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Looking to be spoon-fed? It won't end well. Angela Lane and Sergey Gorbatov, PhD. You worked hard to get the meeting. You might even think it went well. But to the leader whose time you took, you came across as unimpressive. Congratulations. That’s significantly worse than not getting the meeting at all. The Meeting We're Talking About It has a name: the “informational interview”. Someone, usually earlier in their career, asks someone more senior for time. Not for a job

Most leaders never ask what they're rewarding, where talent risk hides, or what's really true. Boeing, Klarna, and Wells Fargo show the cost.

We've sat in enough 360 debriefs to recognise the moment feedback dies. A leader hears something they don't want to hear, and instead of sitting with it, they explain why it's wrong. Wrong data. Wrong timing. The room goes quiet. The person who raised it decides it wasn't worth the effort. Next time, they'll say less. That moment has nothing to do with feedback skills. The leader in question knows the model. They can define "specific, timely, behavioural" without blinking. Wh

Being open to as many job opportunities as possible gives you a career edge. More choices. More experience. More capability, compounding over time. In our Move Up or Move On book, we call this being an Opportunity Seeker. But other considerations, often personal in nature, may cause you to limit your opportunity set, either temporarily or permanently. At some stage, you’re going to have to decide whether to share those limitations with your organisation. Take a high potent

By Angela Lane and Sergey Gorbatov We ran a poll on LinkedIn. The question was simple: what best separates high potential from high maintenance? Four reasonable options: performance under pressure, impact on the team, whether they grow others, and how they respond to feedback. The respondents, many of them senior leaders in Talent and HR, were clear. Around 40% agreed that a critical difference between those with true high potential and those who are ultimately just high main

One in four leaders fail. Most don't get fired. They stall. They become ordinary. They stay good enough to keep the role, not good enough to advance. Intellect, experience, motivation, and agility don't protect you. Senior leaders derail because of how they behave. Forget ethics violations. The killer is counter-productive behavior: things you do that don't help you, may sink you, and that you do anyway. Psychologists call this derailing. Fixing it stays hard for three reason

By Angela Lane & Sergey Gorbatov We sat down for a LinkedIn Live last week with one question on the marquee: Is the HR structure broken? The week answered before we did. On May 19, 2026, Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow took the stage at Fortune's Workforce Innovation Summit and announced he had fired the entire HR department. His line: "We had an HR team, and that HR team was creating problems that didn't exist." Bolt's valuation had collapsed from $11 billion to roughly $300 million.

There are a lot of reasons why leaders fail. Knowing what might cause you to fail — and responding to it — helps you succeed. That matters because 1 in 4 leaders fail. What do I mean by fail? It is not necessarily losing your job. In some ways, it might be worse than that: it is not meeting expectations, not living up to your promise, becoming ordinary, being (just) good enough—the kind of performance that is not bad enough to cost you your role, but probably bad enough to co

At any one time, we are doing three things. Even if we aren’t conscious of it. Delivering results. Building our reputation. Working toward something bigger. And while we do that, our organisations are quietly assessing who's performing, who has potential, and who will be getting more development and faster career growth. That assessment has a name. It's called a Talent Review. In most organisations with a serious approach to people, leaders gather periodically to assess ta

Culture is built (and destroyed!) by what leaders say, do and tolerate every single day. Leaders directly shape culture through three levers: the expectations they set, the behaviour they model and the accountability they enforce. All three. Together. Consistently. Simple, right? You are doing it… Of course, you are. And yet. We see three archetypes show up consistently across organizations and geographies. To bring each archetype to life, we'll use a leader by the name of Bo

Culture is built (and destroyed!) by what leaders say, do and tolerate every single day. Leaders directly shape culture through three levers: the expectations they set, the behaviour they model and the accountability they enforce. All three. Together. Consistently. Simple, right? You are doing it… Of course, you are. And yet. We see three archetypes show up consistently across organizations and geographies. To bring each archetype to life, we'll use a leader by the name of Bo

When it comes to development, it’s the quality of the challenge that matters. There's a phrase for it: developmental heat. There's an emphasis in professional development today: growth is associated with being given a coach, being assigned a sponsor, or maybe having your MBA supported. High-touch, white-glove development. It has to be the best strategy, right? Wrong. Roughly 70% of meaningful development happens through the work itself: through the stretch, the pressure,

by Angela Lane and Sergey Gorbatov Performance has long been one of the central levers of talent management. Most organizations still rely on a familiar formula: set goals at the start of the year, review progress along the way, and evaluate performance at the end of the year. That model made sense in a stable world. It makes less sense now. AI is reshaping work. Business priorities are shifting faster, roles are evolving in real time, and teams are being reconfigured more of

Let's talk about power. Not leadership power. Not empowerment. But power. The uncomfortable kind. The kind that determines who gets noticed, who gets promoted, and who gets passed over despite exceptional work. The politics of your career. Now pause. Notice how you're feeling. If our opening paragraph made you tense up — if something in it makes you want to click away — this article is for you. The Uncomfortable Truth About Value We've spent decades studying and advising o

Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth: feedback is one of the most overused words in corporate life… and one of the least effective behaviors in corporate life. We tell managers, “Give more feedback.” We tell employees, “Be open to feedback.” Then we act surprised when nothing changes. But here’s the punchline from our recent LinkedIn Live : feedback doesn’t just fail sometimes. In a meaningful chunk of cases, it actively makes performance worse. One major meta-analysis

By Angela Lane & Sergey Gorbatov AI is transforming work and business at an extraordinary speed. It promises to automate not only manual tasks but also decisions, problem-solving, interactions, and even creative processes. When talent is scarce (and most will agree it is), this must be good news. But it raises a provocative question: If AI can alleviate talent scarcity, will talent management remain relevant? Our answer is yes — though the reasons may evolve. How We Got He

If you scroll through any thread on Reddit's r/CareerGuidance asking people what changed their careers, you’ll notice something fascinating. It’s often stories about saying yes to something everyone else ignored. One user wrote, “I work in land surveying. I was a field guy, and the company wanted another person in the office. No one wanted to do it, so I did. I’m now on my way to being licensed and I work from home. I guess doing what other people don’t want to do.” (u/ cam

We all agree talent matters. The question is: Will you get better at managing it? To help you think through your talent agenda, we’ve...

Let’s get one thing straight: If you're not managing your personal brand, you're leaving your career to chance. In a world of portfolio...

How to Win with More Talent – One Hire at a Time By Angela Lane & Sergey Gorbatov When it comes to driving performance through talent,...