factors that explain why some people experience good outcomes.”

What do you think can be done to destigmatize conversations around depression?

“Being matter of fact and really normalizing it as part of the human experience, realizing that depression is probably going to be some part of your identity — not your whole identity but part of your identity — and creating forums like this for people to engage are really important. I think that there’s going to be big changes, particularly in younger people [who] are way more comfortable talking about mental health problems. I think there are going to be some sea changes to finally get our society to less stigma.”

 

In his research, Jonathan Rottenberg, Ph.D., explores long-term outcomes and well-being after depression and other mental health issues. Rottenberg served as the director of clinical training and director of the Mood and Emotion Lab at the University of South Florida. He is the author of “The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic” and “Depression: What Everyone Needs to Know.” Learn more by watching Ever After, Rottenberg’s video series about life after depression.

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. Experience the full Life After Depression Keynote video or podcast.

If you or someone you know is experiencing mental health challenges or considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, texting “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741, or visiting 988lifeline.org.

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Master active listening to enhance decision-making

Four people, two men and two women, are gathered around a table covered with various supplies, such as notebooks, pens and coffee mugs. They are looking at two large whiteboards filled with colorful sticky notes. Picture a colleague grappling with a tough decision — they’re probably feeling the weight of uncertainty and pressure. In such moments, it’s tempting to step in with solutions or advice. But real support means resisting that urge, putting your own ideas aside and listening carefully to understand their concerns, priorities and the help or reassurance they seek.

In the Cornell Keynote webcast “Active Listening: Supporting People During Difficult Decisions,” Cheryl Strauss Einhorn, an adjunct professor at the Cornell SC Johnson School of Business and Cornell Tech, shares the four types of active listening and how utilizing them can support decision-makers.

What is active listening?

“There are two kinds of listening: passive and active. In passive listening, the responder is just taking it in, and the person speaking may not get any feedback. We don’t have a sense of whether or not the responder really got what we meant to say. Conversely, active listening is the practice of making sure you make the other person feel heard. You’re listening for cues in what they’re saying so that you can respond, not from your vantage point, but from the vantage point of what they’re truly inquiring about.”

Why is active listening essential in the decision-making process?

“Decision-making is a holistic process, and for too long, we’ve been under the impression that our decisions are ours alone. For our decisions to truly succeed, we need to be able to take into account other stakeholders’ viewpoints, which means actually asking them questions. What to ask is going to stem from what it is they’re talking to us about.

I was interested in coming up with a framework for listening to people and then asking questions that show we are responding to what they’re asking. And, if we’re unsure what that is, how can we further open up the conversation to ask them what they mean.”

What are the four types of active listening support?

“The four types of active listening I discuss are emotional, informational, analytical and reflective.

  1. Emotional support is listening with empathy, making space for the emotion and doing it without judgment.
  2. Informational active listening is about providing the information the other person needs, whether it be knowledge, facts or data.
  3. Analytical support helps them to interpret and understand what they’ve already gathered and how the information can be synthesized into something that has meaning.
  4. Reflective listening is really about mirroring. How often has someone come to you, and you think, ‘I believe they already know the solution.’ By asking questions that mirror what they’re saying, you help them prioritize and clarify their own thoughts.”

How can each type of active listening help support decision-makers?

“Emotional support can benefit the decision-maker by validating their feelings and making them feel heard. You may hear the other person say, ‘I feel,’ and you could respond with, ‘That sounds difficult,’ or ‘I hear your frustration.’ You listen for the cue the other person is giving and respond without bringing judgment to their emotion.

A decision-maker in need of informational support will ask if you have the information they need available. If you do, you can provide it. Otherwise, you can ask what information or data would be useful for them at this point. In a professional setting, speaking to what a decision-maker is asking for makes them feel like you are truly collaborating and giving them the support they need.

When offering analytical support, you can listen for something like ‘How would you interpret’ or ‘What does this mean?’ In these instances, somebody is asking for some kind of interpretation or synthesis. If you think that you have that at your ready, terrific. If not, you could say, ‘What kind of analysis would help you think this through?’ so that you can be directly responsive.

Reflective support helps decision-makers clarify their own thoughts and priorities. You might hear a decision-maker say, ‘I can’t decide’ or ‘I’m conflicted.’ This does not mean they’re asking you to decide for them. You can ask them back, ‘What’s the goal you want to achieve?’ or ‘What’s your priority here?’ and that can help them to bring forth again their own priorities and a solution that they already may have in mind.”

