After being laid off, 57% of U.S. workers said they’ve felt pressured to accept a lower salary to get back to work, according to Glassdoor poll results released Tuesday. Women, the results show, feel greater pressure, with 63% saying they’d considered a lower offer compared to 52% of men.
Celebrate the big wins. They are well-deserved products of your efforts. Accept the laurel, frame it, show it off. Celebrating the big win doesn’t translate into complacency. It implies acknowledgment. The idea behind the resting-on-laurels effect is not to minimize your accomplishments. It is to use them as springboards and to be mindful that they don’t become traps.
The other day someone mentioned a friend who had recently retired. Then they paused. “Well… semi-retired,” they said. “He doesn’t really like calling himself retired.” I understood immediately. Not because I know the man. I don’t. But because I recognised what he was trying to protect. His relevance.
Organizations have long assumed that the individuals who rise to leadership roles are those best equipped to lead. Yet decades of research in personality psychology and organizational behavior suggest a more troubling reality: the characteristics that help individuals emerge as leaders are not the same characteristics that make them effective once they are in power.
When banks were failing and bread lines forming during the Great Depression, cosmetic sales rose 25%. In 2008, as the global economy collapsed, Lego posted record profits. In 2020, as the pandemic shuttered industries, the pet sector grew 16%. These industries weren’t selling products. They were selling joy.
