BetterUp

In workplaces across the globe, stress is up as layoffs, reorgs, and AI all land at once. But stress isn’t the only indicator you should be watching with your workforce. It's mattering: the sense that what you contribute actually counts. As AI adoption accelerates, it's declining faster than productivity, courage, or relationship building. That's not a coincidence. See what's driving the drop in our report on AI and the conditions that shape it: https://lnkd.in/gcRD6i9x

Is your "nice" culture actually hurting performance? Remember Jack Welch's "rank and yank"? Over the past two decades, the pendulum swung the other way. Leaders were asked to prioritize psychological safety and harmony. Some companies took it so far that any friction got treated as a culture failure. At one company, nearly every employee "met" or "exceeded" expectations in year-end reviews. New research shows why that's a problem: when psychological safety gets mistaken for comfort instead of safety to be candid, artificial harmony suppresses the very candor it's supposed to protect. The fix isn't Welch-era ruthlessness. It's teams that feel cared for and safe enough to say the hard thing. Read more → https://lnkd.in/dUCEkgep

🚀 Lumen's strategic revenue now exceeds 53% of its total revenue — for the first time in its company’s history. 🚀 Lumen Technologies CEO Kate Johnson says "Lasting transformation starts with people. When organizations invest in their talent, build a culture of learning, and empower teams to embrace change, they create the conditions not only to adapt, but to lead. That’s how meaningful transformation takes hold and delivers results." Here's what EVP and Chief People & AI Enablement Officer Ana White attributes this extraordinary progress to.

Lumen Technologies' turnaround started with $20 billion in debt and a culture that had stopped taking risks. President and CFO Chris Stansbury told the WSJ Leadership Institute that the fix came from getting the C-suite to trust each other enough to challenge one another directly, then aligning around one mission. This kind of leadership work doesn't show up on a balance sheet. Until it does. We're proud to work alongside teams like Lumen's as they build it. Read the full piece in The Wall Street Journal ⬇️ 🎁 link here: https://lnkd.in/gz5gkDtE

Conscientiousness. Openness. Agreeableness. None of these traits predict who sends workslop. What actually predicts it:  🚦 Whether AI use is mandated or encouraged 💙 How much trust exists on the team  ⛽ How much psychological fuel your people have Explore the full data from BetterUp Labs research to find out what separates high performers from high workslop producers: https://lnkd.in/gcRD6i9x

Friday lunch idea: Block an hour and watch Adam Grant and Caroline Heller's conversation with Jolen Anderson at whatever pace works for you. Drop it to .75x if you want to sit with every point. Push it to 1.25x if you process fast and want the highlights. One section worth watching at full speed: around the 45-minute mark, Caroline talks about reverse mentorship, and how BlackRock is making AI-use part of everyone's day job instead of something extra on the side. What's one way you're building AI into your actual day job, not just testing it on the side? Watch here → https://lnkd.in/gwm5e4sn And let us know your approach in the comments!

Kate Niederhoffer's new piece for Built In looks at what happens when companies chase adoption numbers instead of outcomes. It's Goodhart's Law playing out in real time: target a metric, and people start optimizing for the metric instead of the thing it was supposed to represent. Here's what stands out: ✨ Where saved time goes matters. Managers who redirect AI-saved hours into coaching and strategic planning see a 65% jump in team AI performance. Only 7% of organizations tell employees what to do with that freed-up time. ✨ AI can strengthen relationships or erode them. Managers who use AI to skip direct conversations see burnout rise 26% and intent to leave climb 29%. Managers who use AI to prepare for those same conversations report feeling more confident, not less connected to their teams. ✨ Trust changes how AI is perceived. Employees who trust their leadership are 46% more likely to see AI as something that adds to their capabilities rather than something that replaces them. These numbers don't show up on your adoption dashboard, but they do all show up in your retention and performance numbers eventually. Read the full piece: https://lnkd.in/gzMa8f43 #AIAdoption

More than half your team has sent it: Workslop. 53% of desk workers say some of their AI-generated work is unhelpful or low quality, according to BetterUp Labs research. The easy read: people are getting lazy with AI. The real finding: workslop isn't a character problem. It's a conditions problem, and the data shows exactly which conditions predict it. Full findings in our report, The case for conditions: https://lnkd.in/gcRD6i9x

Lumen Technologies' turnaround story told by Ana White is worth reading – take a look at the latest HR Brew article on their work with Brené Brown and the BetterUp Center for Daring Leadership. 👇

Huge congratulations to Payton Westcott on her first F1 Academy win at Zandvoort, racing for the Mercedes-AMG F1 Academy Team. Payton held her nerve through a high-stakes environment to take the win by nearly two seconds, marking her first victory this season. Human performance under pressure made the difference. Westcott had the focus, resilience, and precision she needed when every millisecond counted, the same fundamentals BetterUp helps develop in the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team. Congrats, Payton. More on the partnership: https://lnkd.in/gG_EsB_d