What are some common challenges people face when practicing active listening, and how can they overcome them?

“The toughest thing to remember when actively listening to another person is that you are not the decision-maker. The idea that the other person is a capable decision-maker and their decisions are their own is very important, and one way to pair active listening with this idea is to simply pause. We’re so trained to jump right into conversations that it feels unnatural to take an extra beat, but waiting for a moment to consider what the other person is trying to convey and having that metacognition come forward is going to make it easier for you to be in service to the other person.”

How do you see the principles of active listening evolving in the future to support decision-making across different industries?

“One of my recent research projects, which we discussed during an earlier eCornell Keynote, identified five different ways people approach decisions, each of which has a different underlying value structure. This means individuals are optimizing for different things in their decision-making process. Once you can identify which problem-solver profile somebody is, the act of listening becomes much easier.

For example, if you know someone is a ‘detective’ — like I am — when you come to them with an answer, they’ll want to see the data that supports it. So, if you say to me, ‘Cheryl, this is the evidence I have that supports this hypothesis, and I think we should move in that direction.’ I am going to feel so appreciative that you recognized my need for evidence and allowed me to assess whether that evidence makes sense to me.

That is a great way that I’ve seen companies and teams really bring this idea of active listening forward to streamline decision-making, build trust between team members and increase productivity by aligning communication styles with individual problem-solving approaches.”

Interested in learning more? Discover how you can leverage your problem-solver profile to tackle challenging problems in the Complex Decision-Making certificate program, authored by Cheryl Strauss Einhorn.

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. Experience the full Keynote “Active Listening: Supporting People During Difficult Decisions” on the eCornell website.

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Family business owners strategize for longevity in new certificate program

Workers review documents while standing in front of items on a store shelf

For Joseph Astrachan, a co-author of Cornell’s Family Business Leadership online certificate program, a family-run business is a generational tradition. Since Astrachan was young, his family has operated businesses in fields ranging from pharmaceuticals to shipping. He is no stranger to the difficulties that come with owning a company tied to the fabric of a family, including managing close relationships in the face of business challenges.

With Daniel Van Der Vliet, executive director of the Smith Family Business Initiative within the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, John Engels, president and CEO of Leadership Coaching Inc. and Holly Isdale ‘86, founder of WealthHaven, Astrachan has blended academic theory and industry practice in a certificate program that helps others navigate the obstacles and opportunities of running a family business successfully.

“There is no way around it: Navigating a family business is distinctly different from the traditional corporate model,” said Astrachan, a Professor Emeritus and former executive director of the Cox Family Enterprise Center at Kennesaw State University’s Coles College of Business.

The certificate program uses a hands-on approach to address how the personal and professional overlap in family businesses. Courses include:

  • Family Business Leadership Fundamentals
  • Managing Family Relationships
  • Stewarding Family Wealth and Values
  • Implementing Family Governance Systems

Just like with any other business, management in a family-run venture evolves over time. For family businesses, there is often an added layer of grief associated with leadership changes. Sometimes assumed agreements and familial relationships complicate these transitions.

“Continuing a family-run business requires perpetuation through transition, passing it from one generation to the next,” Van Der Vliet said in a recent conversation with eCornell. “Even though all business begins with family . . . some of this expertise around family business does not exist in academia. Family business is very specialized.”

To help learners understand the nuances, the Family Business Leadership program combines advisory parties – like lawyers and accountants – and family members into one cohesive group of learners. The courses organize behaviors in family businesses into familiar workplace relationships and help make sense of common patterned dynamics. Learners gain practical insights they can immediately apply to their own operations.

“Family members are not asked to share anything deeply personal,” Van Der Vliet said. “Their projects could become more personal if they choose, which can be beneficial for their takeaways from the course… and for those that are not family members in the family business, on the advisory or service side, they can have an opportunity to realize [how family dynamics] broadly affect the company.”

Discover how to manage relationships, steward wealth and implement governance structures in Cornell’s Family Business Leadership certificate program. Learn more and enroll now.

Quotes have been edited for clarity.

