What's up, everybody?

Today, we want to call something out: there is a BIG ol' tension at the heart of this newsletter.

On the one hand, we write to understand the changing world of work, and our relationship to it. So our issues are peppered with stories on AI, Great Resignations, and remote work. Big, sweeping, complex trends. But then we follow right up with emails dedicated to things like trust, intent and awareness.

You'd be forgiven for asking if we weren't a bit...confused. 🙃 At one point, even we were asking:

"Which is it: cutting edge trends and changes? Or timeless traits and age-old solves?"

The answer is both. And it turns out the two are linked:

We believe that in a world of modern work defined by overwhelming change, speed and complexity, the key to thriving is, paradoxically, to cultivate our most timeless -- and human -- traits: resilience, adaptation, awareness, curiosity and trust, to name a few. And because of the outsized ROI these traits now offer, we also think they deserve a promotion -- to "supertraits".

We believe that the alternative -- trying to outpace this kind of change -- is at best a fool's errand. Better instead to focus -- as employees, leaders, and organizations -- on what we can control: our understanding of change, and our response to it.

With that out of the way then 😉, we'll use our stories this week to take a look at three key supertraits: learning, focus, and self-awareness.

Thank you for reading -- and have a great week!

Aki & Usman

#1

#Supertraits #Learning #Adaptability #AQ

Steve Cadigan served as LinkedIn's first Chief Human Resources Officer. And he makes a simple, resonant point here: that we should be hiring not just for IQ and EQ, but for people's "AQ": their adaptability quotient, i.e. their ability to learn.

#2

#Supertraits #Focus #TeamQuiet #Leadership

Kieran is the CEO of Textio, a software startup. A few weeks ago we wrote about the need to create quiet space to focus, and to process what happens around us. We argued that this had become more urgent than ever, given the levels of "noise" and distraction we face. So we loved Kieran's Tweet, and how she applies the same logic -- to leadership. This struck us as such a worthy, wonderful goal: to create the clarity, space and quiet our teams need, so they can focus on what matters.

#3

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#Supertrait #SelfAwareness #Intuition

Lest we think these needs are anything but timeless, Robert Greene, author of "The 48 Laws of Power", reminds us above ☝ that Pindar waxed on the benefits of knowing who we are, trusting ourselves and listening to our inner voice -- a full two and a half thousand years ago.

Thanks for reading. 🙏🏻

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