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Certificate program brings meditation, mindfulness benefits to leadership

Person in light-colored clothing meditates

Mindful and inclusive leaders are highly sought after in today’s increasingly global and diverse workplace. Organizations need leaders who can foster environments where individuals with varying backgrounds feel valued and understood.

Organizations tend to concentrate on the bureaucratic elements while the foundation of an inclusive setting lies in individuals’ empathy, compassion and wisdom. Research studies suggest that through greater emotion regulation, meditation can enhance interpersonal awareness and the capacity to connect with people from different walks of life.

Connie Yuan, author of the Mindful Inclusion program from eCornell and a professor of communication at Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has combined her mindfulness and organizational behavior expertise to transform how meditation is perceived and applied in leadership. 

The Mindful Inclusion program begins by introducing Tibetan Buddhist techniques for meditation success and later highlights the importance of formal structures and informal networks to bridge practical skills with theoretical understandings in organizations. The need for adaptive leadership is emphasized as no one-size-fits-all method exists.

Courses include:

  • Using Mindful Meditation to Strengthen Relationships
  • Organizational Structures and Networking
  • Leading Adaptively
  • Navigating Diversity and Cultural Differences
  • Managing Organizational Knowledge and Innovation

Yuan emphasizes that welcoming multiculturalism instead of commonality among diverse individuals is critical as fostering innovation through varied perspectives leads to effective management and growth. 

“The program helps people embrace diversity not as something we have to live with because [workplaces are now more diverse]. It treats diversity as a resource opportunity for growth,” said Yuan.

The program also offers an alternative management approach for people exposed to collaboration and entrepreneurship at all levels — from CEOs to individual contributors. By improving relationships with people who are different from themselves, participants develop greater compassion to navigate intercultural connections effectively.

Enroll in the Mindful Inclusion certificate program to make the most of diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

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Cornell Keynotes podcast: Mismanaging hybrid teams

Worker distracted by dog during virtual meeting

The shift toward hybrid work exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic and has since become a staple in all types of organizations.

Although hybrid teams can offer a number of benefits, leaders often find that the practices they have come to depend on for managing in-person teams do not translate well to the hybrid context. And with hybrid team management being the responsibility of both leaders and team members alike, where can you look for opportunities for improvement?

In a new episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast from eCornell, professor Brad Bell, director of the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies at Cornell’s ILR School, shares ways that hybrid teams are mismanaged and presents strategies for effectively managing hybrid teams.

Read more on the Chronicle.

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3 strategies to optimize executive pay in your organization

Executives make a deal with a handshake over a desk

Well-structured executive compensation packages can attract talented leaders to C-suite and top-tier management positions. Companies must consider the impact those offers might have on their employees and businesses.

Providing a clear rationale for high-level salaries and benefits supports employee productivity and morale throughout an organization. Getting it wrong can have a detrimental impact on company culture and can also lead to fines, sanctions, tax penalties, lawsuits or reputational damage.

LizAnn Eisen, faculty director for the Cornell Tech Board of Directors Forum and acting professor of the practice at Cornell Law School and Cornell Tech, recently hosted a Cornell Keynote discussion of executive pay featuring Jessica McNamara ‘96, senior counsel at IBM, and Jennifer Conway, a partner at Davis Polk. The trio covered strategies for ensuring an organization’s pay structures align with regulatory requirements and best practices for perks, clawback and noncompetes.

1. Prioritize transparency and cross-team alignment on perks.

The crescendoing call for transparency in executive pay calculations includes non-cash benefits, or perks, such as travel on company aircraft, personal security and country club memberships. Corporate leadership teams can sometimes find it difficult to distinguish business expenses from disclosable perks.

“The SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) considers a personal benefit to be a perk unless it’s integrally and directly related to the performance of duties,” Conway said. “If it’s a perk, then it has to be valued based on the aggregate incremental cost to the company — the cost of providing the perk — which sounds simple, but it can actually be very complicated.”

While SEC rules apply only to public companies, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) monitors all businesses for non-cash, in-kind fringe benefits provided to any worker in exchange for services, focusing on whether employers are properly reporting employee income. A taxable fringe benefit requires imputing income based on fair market value.

Both SEC enforcement action for inadequate perk disclosure, which the commission sees as a possible breakdown of internal controls, and audit activity from the IRS regarding personal trips reported as business travel have increased recently.

When dealing with the two different sets of federal standards for perks, McNamara advises that companies make sure their practice is robust using three key steps:

  • Have clear written policies and approval processes applicable to benefits like the use of corporate aircraft.
  • Maintain a detailed record-keeping system and automate inputs when possible.
  • Do monthly and year-end reviews with all key stakeholders, including administrative assistants and human resources, legal and tax departments.

2. Understand the latest rules on compensation recovery.

Last fall, the SEC adopted the final clawback rule mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act. The act subjects erroneously paid compensation to recovery and applies to top officers of a company. The no-fault component of the rule is new: Even if an executive had no role in their organization’s misstatement of finances, their excess compensation tied to meeting performance or revenue goals now could be subject to recovery.

In restatement processes, some areas for repayment like performance-based bonuses should be apparent, but retirement plan contributions and payments based on stock-price changes could slip through the cracks. The risk for litigation, according to Conway, makes it important for businesses to be thorough.

“Given the complexity, it’s important to work with outside counsel,” she said. “It’s also helpful to make sure that you’re correctly calculating what’s subject to recovery.”

To ensure that its executives are aware of the new clawback rules, IBM’s legal team added language regarding recovery and repayment provisions to its equity award agreements, McNamara said.

3. Prepare for a future that may not include noncompetes.

The Federal Trade Commission’s recent ruling to end noncompetes is set to take effect in September, but there have been legal challenges to the agency’s authority. From the major questions doctrine to the rule’s retroactivity, every matter of the potential ban is up for debate.

“There’s a good chance that the rule never goes into effect, but it’s definitely important to take very close note of it. On the state level, there is much more momentum to act,” Conway said.

If the ban were to be enforced, it would prohibit any term or condition of employment that intends to prevent a worker from seeking other work once they have left a company. While the rule would be retroactive, an exception applies to a limited group of senior executives who serve in policymaking positions and whose compensation exceeds $150,000 annually.

According to Conway, one of the most significant portions of the new rule impacts noncompetes tied to the sale of a business.

“The final rule does not apply to noncompetes entered into by a person pursuant to a bona fide sale of a business entity, sale of the person’s ownership interest in a business entity or all or substantially all of the business’s operating assets,” Conway said. “That raises a question of how small an ownership might be sufficient. Is it so broad that you could cover somebody with just a small interest in equity of a public company? As the rule is currently drafted, it doesn’t actually impose any sort of threshold.”

For IBM, which has acquired several companies — including many in California where a sale-of-business exception to prohibitions on noncompetes has existed for some time — not having a threshold is important for protecting the good will of businesses that they purchase McNamara said.

Given the litigation challenges, companies do not have to alter their existing practices right now, Conway said, but they can engage in certain activities to prepare for the future:

  • Review restrictive covenants, assess how broadly they apply and consider which ones are necessary.
  • Evaluate “blue pencil” provisions.
  • Include acknowledgements of senior executive status in new noncompetes.
  • Strengthen non-solicit, confidentiality and intellectual property (IP) covenants.
  • Review overall compensation plan structures to ensure they are designed to give employees incentives to stay.

“Once the IP walks out the door and someone starts work the next day for somebody, the only real method [for relief] is an injunction. If the injunction isn’t granted, there’s no equitable relief that can get the IP back. The damage is done,” McNamara said. “The noncompete is a nice way for people to sit out for a period so their information becomes stale. A reasonable rule, even if it applies to a level of technical talent you need to protect . . . would be much more palatable to the business community.”

Visit the eCornell website to watch the full Keynote “Executive Pay in the Spotlight: Perks, Noncompetes and More,” one webcast in a multipart series leading up to the Cornell Tech Board of Directors Forum. The immersive forum will prepare you for today’s most urgent opportunities and challenges in board governance, including AI and other developing technologies. Learn more and register.

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Cornell Keynotes podcast: Neurodiversity inclusion policies and practices at work

Employees connect colorful puzzle pieces

Finding the right talent is a top priority for businesses. Building a deep and diverse candidate pool is key in matching open positions with the best employees to fill them.

In a new episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast from eCornell, Susanne Bruyère, a professor of Disability Studies and academic director of the K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Institute on Employment and Disability at the Cornell ILR School, joins host Chris Wofford to discuss the growing number of corporate affirmative hiring programs to recruit individuals who are neurodivergent.

Read more on the Chronicle.